Autor: Ashish Mathur – BPM and CRM Tango

There are two industry terms – BPM and CRM – which people may be playing around separately to play there day to day business games. Let’s understand each one and see if there could be any correlation between the two.

• BPM is termed as “holistic approach” to promote business effectiveness and efficiency. It promotes innovation, flexibility and integration with technology.
• CRM is considered as a way for business to connect with their customers, understand them, increase profits and have better customer service.

By having achieved efficiency and effectiveness (BPM); understand customer requirements and better connection to the customer (CRM); both the terms are coined for getting profits for the business ultimately.

As the business world is moving more and more towards service orientation, the question comes how to achieve process efficiencies and do more business with the availability of many services and software around the corner.

One possible answer for this can be CRM with BPM practices

Some of the surveys show that many businesses are struggling to manage customer expectations due to the inability to manage their service requests in a consistent manner. The reason behind this might be that customer service people may have to interact with many systems to service the customer request, which may lead to inconsistency sometimes. The pitfall behind this approach also seems that customer service agents need some training to manage all this complexity of different systems.

One of the best examples of this could be: if a customer asked to add a new member to his insurance plan, then the service agent would have to validate the caller’s identification, and then would have to check his payment history. Finally, she then adds the new member to the policy. Each of these sub processes can be different services which require different systems/tools.

One possibility of improvement at this point could be to combine BPM and CRM which may lead to process and relationship management efficiency. Adding BPM and CRM can cover up gaps which may arise due to the lack of knowledge of different processes and handling with different systems. Another great advantage of this tango could be that it gives the customer relationship agent the same view the customer has, as an outsider (he does not think about different systems). Basically, the customer will act as a process participant in this conjunction who will help in driving the whole process.

Challenges

Many people are/might be finding it rigid to combine the both, as CRM is considered as easy and BPM as disruptive. It may be a challenging job to show business users the benefits of BPM to them and there customers. One clinch in this is that many CRM vendors claim to have BPM/Workflows already implemented within their solutions, which fosters the image of not to use BPM as a separate identity for the adaptation of efficiency improvement. BPM is more abstract in terms of concrete details than CRM.

Way to Go

If business gets ready to opt for this tango, then the question arises which one and how much: should it be Core CRM with some BPM, or Core BPM with some CRM? Actually, the answer lies in the business nature itself. Some businesses are more process driven than others. Some industries use a robust process driven approach which requires a high level of BPM capabilities raher than CRM, like Insurance or Finance; and some may need more CRM capabilities rather than BPM like in Retail. So it’s up to the business stakeholders which dish they want to pick more. It seems true that use of both in conjunction with each other will take the business efficiencies and do more business to the next level, and so is the business profit.

Autor: Michal Rykiert – Mobile Devices – the Future of BPM?

Company: WEBCON – http://www.webcon.com

Business trips such as delegations or conferences prove the usefulness of mobile devices that allow to remotely get some of daily duties done. However, those are more or less incidental cases. After all, an employee spends most of his time in office. But what if he or she does not? There are specific professions that require to be in a field most of the time. In this case mobile access to company’s BPM system is invaluable.

Mobile BPM in the Construction Industry

At this point you may want to get a closer look into the construction industry. For instance, people directly responsible for overseeing projects (e.g. construction engineers), often have to work in a field, and their task is to personally monitor as work progresses.
At the same time they need access to certain documents – plans, specifications etc.  What’s more, the characteristic of their profession requires to be on the move around the construction site. How in this case can they execute effective work management?

Autor: Ian Lowv – BPM Program Implementation – An Important Checklist for Success

Since the emergence of Business Process Management (BPM), organisations adopting it have had a wide variety of experiences – some successful and others less so. Some would argue that because BPM is so amorphous that any project is considered to be analogous to ‘boiling the ocean’ and therefore the outcomes may vary from exceptionally successful to, in some cases, disastrous.

