Continuing on the theme - BPM is as much about organizational discipline as it is about technology.

Last week, I had coffee with Terry Schurter [a thought leader in business process/performance management]. He runs an international not-for-profit professional community dedicated to the improvement of process for personal, organizational and customer success. His organization provides training and certification for business process management.

Our Thoughts…

As you might imagine, we talked at length about managing business processes. Without giving away the ‘plot’, he identified a couple of business process hot spots.

When reviewing your business processes [a collection of related, structured activities that produce a service or product] he sees several key areas to analyze.

1) Moments of Truth – Any place where your business processes touch the customer or the customer touches the process. Aptly named, any contact with the customer is a Moment of Truth. This almost seems too obvious, but does it get the right amount of attention?

2) Break Points – A break point is a transfer of work, information or data from one person to another within a process. Again aptly named, if something should break this is where it is likely to happen. You have heard the old adage – the squeaky wheel gets the oil; I believe that these break points are usually the squeaky wheel. This is where you will first fell the pain.

3) Business Rules – These are the explicit and implied principles that define how and why your processes function as they do.

I haven’t yet seen this approach to business process management, but I believe it would be extremely insightful.

Your Thoughts…