Process-Centric Management

The BPTrends group on LinkedIn.com is a lively discussion platform for all things BPM (Business Process Management). I can recommend joining the group as well as the Monthly Advisor on their website.

One of the discussions is to try and define BPM in 160 characters or less. I added my few cents and came up with 2 attempts along these lines:

• The purpose of BPM is to actively manage process events, variables and stakeholders to deliver critical, measurable process outcomes; and
• It is “applied common sense” to make sure that you do the right things the right way over and over to stay in business and that you get better at it.

Roger Tregear’s definition, however, is the best BPM for Executive Dummies that I’ve seen in a long time.

• Organisations exist to deliver value to customers and stakeholders. That’s strategy.
  
• They do this via a series of coordinated activities across a number of functional elements of the organisation. That’s a process.
  
• It makes sense to optimise these processes so that they satisfy the requirements of customers and other stakeholders. That’s process improvement.
  
• Taking a coordinated view of the performance of the processes by which an organisation delivers value, optimises performance. That’s process management.
  
• Process management allows organisations to focus on processes that create the market differentiation described by the strategy. That’s execution.
  

It is more than a 160 characters but it describes the essence of what BPM wants to achieve, or for that matter, the essence of what any organisation wants to achieve.

It is actually part of an article that Roger did (see the “achieving process based management” in the box.net section of his LinkedIn profile) and I recommend reading it. He lists some of the reasons for BPM in the same document, which I will comment on in a later post.

Back to the “profound sequence from strategy to execution”. Not all organisations look at their processes strategically. They should, and Roger gives the definitive reason in the five bullet points. We seldom find prospects or customers that want to start the discussion with strategy. Most are looking at bullet 2, the series of coordinated activities across a number of functions in the organisation. Most have a problem with coordinating events across functional areas of their business and want a quick fix. And that’s generally where many organisations stay. They may automate them but they don’t get the benefits associated with managing them.

It also illustrates the difference between process automation/workflow and business process management. You may require process management software tools to achieve effective BPM, but it remains a way of thinking and how you approach processes that will have the long term strategic benefit. There is a process in getting to real BPM. The good news is that it is fairly simple and not hard to do. Just take the five points and apply them to your organisation and go from strategy to execution through your processes.