For decades, the question that has been observed to be top of mind for many executives is “How should we be organized to be able to achieve our strategic objectives?”

Perhaps that explains why leaders select reorganization or restructuring as the single most frequently practiced method of change management. To test this out, simply ask yourself how often your company has modified the organization chart in the top two to three levels during the past three years? If you answered less than three times, you are probably in the minority.

The proliferation of process improvement methods over the past decade has become problematic. The range of process improvement methods now includes BPM, Lean, Six Sigma, Lean Six Sigma, Operational Excellence (OpX), Process Excellence (PEX), Reengineering (BPR) and several older techniques such as the theory of constraints (TOC) which are still in use in some organizations.

As process improvement professionals develop increasing skill in a selected improvement method, they are inclined to think and communicate that their method is better than alternative approaches to process improvement. Executives seeking to improve operational performance are sometimes confused about the similarities and differences between various methods and feel that they “have to choose a side.”

A recent article in HBR informed readers on the “truth” about customer experience[i]. The authors argued that it’s not enough for organizations to excel at key touch points with customers – instead organizations need to understand and skillfully manage the entire customer journey.  While this is true – and might be a new revelation for some readers – it should come as no surprise to those of us who have practiced a customer focused, process based view of business.

A process based view of customer experience is much more than just creating a roadmap of a customer journey; it also involves shaping what the organization measures and manages.  Let’s consider how a process based view of customer experience can benefit service providers such as phone, internet, cable, and utility companies.  The customers of such service providers have a set of very simple needs; including,

Industry analysts such as Gartner have estimated that the size of the BPM market was well over $2.0 billion in 2011 and some industry observers believe that the global market for BPM will surpass $5 billion by 2017. However, a rapid increase in the size of the global BPM market does not necessarily mean that companies are getting the best value out of BPM. Accordingly, some senior managers are asking the very same question that parents going on a long drive with small children typically hear, which is – “Are we there yet?”

By now, it is fairly well known that the root causes of excessive costs and errors, of delays and inflexibility, are related to the non value added handoffs across organizational boundaries. In most companies, work is fragmented across multiple departments, product lines and business units. No one has end-to-end ownership of the flow of work or responsibility for flawless service to the customer. In such environments, redundant activities and duplication of effort is common, errors are frequent, and overall responsiveness to customers’ needs is elusive. The key to resolving these issues is to take action on redesigning customer touching end-to-end processes and then install a governance framework which assures cross departmental collaboration, encourages different units to work together for value creation, and makes the changes stick.

Business Process Management (BPM) has made a significant contribution to improving the performance of some business processes, yet the “management” part of BPM has not lived up to its full potential. Way back in 2003, I defined BPM as the disciplined definition, improvement and management of a company’s end-to-end business processes. The key aspects of this definition relate to “end-to-end” processes and the “troika” or “triumvirate” (e.g. not just one – but all three) of definition, improvement and management. In this broader context, the M is frequently missing from BPM.