Typical challenges that often cause concerns during a BPM initiative include:

• Focus on automation supersedes process excellence and continuous improvement
• Complex transformation programs end up in failures, as the business scope is not prioritised and the program roadmap not defined in advance
• Traditional Waterfall business requirements & process analysis phase takes  an average of 6 – 9 months  with no results to show in production for at least a year and as a result, business sponsors often get disillusioned with BPM
• Lack of alignment between the investments across business strategy, process improvement and automation activities

• Business outcomes and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are rarely validated in terms of actual metrics
• BPM solutions are usually designed without considering the holistic Enterprise Architecture
• Confusion between value of BPM platforms  and CRM, EAI, ECM  platforms
• Average time to assess BPM needs, define technology specifications, evaluate alternatives  and arrive at a technology decision takes more than 6 months
• Role of BPM in enterprise technology stack is not standardized or defined.

As a management consultant and a BPM practitioner, I have been through many situations in which I have helped organisations implement new BPM initiatives and turn around less successful projects. My experience in handling such challenges has allowed me to identify the specific characteristics of a successful BPM project.

The three main steps that can help ensure the success of BPM projects  are:

• Setting the vision, articulating the business problem and quantifying it

o  Educate IT and business teams about BPM fundamentals

o  Align stakeholders/ departments on initiative scope & priorities

o  Have a clear understanding of the business problem as it relates to business objectives

o  Identify a ‘Candidate’ process for the first project

o  Ensure business case and define KPIs for improvement

• Mobilizing teams and delivering a solution to the business problem

o  Ensure  there is business participation in all phases of the project

o  Ensure team composition has a well balanced mix of IT, process  and business user representation and expertise

o  Ensure business transformation supersedes technology goals

o  Select suitable technology platforms (Process/Rules/Integration/UI/BAM)

o  Agree upon and adopt suitable BPM methodology & standards. Don’t adopt a Big Bang approach! Iterative approach ensures ‘Quick Wins’

o  Ensure BPM design and architecture are scalable and built for change

• Measuring the outcomes and seeking the next business problem

o  Have clear metrics to ensure that the outcomes can be appropriately measured

o  Identify the roadmap with prioritised follow on opportunities

Adopting these guidelines will allow businesses to have better control over their ability to drive business change rather than react to changes placed upon them. IT will also have more flexibility to integrate existing systems that deliver solutions which are in line with business needs and end user expectations.

As new iterations of the same process or new processes are brought onboard, a momentum is created and what started out as a tactical solution becomes a strategic and dynamic process platform. In addition, the various systems that are currently used to deliver a silo capability to the various functions inside each of the organisation’s divisions can be exposed to other divisions (if appropriate) and therefore improve IT reuse and drive consistent working practices across the organisation.

I would be keen to hear your experiences and lessons learnt while implementing BPM programs.

This article highlights the importance that system integration capabilities should play when selecting a BPMS. Integration is often the largest challenges in transforming business processes and can often present one of the most difficult barriers to delivering rapid success.

Few business processes live out their life within a single system. Consider the example of winning a new customer, on-boarding them, delivering a service and gaining payment. It is not uncommon to find the following systems involved in supporting these processes:

1. Electronic Content Management for storage of  document (ECMS),
2. Customer relationship management (CRM) for lead and customer data,
3. Internally hosted specialist business support systems such as accounting systems,
4. Cloud based services,
5. Supplier or partner hosted systems.

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 “Out of the Box” Capabilities

The first area to consider is the “out of the box” integrations the BPMS comes equipped with. It is almost impossible to find a BPMS that does not offer integration with at least one major system, with connectors to ECMS, CRM and email systems most prevalent.

The key is to understand just what functionality is exposed via the connector. Does it allow updating of data in the remote system, or simply to read data? Can it react to events and launch processes automatically, such as someone checking a document into the ECMS triggering an approval process? It is also important to understand if the remote system can easily initiate workflow within the BPMS.

