Elise OldingSocial BPM has been getting a lot of hype as a technology. It is not. Certainly, it is supported by technology, but it is a practice that requires the right skills. The skill that will be fundamentally required is process design. Social BPM requires understanding how to turn a process “outside in” by viewing it from the customer’s perspective and experience. Social BPM is about enhancing customer experience at all the touch points of a process, and insert methods to seek out new information, not only about increasing internal efficiencies.
The shift will need to be from focusing on tasks and work flows to thinking about the experience of those interacting with the process. Social BPM will cross into the realm of user interface and require a hybrid role a process designer. A process designer is a highly skilled individual that creates the context and concept of the user experience. This means challenging conventional thought – it means creating an experience of the process first, then defining the activities and tasks.
An example of this thinking one of our Gartner clients shared with me:
The enterprise is undertaking a major restructuring and redesign of a major portion of the company. Rather than looking for just efficiencies, they included the customer view of how their processes are experienced. This led to rethinking how processes have been standardly defined. For instance, their product distribution was deemed a customer facing interaction. (I admit I did wince when I was first told this!) The rationale is that the delivery is the touch point for the customer and that interaction influences the perception of the company. Rather than defining distribution as a supply chain function, they included it in sales and marketing processes.
As you can see in this example, technology would not have identified this shift. Social BPM is a shift, it will require re-looking at how we have defined processes (management, enabling/support and competitive). Using the above example, the role of the delivery person may be expanded, they may need different decision making authority, they may need to connect customer comments, spot emerging trends and be able to communicate these for action. This role will contribute to the competitive advantage of this company by making every customer interaction one that represents the brand.
This view of process design goes beyond getting a bunch of people in a room collaborating on process design. It goes beyond cobbling some disconnected social technology on top of the process. (see “Stop Whining and Get Back to Work(flow) by Carol Rozwell) It will require radical rethinking of the process, understanding the touch points with the customers (external and internal) and how that view changes how the process will execute and what changes may be needed in the roles delivering that process.
It will require the skills of a process designer.
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8 responses so far ↓
1 Tweets that mention Social BPM Needs “Process Designers” Not Technology -- Topsy.com August 30, 2010 at 5:55 am
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2 Social BPM Needs “Process Designers” Not Technology | Hitech And Technology News Online August 30, 2010 at 5:58 am
[...] from: Social BPM Needs “Process Designers” Not Technology August 30th, 2010 Tags: bpm, fundamentally-required, requires-the-right, [...]
3 Bill August 30, 2010 at 11:53 am
“Social BPM requires understanding how to turn a process ‘outside in’ by viewing it from the customer’s perspective and experience.”
Bingo. Amen. Right on. You go girl. Did I miss anything?
I trust that one day we will once again come full circle and realize that the customer doesn’t care how the clock is made. He or she simply inquires to learn the time (through the wisest expenditure of resources – time and money, usually).
The basic question remains: Why is the “enterprise” even “enterprising?” Presumably, by selling a product or service, it will make a profit. Let’s not overthink this. After all the human interface studies, the sociological and psychological analysis, the Nth degree of flowcharts and formulae, we will always arrive at that common (ubiquitous) bottom line conclusion that says we must “buy low and sell high.”
I contend that a really good “Process Designer” must have experience in a broad cross-section of business activities, including finance and accounting, sales and marketing, product design, field operations, engineering, writing/communications, and as many other disciplines as is humanly possible to touch.
In the end, BPM simply requires lots of common sense, savvy, guts, and a healthy dose of KISS.
4 Max J. Pucher - Chief Architect ISIS Papyrus August 30, 2010 at 4:45 pm
Social (BPM or CRM) is neither Empowerment nor enabling processes or their design. No process design will force customers to buy or to be happy. People make other people happy. The problem starts with assuming that designed processes improve anything. There has to be a balance between the value proposition created by marketing and how to achieve perceived value for the customer. What kind of job are you improving for the customer? People bemoan ‘bad process design’ or as Bill points out designs being done by people who don’t have the right experience.
How about ‘not-designing-processes’? How about simply doing them? Empowering people to perform any activity that makes the customer happy as long as it doesn’t conflict with a few compliance boundaries? No, that is not ‘Social’! Social is uncontrolled interaction that does not progress a process forward as it neither controls business data nor business content nor process state or changes goal fulfillment!
To make sure the business is ‘enterprising’ it has to follow the busines objectives and targets and the process goals must be derived from those. All of the above has nothing to do and is not improved by rigid flowcharted processes.
In the end process doesn’t need design. It needs software that empowers people and doesn’t require hardcoded flowcharts. Processes must be focused on goals and outcomes and not on flows. That’s why we buitl software that only focuses on those and doesn’t require (while it can do them) flowcharts to execute a process, but it does require authorization, goals and means (data and content) also known as ‘empowerment’.
5 Jacob Ukelson August 31, 2010 at 3:52 am
Elise,
Hi. I really like your emphasis about thinking about the experience of interacting with the process, rather than focusing on workflows.
The problem is what you describe is very different than what most people (especially those in the BPM community) would consider “process design”.
It seems like Adaptive Case Management is closer to your thinking than BPM. I actually just wrote a post about process IQ vs EQ – http://blog.actionbase.com/is-adaptive-case-management-eq-while-business-process-management-iq
Jacob Ukelson – CTO ActionBase
6 Elise Olding August 31, 2010 at 3:20 pm
Thanks for your reply Max.
At Gartner we do not believe all processes are “flowcharted.” There is structured and unstructured work. The important aspect for unstructured/knowledge work is to have visibility and define risk tolerance. Work must be understood to delegate responsiblity and accountablity to the lowest level possible. This, in context with the customer’s view of the work (inside or outside) will require design skills, not just technology.
7 Will Mobile Apps be the BPMS Killer? November 30, 2010 at 2:15 pm
[...] As BPM professionals I would encourage each of you to develop a close relationship with your smart device. There are countless apps out there – ones that can dramatically increase productivity, enable better sharing of information and provide richer, more easily accessible interactions. Hands on usage may change your perspective and stimulate your creativity when tackling that next process design project. [...]
8 Will Mobile Apps be the BPMS Killer? November 30, 2010 at 2:15 pm
[...] As BPM professionals I would encourage each of you to develop a close relationship with your smart device. There are countless apps out there – ones that can dramatically increase productivity, enable better sharing of information and provide richer, more easily accessible interactions. Hands on usage may change your perspective and stimulate your creativity when tackling that next process design project. [...]
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