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Process Management

Contents:
  1. Why Change Now?
  2. Why Business Process Management?
  3. What is Business Process Management?
  4. Criteria
  5. Key Do's, Don'ts and Benefits
  6. Getting Started
A service to transform your enterprise from fragmentation to integration
Diagram of scattered organization Arrow leading to Diagram of cohesive organization

1.Why Change Now?
A few pithy quotes Surviving in business has never been easy -- leading your industry is significantly more difficult. Yet the gap between the leaders" and "followers" is growing rapidly.

Many of the best known companies have lost their leadership edge and some are struggling to survive. They have lost the very thing that made them leaders -- the ability to innovate processes that were a leap ahead of the norm.

The leaders of tomorrow will be those companies which can most quickly and effectively innovate and redesign not only their products but every process by which they do business. The rest will be forced to follow, to focus on cutting costs, jobs and margins to stay in business.

This choice is a leadership issue and can only be made, planned for and driven from the top.

2. Why Process Management
Diagram of balancing functions Hence, these days more and more conversations around the boardroom table are about Process Management. But most of them happen in ignorance of the fundamental role it will play in better managing tomorrow's business.

To succeed, organizations must consistently meet the needs of their stakeholders -- customers, employees, owners and the community. But these needs keep changing, and at an ever increasing rate. So it is those organizations that recognize and can be responsive to these changing needs that will be the ones to prosper and grow.

Quote from James Havard The fundamental structure and culture of many companies, especially the larger ones, cannot cope with change at the rate required .

Functional hierarchies cannot cope with the responsiveness required today. Process Management not only breaks down the functional barriers but gives the organization the opportunity to progress far beyond this. It provides the structure for the effective alignment of work, information and decision making which offers the potential for step changes in business performance.

Process Management is not only the foundation of progressive and sustainable improvement, and the fundamental element that has been missing from many major Quality Initiatives in the past, but it is also the key to survival.

3. What is Process Management?
Enterprise Management

TQM Diagram

"Holistic Approach"

Process Management, often referred to as Business Process Re-engineering (BPR), means different things to different people. There is a spectrum of applications coming generally under this heading, progressing from its most common use as a basic problem solving tool through to actually managing the business through its key processes.

Process Management provides the environment for effective empowerment, reduction of cost base and increased responsiveness by moving from functions to processes.

The benefits and opportunities increase disproportionately as progression is made through the spectrum.

The concept is based on a fundamental reality that whilst companies are organized traditionally by function, customers are satisfied and value added through a series of processes.

Diagram

A company may have one or more core business processes and a number of

All employees must understand these processes and the requirements of their suppliers and customers and constantly drive improvement.

So, by first understanding how the overall enterprise works and how it relates to the stakeholder needs, a company can focus on the changes required, carefully balancing the interests of one against the other, and at no time increasing any one at the expense of another.

Only then can processes be managed, measured and re-engineered. Not by functional heads, but by Process Owners who are the people best placed and responsible for ensuring that their process consistently satisfies all requirements, and that their process team continually strives to improve the capability and effectiveness of their process. This rate and degree of change raises many people management issues.

A fundamental requirement for success is the ability to balance the techniques with the effective empowerment of all staff and the management of change, and to apply a structured approach.


A Process for Developing the Shared Vision

Diagram


The Spectrum of Business Process Application

It is not enough just to analyze individual processes as a part of problem-solving, or even as process re-engineering. The whole picture of how the business operates -- from strategic planning though to collection of cash -- must be seen. Only then can the full potential for improvement really be appreciated.

From that starting point, the key processes can be aligned to the key stakeholder needs and the Business Objectives, and reviewed to determine their ability to deliver them.

Business Process Diagram
4. Criteria

Commitment Diagram		 The need for "change" is often identified at this stage -- particularly where it becomes clear that no adequate process exists to deliver a key requirement, or meet a Business Objective.

The conflicts between the differing requirements of the stakeholders in any one process are brought into sharp focus and the balancing of benefits addressed.

But this exercise of analysis, balancing requirements, determining measurable parameters and implementation cannot stand alone. It must be accompanied by a comprehensive and carefully harmonized program of empowerment -- from top to bottom -- and training, so that everyone knows the why and the how, has the skills and wants to participate in creating and maintaining the environment for long term success.

Ownership and commitment flow from that involvement. People's focus and behavior shifts from what will satisfy their managers to what will satisfy their customers.

Given this environment, corporate example and encouragement, they stay motivated and involved, providing an organization which is committed to satisfying its stakeholders and structured for maximum responsiveness.
5. Key Do's, Don'ts and Benefits?
What are the key do's and don'ts? What are the benefits?
A study of companies which have succeeded in the long term with a business process approach has found a number of Do's and Don'ts as the key to their success: Managing by Business Process Management gives you a vehicle for change, by providing:
Do:
  • Plan for a marathon, not a sprint
  • Take a holistic view of the business and its processes
  • Plan for the people issues
  • Use the appropriate Business Process Technique
  • Continually reinforce the vision
  • Drive it from the customer
Don't:
  • Do it without clearly identified Business Objectives and Stakeholder Values
  • Try to re-engineer everything
  • Re-engineer more than one key process at a time
  • Re-engineer any process without understanding its role in the overall business
  • Try Business Process without empowerment
  • Re-engineer processes with only one Stakeholder in mind
  • Do it to them; let them do it to themselves
  • Get consultants to do it for you; have them teach you how to do it yourself.
Benefits:
  • The mechanism for changing behavior
  • The structure for enhanced competitiveness by removal of non-value adding activities
  • The environment for active empowerment
  • Rapid response to marketplace changes
  • Permanent cross-functional working structures
  • Easy mechanisms for measurement
  • The baseline for benchmarking
  • The structure for integrating Safety and Environment issues with Quality
  • The translation of Business Objectives into individual and group tasks and activities
  • The structure for integrating and maximizing the benefits of many tools and techniques of Quality
Business Process Management enables the organization to overcome its traditional functional barriers, and creates a result-oriented, market-sensitive and responsive business capable of capturing the changes and holding the gains.
6. Getting Started

The spectrum of principles and techniques contained within Business Process Management can be applied equally effectively to meet a number of different short or long term improvement needs.

The specific applications that are most commonly applied are targeted at:

Short Term Major Improvements
Where you need to make significant improvements in the performance, customer satisfaction levels, employee effectiveness or capital utilization, Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) offers one of the most effective and productive vehicles for delivering sustainable and progressive results in a short time scale.

Strategic Business Planning and Major Process Change
Where the key requirement is to forecast the present and future needs of your stakeholders and translate these into measurable targets, and from that develop programs of change for the end to end business process. Then our Future State Vision methodology will provide one of the most powerful tools for achieving sustainable competitive advantage.

Empowerment
Where you need to devolve decision making and participation down through the organization to enhance responsiveness and reduce the cost base, our process-based approach for Team Based organizational development provides a structure for balancing authority, accountability and responsibility in a way that is internationally proven to radically change traditional cultures.

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