Articles

Author(s):

Andrew Spanyi

Faculty Member, DBizInstitute.org and Managing Director, Spanyi International

Many firms are actually quite good at improving performance on projects of small scope within traditional organizational boundaries and yet they struggle in achieving sustainable improvements to large business processes such as order fulfillment and new product introduction.

What’s the problem? Lack of committed leadership typically surfaces among the top few barriers in practically every survey on the obstacles in making major improvements to organizational performance. Why do leaders continue to struggle in this regard? There are at least three reasons.

The 6 C’s of Process Improvement – The Owner’s Manual

Author(s):

Faun deHenry

President and CEO, FMT Systems Inc.

What do can you do when process improvement is needed and there is no executive sponsor available?

Thoughts on SOA and the Cloud

Author(s):

Mike Rosen

Editorial Director, SOAInstitute.org

The cloud is all the rage this year, so not to be left out, I thought I better write something about it. Once you get past the ‘cheaper, faster, better’ hype, one of the common themes is the apparent synergy between the cloud and SOA. Well duh! The cloud is all about making IT resources available as services, and Service Oriented Architecture is all about creating solutions with service building blocks. In this column Let’s start looking at this with some definitions:

Reinventing “Lean Thinking”

Author(s):

Izabela Waglay

President, EELI Group Inc.

Has Lean delivered its full promise to date? Observing the evolution of the “Lean Thinking” concept in the past 30 years in North America is very interesting. A few years back, the (yet another new) term “LEAN” was coined and brought forth, which I found fit perfectly in describing the main thrust of the philosophy and what the driving methodology was intended to achieve.

Balanced Approach to Process Metrics

Author(s):

Faun deHenry

President and CEO, FMT Systems Inc.

As business process management understanding matures within organizations, new challenges will arise. Sometimes it helps to know how other disciplines have addressed similar issues as it avoids the “reinventing the wheel” syndrome. For the last decade forward thinking organizations have conducted reviews of their business processes and taken steps to streamline them, i.e., minimize the “handoffs” between business units. For publicly traded companies, Sarbanes-Oxley has increased the complexity of business processes and prevented the streamlining of certain processes.

A Business Executive’s View of Business Architecture

Author(s):

William Ulrich

President, TSG, Inc.

Business architecture is a game changing discipline that allows a business to establish a common vocabulary, shared vision, and level of transparency that facilitates initiatives ranging from mergers and acquisitions to deployment of new strategic business models. Even as business architecture success stories emerge, the message has been slow to penetrate the executive suite. This article discusses why business executives should strongly consider business architecture as a way of overcoming many of the complex obstacles inherent in today’s dynamic business environment.

Future with BPM: Cost Vs Benefits & Strategies

Author(s):

Vinod Jain

VP - Strategist, BNYMellon

A Prominent factor of international business today is its strategic direction. Global firms are competing with a wider variety of business and operational strategies and with more complex operational strategies today compare to 12 years before.

This makes more challenging for global operation to deploy same model for its internal business where economic and market conditions are different. This can resolved by providing a unique national strategy and dedicated modification of key activities for each major country; this facilitates customizing the business around each countries market.

A global business and operational strategy world is considered as signal market where corporate goals are common. This brings international operations to tough spot of performing as stand-alone entity.

The Decision Model: Breaking Barriers in Real-World Projects

Author(s):

Larry Goldberg

Managing Partner, Knowledge Partners International LLP

The number of successes with The Decision Model is escalating. Organizations are using The Decision Model to solve a range of business challenges and opportunities including some we did not expect. Therefore, this month we summarize three real world projects to illustrate how organizations are using decision models and how quickly project teams are delivering them.

SOA and Service Catalogues

Author(s):

John Moe

Principal Consultant, J Moe Associates

A recent survey suggests that two thirds of large organisations are looking to implement a service catalogue in the next few months. However, the same survey also stated that less than half could articulate what benefit the service catalogue would be to the business. Looks like we are in a classic technology hype cycle!

The Business Architecture Core Artifact

Author(s):

Ralph Whittle

Enterprise Business Architect, Independent Consultant

Just about any serious Business Architecture (BA) discussion these days will include some reference to a model or artifact within the BA approach. This article will discuss what the author believes is the “core artifact” of the Business Architecture.