Recently I have been influenced, in a good way, by my acquaintance with Terry Schurter, a thought leader in the BPM space. For the most part, we think of process in very much the same way. There is one significant way that he looks at process that has impacted me a great deal lately. Namely, his focus on customer satisfaction.

I subscribe to the notion that a process has one or more customers. By customer we mean, of course, the recipient of the outcomes of our processes. Some processes deal with internal customers, while others deal with external customers. What has been eveolutionary for me to consider is that much of our optimization and automation efforts in the area of processes occur with processes that have very little to do with our external customers and therefore have very little to do, directly at least, with customer satisfaction. Terry asserts that companies desiring to transform themselves to be solid competitors in the global market place must become customer centric.

This is a new thought to me. At least, as it relates to process automation and optimization.

His unique, non-technical approach to addressing customer centricity is decieivingly simple. It involves analyzing processes at 3 critical points - Moments of Truth (customer touch points), Break Points (process hand-offs) and Business Rules (process flow assumptions and constraints).
Although this approach does not require technology, it is clear that the right technology could make this analysis easier to do and manage.

For the most part I feel that Ingenuus has been very aware of break points and business rules, and our technology uniquely addresses these activities. Moments of Truth, on the other hand, have not been on our radar sceen - until now.

Perhaps companies shy away from automating customer processes, or using less complex technology to automate customer processes, is because they are, in essence, the most critical of all processes. For me at least, considering where the customer "touches" a process profoundly impacts handoffs and business rules.

Adopting this simple approach does not require management mandates or approval. It is simply a personal paradigm shift that can truly impact your organization. Enough people considering all that they do in light of these points will cause a shift in any organization's actions and ultimately their processes.