First of all, we received a record number of entries for a brand new awards program. We received 32 entries and had others clamoring to enter beyond the “drop dead date”. Of the 32, 21 submitted some return on investment numbers (ROI) and nine did not include hard benefits.

We were encouraged that the sponsorship of BPM programs/projects is high up in the organization. The breakdown included 15 at the CEO level, five at the CX team level and seven at the Executive/Senior VP level. This means 84% of the entrants had some form of top management sponsorship. The BPM maturity levels (according to the Gartner Maturity Model) were high (22 were at level 3 or above). This means there are efforts going on beyond initial implementations to incremental improvement. We had a great vendor representation with 17 unique vendors, but the judgment was vendor independent. In fact four entries had no vendors involved.

I was really encouraged by the financial returns. Of the 21 companies submitting financial results 12 had break even results less than a year (an impressive 57%). The size of the benefits were also impressive in that 16 (76%) had greater than one million dollars in benefits. There were several with double digit millions in benefits. This certainly noteworthy and will be exciting to hear about at our upcoming BPM conference in Orlando from October 5-7, 2009.

Pro Applications:

The business and IT relate better to applications as they have seen legacy applications and packaged applications for decades and that is how organizations do business today. Sure IT is moving away from construct and control responsibilities. IT is giving more and more back to the business folk as they become more skilled and the technologies make it easier for them to do so. It’s just natural to think in terms of applications. Of course applications have processes in them, but they are the packaging of processes that represent best practices that have proven to be the building blocks for business operations today. There is either a cornerstone packaged application or a number of bespoke applications that run the business. Process is just late for dinner and trying to horn into the table set by IT.

Pro Process:

Of course IT types think that the whole organization runs on their applications. IT forced business folks to formulate applications around common best practices. How self serving!! Processes pre-date applications by over one hundred years and include much more than commodity applications and low level applications. Business professionals inherently understand process flows; not applications. Why do you think business folks relate to UIs? UIs represent the way parts of their overall process flow. Processes hold together stove pipe applications into operation processes and applications are the transactional servants of operational processes. Guess what? Operational processes are only a fraction of what an organization does (20-30% maybe).. There are dozens of unstructured activities that only process can support. Applications are way too brittle with fixed and implicit rules, flows and components. It’s a process world; not an application world. .Processes consist of explicit flows, rules, dashboards and services that business people can relate to and change themselves. The propagation of applications is the core of IT survival.

We definitely need both to cooperate to make businesses run just like we need chicken and eggs to survive. See http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2009/03/03/double-your-pleasure-application-packages-and-bpm-together/

 What do you think?

People are just so crucial in our processes. It is important to treat our clients well and give them a process that does not frustrate them and maybe even delights them. If does not cost much to do it right. Leveraging the your collective client base through inexpensive collaborative set of methods, ahead of time, is cheaper than surveying them to tell you what you want to hear by designing “CYA” (cover your backside) questions. Start creating surveys with real customer feedback. Enabling your employees, partners and vendors while driving the work to the lowest level of skill where ever possible is the way to make more money Super-charging support for all skill levels enables each level to reach to higher skill levels at a lower salary cost just makes sense. The highest cost to a company is the loss of a customer, then an employee and finally a partner. Do you want to risk that with poor processes?

The Planet is more important now than ever now that we know it’s not inexhaustible. Thinking about sustainability should be on our minds “24*7”. If not just because I have eight grandchildren, so far, it makes economic sense. Why would you knowingly “push up” the costs of your future resources by gobbling them up now? Sustainability means meeting the needs of the present without compromising future the generation’s ability to meet their needs. We need to leverage BPM to optimize the use of scarce resources. We need BPM to help regions, countries and organizations to extend their sustainability over a long period of time. There are certainly untold opportunities to save paper by leveraging electronic content “Just reducing worldwide paper usage by 10% would save over 100,000,000 trees, 100,000,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and a staggering $3.5 billion in paper costs. BPM can be at the heart of optimizing resources, if applied properly. I have dozens of case studies..

Profit is the fuel that drives BPM. When I first started surveying the ROI of BPM efforts, it scared me. The numbers were great, so I predicted about 15% ROI for most everybody. The truth of the matter is that the numbers were north of 20% consistently. I saw wild numbers of 220% and 360% that I had to throw out because they would have skewed the average.  I am still waiting for a BPM project on the rocks as it is bound to happen, but the majority of BPM efforts are delivering today.

People, Planet and Profit in the corner pocket !!!!!.

I would propose we need to start thinking about unexpected exceptions and processes that are less structured (unstructured) to adapt to change and to include work that is more fluid. There are a whole lot of benefits in dealing with unstructured processes.

