The New BPM

IPAPI CEM Method™ – Optimize

tschurter@ingenuus.com (Terry Schurter) — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 18:24:00 +0000

With the IPAPI CEM Method™ we take a unique approach to getting that broader perspective. We describe a process as a simple model of activities. We don’t want to “capture” workflow or any of the other “as is” modeling artifacts because they only get in the way of identifying causes of work. What we need to do is create a simple process model that we can all agree represents the process at a high level.

That kind of process model gives us the broader perspective we need to identify other non value-added work. Why? Because with a simple high level process model we can suddenly get a real sense for how the process is structured to achieve its purpose. And with that insight it suddenly becomes very obvious what parts of the process are problematic or fail to contribute to the achieving of the intended purpose. What have we found? More causes of work, and once we know they are there we can take action to begin eliminating them.

Identifying and eliminating the very causes of work is how we optimize processes with the CEM Method. Using this approach we eliminate both the non value-add activities of a process along with many of the causes of unintentional work in our organizations – the work that often consumes over half of our employees work efforts!

tschurter@ingenuus.com (Terry Schurter) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 19:59:00 +0000

The Number One Reason why Process Initiatives Fail

If you did a study of how processes in your organization changed over time using our Process Diagnostics, you would find that in general our organizations are actually engineering more causes of work into our processes all the time. This is also the number one cause behind the increase in complexity that is making our lives so difficult.

Yet the only way we can significantly reduce the non value-added work in our organizations is by eliminating causes of work. That’s the difference between the IPAPI approach and other approaches to process improvement. Rather than continuing in a cycle of affect-fixing (that creates more and more affects)... we identify and eliminate the very causes or work. The difference in results from these two basic approaches is profound.

The second type of non value-added work comes from how we choose to think about the work that we do. So often we focus our efforts on changing aspects of a process without really understanding what the overall nature of that process is and the purpose it is intended to serve. But that can never work. We must base our efforts on the intended purpose of each process if we are to achieve value creation; to do that we must step back and get a broader perspective on each process. Unfortunately the degree of detail we typically use to describe processes is far too much for us to ever get ourselves into this perspective.

Eliminating Non Value Added Work

tschurter@ingenuus.com (Terry Schurter) — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 23:48:00 +0000

Non value-added work comes in two types. The first type of non value-added work is work that is created when something doesn’t occur in the way we intended it to. It is unintentional work but it is still work.

Because “process” is a convenient and popular way to talk about the work an organization does we can approach this problem by identifying the causes of work that exist by process (from the IPAPI perspective any form of process definition works).

But how do we do that?

It turns out that there are three things we can identify in a process that will enable us to uncover the causes of work existing within it. These three things are Moments of Truth, Break Points and Business Rules.

Moments of Truth exist any time a customer touches a process or a process touches a customer. Break Points occur anywhere a hand-off of any kind occurs in a process and Business Rules are the explicit and implied rules of the process that form or influence the behavior of the process. We call moments of truth, break points and business rules Process Diagnostics.

Each and every one of these Process Diagnostics is a cause of work. Why? Because at every Moment of Truth, Break Point and Business Rule there will be things that go wrong – what we call a deviation from the intended or designed process state. And no matter how many times we engineer and reengineer these causes of work they still have deviations. That’s because we can’t engineer flawless processes: the very act of trying to do so (fixing affects) makes our processes more and more complicated...

And it also introduces more causes of work!

Can a Process-Approach Solve all of my Problems?

tschurter@ingenuus.com (Terry Schurter) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 18:02:00 +0000

No... but you’ll probably be surprised at what the Customer Expectation Management (CEM)Method process approach can solve.

In our jobs we are faced with many challenges – and one of the most prominent of those challenges is reducing costs. Cost reduction will remain on the organizational agenda forever.

If we are experiencing growth or seeking to improve response times for specific areas of our operations we may be faced with increasing capacity or throughput.

Often times we are part of an initiative to increase revenues for a line of business, product line, or even as an enterprise initiative.

Then you may even be tasked with improving customer satisfaction!

So what are you challenged with? What’s keeping you up at night? Is it Cost Reduction, Increasing Revenue or improving Customer Satisfaction? Are these the kinds of challenges you face?

Or perhaps you have a less ominous challenge. Perhaps you’ve got responsibility for improving internal problems? Like making it easier for somebody else to do their job? It could be your task is to support changes decided by others.

Sometimes the most important issue faced is dealing with tasks and projects that just never seem to work out as expected. Are you spending a lot of time trying to make things work after you already thought they were done? Maybe you’re simply tired of things not working out as expected. A project manager who’s tired of seeing all their best efforts still fall short of the goal they thought they would achieve?