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Ability to Integrate Using API’s and Database Functionality without Writing Code

Despite the growth of the cloud, the significant challenge for many organizations implementing a BPMS is to integrate with internally hosted systems. These are often specialist systems which are industry specific, and are unlikely to come with connectors to any BPMS.

Traditional integration with these systems tends to focus on developing software that will take advantage of exposed API’s or database stored procedures. It is important to know that the proposed BPMS will make this possible. Ideally, it will be feasible to interact with the API’s and database procedures via wizards within the BPMS.

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Extensibility using Code

There will of course be occasions where integration is only possible through bespoke code. Once again it is important to understand how your BPMS will support executing your own custom code.

Will it execute within the BPMS, adding to the audit trail, or will it execute as a stand-alone application outside of the main product? Will you have options to execute code in your chosen language or are you restricted to a basic scripting language?

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Connecting to Third Party and Cloud Based Services

It is becoming almost impossible to avoid utilizing cloud based services in delivering an IT Strategy. Whether it is sending SMS, creating a customer survey or finding a secure way to transfer data between suppliers or customers, the cloud offers cost effective solutions which cannot be ignored.

This means that the BPMS being selected must also have an awareness of the cloud and an ability to work within that framework. A key consideration is to review how straight forward it is to consume web services without having to write code. If the BPMS offers a code free mechanism to consume these services then the integration possibilities are greatly extended.

It is also worth understanding if the out of the box integrations are cloud enabled. Does a BPMS claiming to be integrated with SharePoint work with Office 365, or does it only work with private implementations? Finding the answer to this post procurement could result in an expensive mistake.

Summary

A BPMS rarely lives in isolation from other systems. In order to deliver rapid projects which achieve the benefits of process automation, transparency and cost reduction it is vital to select a BPMS with strong integration capabilities.

Within this article I have outlined four integration areas to consider when selecting the most appropriate BPMS for your organization.

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BPM is a management approach that is available for anyone in the business market:  any company, institution or enterprise. However, for some reason, there are companies that did not implement this management strategy yet. Sometimes the reasons for not adopting a BPM approach are related to economic issues of BPM platforms, but the real problem should be: how good are the BPM tools that you are adopting?

So, if BPM is available for everyone, it would be interesting to discuss why companies don´t adopt this management strategy. Maybe it has to do with the developers and sellers of BPM tools. Maybe they don’t explain very well the benefits of these strategy and their investment return, they don’t demonstrate the usability of BPM tools and how it really changes the company processes and therefore the client’s satisfaction.

When the client takes the initiative to try one of the BPM tools available on the market the seller should adapt his strategy in order to persuade the customer and allow him to try the product. It is at this point that the client has the first experience with the product and it should be satisfactory! The consumer will try to analyze it properly and assimilate all the advantages of this new business tool.

As expected, the reaction is not the same for all customers. There are some people that enjoy the platform and intend to immediately implement it but others can’t easily see the benefits and the return of the invested amount. This is the normal operation of the market and it is at this stage that the art of selling is put to test.

Companies need to think more about the BPM approach and how they can implement it on their processes. There should be a market research about the best BPM tools available, their pros and cons and its value for money.

As with many IT professionals, I was first attracted to BPM by the capabilities offered by BPMS technology to increase business agility and reduce costs. Working as an IT Director, I identified two compelling reasons to invest in a BPMS. The first was that it offered a low cost and effective solution for automating administrative business processes, thus reducing operating costs. I secondly saw it as an effective solution to achieve a stated business aim of continuously improving processes at low cost, where the pace of change would be rapid.
A third compelling reason has recently emerged; using a BPMS to meet increasing business demand to complete business processes via mobile devices. Let’s look at each reason in more detail, so I can explain my conclusion that all senior IT professionals should give serious consideration to implementing a BPMS to increase agility, even if they don’t plan to embrace wider BPM principles.