Unstructured Processes for Knowledge Workers

There is a huge opportunity for benefits in enabling Knowledge workers with collaborative and dynamic communications technologies that are tied to processes. Today Knowledge workers leverage structures process and collaboration technologies/features in a vacuum. There is little that brings these things together in a workbench pattern for job types. By combining snippets of structured activity and unstructured activity in a hybrid unstructured process, money can be saved enabling knowledge worker productivity.

http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2009/01/15/knowledge-workers-and-unstructured-processes-go-together-like-wine-and-cheese/

Unstructured Process for Goal Attainment:

Process may have to flex as goals change, so coupling dynamic goals with dynamic and unstructured processes will allow the change of process composition, sequence and outcomes. This may be accomplished by management decisions supercharged by optimization technologies and decision platforms that learn toward a more real time nature. The decisions and goals could easily be affected by complex market events and management responses or a trend in an organizations collective customer/prospect base.

http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2009/04/20/oh-process-how-do-you-flow/

Unstructured Processes for Examining Best Practices

By observing unstructured process, with technologies deemed as automated business process discovery focused, organizations can organically evolve best practices and change them dynamically. This is opposed to frozen best practices in purchased or built applications and structured BPM processes. This is a new area that is just starting to unfold, but I predict good growth as we migrate to unstructured processes.

http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2009/03/12/automated-business-process-discovery-helps-visually-optimize-processes/

Structured BPM processes can play a part as a useful snippet of activity and the resulting cementing of certain best practices for those employing unstructured activity. This is a very exciting new area of growth for BPM.

Today many organization are actively using BPM to save money and survive, and this is certainly an appropriate use of BPM. There are another set of organizations that look at down times to make their organizations more competitive. This takes a bit of strategy planning to make sure the end result leaps ahead of the pack.
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I think that more GDP per hour worked is a better measure and target for a balanced life. We see that the GDP of some of the eastern countries continuing to move in a great direction, but what cost to people? While striking GDP growth does attract investors and confidence, there is another approach that is more resource driven than market driven. If you make your resources more effective (more GDP per hour), you have the chance of striking a good balance toward strong GDP growth and quality of life. If you look at the countries with the highest GDP per hour worked and the lowest number of hours worked per employee per year, you will find those countries that I believe have a good formula to keep a good quality of life while thriving nicely. If you get more output with less effort, you are likely to do better in the long run. This means working smart not just hard.

The countries that excel at the most GDP per hour include Luxembourg, Norway, Belgium, Ireland, Netherlands, United States, France Germany, Sweden and Denmark. This is admirable in terms of leverage of revenue per hour worked. The countries that excel at the least amount of hours worked per employee include Netherlands, Norway, Germany, Belgium, France, Denmark, Sweden, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Spain. In terms of quality of lives, these countries are to be commended. I think the intersection of these two measures point to the countries that have great balance and the ability to ramp up their growth,

Since BPM does more with more with less, it fits quite well into the philosophy of these leading countries. As we move out of the economic spin down into the spin up, these countries can extend their winning formulas with BPM.

Pro: BPM will Sustain Long Term:

BPM just keeps on moving forward because business folks know they can have better business practices implemented by agile processes, but processes can also help detect unexpected events. Quite often the exceptions detected in processes point to new business behaviors. We have only scratched the surface with process that can be modeled and changed to be more effective and cost less. Knowledge workers can be observed for best practices that may or may not be molded into repeatable processes. Business leaders can be made aware of unexpected exceptions that may mean a change in constituent behavior, value chain optimization opportunities or potential environmental shifts signaled by exceptions. The future is so bright for BPM.

Con: BPM is Experiencing a Temporary Lift:

Look this is a repeating cycle. There is nothing new. After the downturn, things will resume as they were. Yes costs will still be a factor, but processes will not be the core. Once the economy starts lifting all boats, business managers will just go back to their old habits and the BPM craze will be over. Yes BPM will be there, but it will fade to the background. You just wait and see.

I believe BPM is experiencing acceleration driven by the need for cost savings initially, but I expect BPM to sustain as immediate availability through the cloud, immediate visibility, dynamic change, deep business involvement and extreme competition drive businesses going forward. Besides, the cost driver is always there. My daddy always said “the more you more; the more you more”. In other words, the more you save, the more you want to save.

Let’s think about where most organizations start with BPM. They either want to model their processes visually to see the reality of their processes and get hooked on trying to make them better while more visually appealing or they want to monitor them to have some technology draw a jump start model. It’s because for the most part humans are stimulated through their visual senses. It could be good looking people, good looking fashion, sleek cars, environmentally seductive home sites, art on the walls at home and the beauty of a little child. Face it, BPM is just good looking. Some times it’s difficult to differentiate vendor offerings because they do stimulate the visual senses, but believe me, there are lots of differences. While the modeling and business activity monitoring components are quite similar, there are significant differences in how each vendor deals with agility, optimization and change.

