Traditional metrics have historically focused on financial and operating factors. What is newer is organizational process metrics or metrics that measure how a process works from the company point of view and the customer point of view.  How is the company doing at meeting a customer needs (such as accuracy, responsiveness, service, speed, completeness) and how is the process doing being efficient and effective so the company can be competitive in the market place at a good price?
This article lists five key pitfalls that organizations face as they start an Organizational Process Metrics initiative and implement it across the company.

Pitfall #1 – Where’s the Decision and Action?

“Our guidance takes major steps in ensuring CIOs have a seat at the table for technology-related budget, procurement, and workforce matters. [It] is centered on a ‘common baseline’ that outlines the roles and responsibilities for agency chief information officers and other senior agency officials. More importantly, it establishes a groundwork for productive partnerships among these leaders to make IT decisions that better support [their business] mission.” – U.S. Chief Information Officer (CIO) Tony Scott (upon releasing the final Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) guidance from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)

Passed by Congress in December 2014, the Federal Information Technology Reform Act (FITARA) grants more influence and control over investments in information technology (IT) to agency’s CIOs.

You can’t improve something which you cannot measure.  This is a basic tenet in six-sigma and many other process improvement methodologies.    Yet few organizations even consider trying to objectively measure any aspect of the quality of the process models which they implement at the core of their process improvement initiatives.   Fortunately, this is an area where the use of a BPM platform offers significant advantages over other technical approaches.  The fundamental difference between a BPM solution and a traditional code solution is the existence of an explicit representation of the business process, including the steps, their sequencing, branching and looping, worker assignments and external interfaces.  This process representation makes it possible to reason about the characteristics of a BPM solution in ways that are much more difficult with other technologies.

Ricoh is a global technology company, best known for its familiar range of office equipment and services including printers, projectors, document management systems and IT services.   Headquartered in Sydney, Ricoh Australia maintains branches in all mainland capital cities.

New services herald a time of change
In the last five years, Ricoh’s Australian operations have been through enormous change.   Acquisitions and expansion into new markets, including the development of highly successful professional services and IT services arms, have resulted in the company doubling in size since 2010. Headcount has risen to over 1,100 employees. Major new customers have signed on with the company. To accommodate their needs, many new processes have been developed and old ones changed. 

Declan O’Reilly, Business Excellence Manager, describes it as an exceptionally busy period and one that has been dramatic in terms of change.