Compelling reason 1 – A BPMS supports rapid and low cost automation of business processes Against the current macro-economic background, businesses are looking for ways to reduce costs whilst not degrading their ability to offer quality service. Automation achieves this by decreasing staff involvement in processes whilst creating a consistent and quality service experience. Extend automation with real time reporting and well-designed escalations and management effort will also switch from monitoring work queues to identifying further cost saving opportunities.
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Compelling reason 2 –BPMS technology increases the pace of application change processes If you work in a senior IT management position it is almost inevitable that you are faced with business users complaining that change requests take too long to implement or that they never get their change prioritized even though it is only small in size. It is also common to be told that the last project didn’t deliver everything that was needed, even though it was signed off as meeting all requirements before implementation, and additional change is now urgently required.
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Compelling reason 3 –BPMS technology exposes business processes to mobile apps at low cost With increasing consumerisation of IT, expectations are being raised at an incredible rate. Requests to IT are no longer limited to providing a windows client or an intranet based application. Business users now expect to execute business processes on their mobile devices.
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Summary I believe that a key behavior of an agile business is its ability to implement decisions taken against emerging opportunities or threats, rapidly and with confidence of execution. For an IT Director, this means being confident of delivering functionally rich applications, available on any device, that meets business requirements, again and again.
For the reasons outlined in this article, I believe that when senior IT professionals consider the potential benefits offered by leading BPMS solutions, they will be attracted to their many capabilities, even if they are not interested in BPM.

See original article at BPMInstitute.org

A Prominent factor of international business today is its strategic direction.  Global firms are competing with a wider variety of business and operational strategies and with more complex operational strategies today compare to 12 years before.

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Under global operational strategy to concentrate geographically located activities in a way that captures most of the available economies of scale and factor cost advantages.

BPM Vs ROI

BPM considers processes to be strategic assets of an organization that must be understood, managed, and improved to deliver value added products and services to clients. The need of optimization and streamline the operational activities for global companies are historical.

Here are some of the facts:

• There is no clear formula or mathematical model available for exact mapping of cost associated with BPM/Dependent projects and ROI. Benefits are multi-dimensional compare to single direction.
• ROI is a critical factor for any larger corporation/ senior management to know before approving any BPM related investment as its not in critical path of company success.
•  Major corporations/companies understand the needs/benefits of optimal strategies for operating models to save cost. But don’t want to invest on BPM due to unknown ROI.
• There are initial up front cost associated with BPM installation and adopting this model.

Determining ROI & NPV for BPM: Tracking direct benefits in terms of cost saving for short term (1 Year) and long term (5 year) period.

•  Improvement to operating structure/efficiency due to BPM,
•  Reduction in day to day breaks, failures, rework compare to previous year,
•  Optimized staffing model consist of reallocation of roles and responsibilities( globally or low cost area) as Business Process Modeling exercise
• Reduction in risk exposure with more control points determined with help of BPM
• Standard and enhanced End – 2 – End detailed process maps to reflect companies’ policies and procedural (Direct saving on External/internal audits & Time spend on audits with reduced exceptions).

Tracking In-direct Benefits in terms of cost saving

• Due to more standardized documentation and process mapping, Ease of change management or future enhancements as indirect benefit
• Centralized location of Policies & Procedures with details End – 2 – End mapping for cross reference.
• Direct contact and interaction with IT and business staff due to seamless integration.
• Ease of brining “New client on-board” and developing new strategies to accommodate need of clients.
• Centralized Business analysis & Project Management efforts with more control.
• Expansion of BPM model to other department with minimal efforts and reduced external expertise.
• Regulatory and compliance benefits and support to compliance certifications.

Adoption and Best Practices

It’s always advisable to incorporate BPM for detail analysis and integration of operation – technology is to take “incremental approach” at enterprise level.

Biggest obstacle for adopting BPM are “Culture, resources, funding” because for larger organization where multiple division need to coordinate for initial roll-out.

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Fonte:  http://www.bpminstitute.org/resources/articles/future-bpm-cost-vs-benefits-strategies

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