While BPM has not reached semiotic perfection, it is moving towards visual beauty. As optimization techniques start to include more sophisticated optimization algos (mathematical algorithms) to help organizations get more out of their processes, they will unwittingly move to math that can generate artistic forms. The recent IBM acquisition of SPSS adds the power of predictive analytics. Examples include fractals. I have tried to paint one myself as my first painting project.

See: http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2008/12/19/happy-holidays-fantasies-and-fractals-dance-in-jims-head/

I have to admit that I am biased as a budding artist toward the visual world. See some more of my stuff:

http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2009/05/28/setting-a-foundation-for-bpm-extends-jump-start-benefits/

http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2009/02/10/trees-on-my-mind/

I believe that competing with BPM will lead to gaming interfaces to represent the power of the BPM adventure. Tomorrows leaders will come with a bent towards gaming and I bet BPM picks it up. Since I really believe that BPM will become more visual and two of my sons, Andy and Dave, are in the games industry I have dug into computer animation. The first foray was in a movie that I produced where my son did some of the special effects (The Falls)

See http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382687/

I believe one of the subtle reasons that BPM moves forward is its evolving visual appeal. Visual appeal is a pursuit worthy of the journey in my biased opinion.

http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2009/03/31/processes-enable-early-warning-for-emerging-business-scenarios/

http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2009/04/20/oh-process-how-do-you-flow/

Pro:

We are living in a fast changing world where markets, geo-political, partner networks and competitors are in constant change. The Internet powered by cloud will allow for the creation of competition quickly. This calls for the institution of creative scenario planning and the listening for signals that might lead to the cataloged response to these scenarios. Even if these scenarios are not planned and events dictate change, goal driven flows will be necessary going forward. This will put a premium on rapid response, acute listening and creative scenario creation. These are skills that are starting to emerge in organizations today. Ignore this trend at your own peril.

Con;

Just because most of were surprised by events like the financial adjustment and several switches in business environment should not lead to huge problems. Business value chains are still in tact and we have plenty of time to adjust. We are working our way out the latest financial crisis. We will learn and adjust our policies to deal with things. Yes, we may have to make better forward looking decisions (more up tempo), but why waste all this time planning for conditions that may never happen? There is no need to be paranoid and business will always find a way to survive.

I believe that it may take another round of events to shake the “Con view” towards scenario planning linked to process responses to environmental changes, but there is an increased premium on searching for potentially impact laden events and planning for outlying conditions

Let’s examine the different phases of organizational culture that seem to be on a continuum. These phases generally occur in sequence, but he starting points can differ. It’s rare that any intermediate step is skipped, but some can be and should be avoided.

The Family:

This is where the atmosphere is agreeable and all employees, vendors and clients are rife with optimism and glee. People are generally looking out for each other and the communication is really high quality. Everyone wants the organization to succeed in the worst way and people gladly pitch in where ever they can. There are picnics and holiday parties and a great deal of holistic caring. The movement is onward and upward..

The Team:

The organization grows to a point where the personal touch ends up suffering a little bit. People start specializing and losing touch with some of the other functional areas of the company. People are still agreeable, but they tend to cluster in teams that support themselves and some of the old contacts, when they were a family, still hold things together. There is still an onward and upward sense of bonding

The Machine:

This is where the organization has grown to a point where it needs more significant structure, so that investments are managed to profitability in a better way. This is where methodology and process is established. This is the key tipping point where human touch can be lost in the implementation of the methods and processes and behavior patterns are set. Care must be taken to infuse people engaging goals, rules and capabilities. This is a very delicate balance and the incline is steep.

The Jungle

This is where individuals have learned to take care of themselves at the expense of other team members and functional organizations. Individual goals are emphasized to the detriment of the whole. Customers and employees are taken for granted and management wants to create an atmosphere of competition amongst all parties. Supervisors that can wipe tears are put in charge of the employees, but the downward culture slide continues. The financial result trumps all and greed is the emperor

The Advanced Jungle

This is where very person is for themselves and mentors even eat their young. By in large, managers/employees only care about whom they beat and how well they beat them. If you can put them in jail or out the door, you are reaching your full potential. People are digging for dirt or covering the backsides instead doing what’s important. This is truly a sad state. Many die in this avalanche of bad behavior. This truly a “shark tank”

I have represented these cultural phase on an upside down “U” shape to show close to the edge of the cliff we can get as process designers and to be careful about how to engage people. Over time cultures can experience entropy. The moral to the story is to build people and teamwork into our processes going forward, so we avoid the nasty slope..