This is the third in a series. The first installment, Building a Process Catalog – The Journey Begins, was published in the April BPM Institute’s online journal. The second installment, Building a Process Catalog, The Ongoing Journey, was featured in the August bulletin.
Recap
My first two features described how I use SIPOC (Supplier, Input, Process, Output, Customer) diagrams to capture some essential characteristics of major business functions.
I am not an enterprise architect. I’m a business architect. The difference lies in the customers we primarily serve. Historically, the business architecture perspective has been part of every enterprise architecture framework. Only recently has there been a clamor to treat business architecture as a separate profession and discipline with its own set of culture, adherents, and customers.
Every primary process in the Enterprise Architecture should have some bearing on how it affects the customer. The process, its activities and the resources to perform the activities should be geared towards achieving Successful Customer Outcomes. When we state the requirements for the services, the processes, the resources and the IT systems or when we design or develop the solution, the interaction with the customer and the goals of the customer should be stated and represented clearly.
I discussed the process centric approach to Enterprise Architecture in a previous article. In this article I will focus on the solutions from such architecture.
How do we change our solutions to achieve Successful Customer Outcomes?
We live in a fast paced world where consumers demand high quality and rapid services. When we buy an item on-line we expect a confirmation email in seconds or we start to be concerned that something has gone wrong.
The desire for rapid and meaningful response is also growing in more complex transactions such as a mortgage or insurance application, even though these often require documents to be supplied that contain the data needed to decide on the claim or application. Consumers can now take and send pictures on mobile devices or scan documents from home, and are attracted by the simplicity and availability of 24/7 e-business.
When transforming these types of business process a capture strategy is needed to enable documents to be delivered and processed in a fast and low cost means, with a consistent high level of quality.
Large companies do not have exclusivity on using the discipline of business architecture. Smaller companies and non-profits can derive tremendous value by leveraging the discipline.
Like many other states, the funding for schools in Illinois has been on the decline. A concerned group of local citizens in one town wanted to do something about it. They started a non-profit Foundation with the goal of raising funds from the local community; funds that will be used to supplement the loss of revenue from the state.
A major strength of this Foundation is the high degree of enthusiasm amongst its members. There is no dearth of ideas on how to raise funds and how to spend it. Proposals for fund raising range from holding bake sales to getting corporate sponsorships. Likewise, proposals for spending those funds range from educational excursions for students, to buying equipment for the school.
We live in a process powered world and the only thing the customer is interested in is WIFM (What’s in-it for me?). Customers are tired of hearing phrases such as “customer centric” and “world class” and “service oriented”. If your process outcomes are not aligned to the customer’s goals and you do not provide an excellent service (note: not a superior product) – guess what?
How does this affect Enterprise Architecture?
If an organisation doesn’t change its way of developing products for more than 40 years, do we expect that organisation to stay in business for very much longer?
Gartner’s definition of BPM is “a management practice that provides for governance of a business’s process environment toward the goal of improving agility and operational performance.“
The definition implies that BPM has both management and leadership and I agree. I would clarify further: leadership of the environment and management of the practices. Let’s see how they both play out by looking at the What, Who, When, and Where of Process Governance.
There are two important streams to governance:
Leadership includes:
Management includes:
During a recent client meeting, we were reviewing the proposed business architecture for a new system. Decision Management will play a crucial role in the application and the rule processing had been nicely delineated in the architecture. While the rules themselves had been fairly well articulated, their “insertion” in the requirements suggested quite a bit of work remained. However, I was generally pleased with the state of the work to date.
David Starr Jordan, founding president of Stanford University, said “Wisdom is knowing what to do next, skill is knowing how to do it, and virtue is doing it.” It applies to enterprises as much as it does to individuals. Modern enterprises rely on the capital planning process to determine “what to do next” and “how to do it”, which results in change programs for the enterprise. These change programs are then implemented via standard portfolio management processes of the enterprise. Capital planning depends on a clearly defined business strategy and a good understanding of the current state of the enterprise.
For years, I’ve been telling my federal customers that an IT Strategy is often not very helpful, and that all of an agency’s resources (whether people, processes, technologies, services, or facilities) should be collectively aligned and applied to enable a single enterprise strategy that is driven by mission and business needs – in short, an Enterprise Business Strategy. “Instead of an IT Strategy,”1
I would go on to say, “What an agency needs is an IT Roadmap.” Despite that advice, which did go against the grain of prevailing government practices, nearly every CIO would persist in his or her efforts to promulgate an IT Strategy – as an emblem or accoutrement of the office they held, it often seemed.
Everyone starts here.
You're looking for a way to improve your process improvement skills, but you're not sure where to start.
Earning your Business Process Management Specialist (BPMS) Certificate will give you the competitive advantage you need in today's world. Our courses help you deliver faster and makes projects easier.
Your skills will include building hierarchical process models, using tools to analyze and assess process performance, defining critical process metrics, using best practice principles to redesign processes, developing process improvement project plans, building a center of excellence, and establishing process governance.
The BPMS Certificate is the perfect way to show employers that you are serious about business process management. With in-depth knowledge of process improvement and management, you'll be able to take your business career to the next level.
|
Courses
|
|
|
|
Courses
|
|
|
|
Courses |
|
|
Business Architecture
|
|
|
|
Courses
|
|
|
|
Courses |
Certificate
|
|
Courses |
Certificate
|