I've even talked to people who are tired of doing things that just seem to fall short of being the right thing to do. So perhaps what’s keeping you up at night is that you're just plain tired and frustrated with the way things are?

How does I help with all of these problems?

Let me tell you.

My philosophy takes a unique approach to how we deal with the many challenges we are faced with everyday in our working lives. My philosophy gives us an approach that guides us to identifying the very causes of work.

Think about that a minute.

Causes of work are the very nature of what shapes the things each of us do everyday. Of course we need to do work so that doesn’t mean that all work is bad but it’s not hard to imagine that much of the work that gets caused – and that people do – is non value-added work. In an ideal world we would eliminate all that non value-added work.

A product and a practice – taking BPM to the next level, Part 2

tschurter@ingenuus.com (Terry Schurter) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:54:00 +0000

How would things be different if those processes we automate, put in executable models, use document management behind, support with knowledge management, apply security to, and so on had an obvious and easy to understand direct connection to delivering on our customer value proposition? It’s enough to gain the undivided attention of even the most advanced organizations.

Interestingly enough, this is not process reengineering. It is process alignment and process optimization to dramatically improve efficiency and quality. It is the use of those things that already serve our real purpose, the elimination of those that do not, and the refinement of those that are just plain off the mark to some degree.

And with the clarity of purpose, actionable metrics, and documented process experience in our hands from these new activities; the use of supporting technology suddenly jumps up in value – often way up. It’s interesting for me to note that given this basic information created by these additional BPM functions the resulting use of technology becomes a streamlined activity with far faster implementation and greater results from the technology people already in place supporting the business. It leverages their skills in a way we have not seen before.

How far does this go in truly bridging the gap between the business and IT? Consider for example a top tier retail consulting group exposed to the practice side of this new level in BPM. When presenting key elements of this BPM activity to the COO, not only was the value obvious but in the first meeting the COO identified the value to using this new BPM on every internal process in the business as well!

When was the last time you saw a COO directly involved in a BPM initiative?

Another example is a UK-based mid-market HR consulting and software firm. What happened when they starting using this BPM approach in the practice with their clients? Would you be shocked to now that in 6 months business spiked dramatically, specifically in relationship to the level of value creation and how simple the proposed action plan was for the client (from the business side) to immediately now that they needed to take the recommendations - because the value was so obvious there was simply no need to debate or justify? When was the last time you saw that happen?

The techniques are perfected and the roadmap validated with clients like the consulting company mentioned above, one of the largest media conglomerates in the nation, and one of the top insurance companies globally. It makes sense, it creates value, it is a critical level of differentiation, and it makes clients very, very happy.

I will be working with at least one company on the software, services or both sides of the coin in this new level of BPM to help them become the world leader in high value creation BPM.

Is this something we should talk about?

A Product and a Practice - taking BPM to the next level

tschurter@ingenuus.com (Terry Schurter) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:39:00 +0000

Part 1

The alignment of an organization and its technology to customer value and customer satisfaction is the new frontier in Business Process Management. This paper outlines the basic approach to creating this alignment, and in the consequent bridging of the gap between the technology and business sides of an organization.

Consider this. The key processes of the organization – the ones that are typically not documented, managed, optimized or controlled are the processes that represent the experience of the customer. These processes have no internal perspective. They are what the customer experiences when they interact with us.

Those processes come in two flavors. The value propositions themselves; which can include production, purchasing, and fulfillment (or delivery) – but which we are now acting on strictly from the customer experience point of view - are the value creation processes of the organization.

All of the other processes related to these value creation processes (support, updates, feedback, etc.) are the second flavor of process (again, we are acting strictly on the customer experience here); and along with the value creation processes they determine customer satisfaction.

For these processes there are alignment, optimize and innovation activities that are not directly related to technology. They can be supported by software and they can be influenced by the capabilities of specific technology but they are primarily business activities that set the metrics and shape of process – their actionable business requirements.

When these steps are taken (and both the approach to crafting these process and the business management activities of optimization, alignment and innovation are applied) we create the foundation for business success. These are structured but subjective activities that can only be performed by people (although the nature of the activities means that anyone in the organization can participant in and use these activities without learning a complicated discipline).

By creating the best high level shape of the process with actionable metrics that directly support business strategy we create a process landscape that can be used to leverage related technologies at an entirely new value creation level. With this approach, supporting technology becomes tied into our business metrics in a way that makes their impact and contribution visible and quantifiable to the business side of the organization.

Think about that.