Do you notice any built-in contradiction in the title of this article? A naïve approach to Continuous Improvement (CI) would be to attempt to benchmark Toyota, and just do what they do. That would be OK if: 1) You make automobiles, and 2) You have fifty years of Toyota management experience. Without those advantages, you would do best to consider a modified strategy.

It’s not easy to change, and usually not fruitful to change precipitously.  An anecdote from an unnamed country, several wars ago, decided to mechanize the cavalry. An inspector, reviewing the prototype of the new battalion, marveled in the shiny new personnel carriers and tanks.  However, he then noticed two soldiers standing off to the side, apparently doing nothing.  When he inquired, he was told: “They are there to hold the horses.”

Not quite!  I can’t tell you how many companies I have worked with who announced we have modeled all the current state process or say we want to begin by modeling all their As Is processes.  And they ask, can you help us with that?  There is nothing wrong with modeling processes, but it takes a long time and it doesn’t produce improvements.  Modeling processes is just one of the first steps.  I suggest modeling the processes you want to improve and do them in groups of three or one by one. Then analyze each and improve them to see business results.

So if you’ve only done the process diagramming, what do you need to do next? Look at the roadmap below showing the phases of a BPM/ process improvement project.

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:

BPMInstitute.org defines Business Process Management (BPM) as the definition, improvement and management of a firm’s end-to-end enterprise business processes in order to achieve three outcomes crucial to a performance-based, customer-driven firm: 1) clarity on strategic direction, 2) alignment of the firm’s resources, and 3) increased discipline in daily operations.

Traditional methods of performance management focus on department & functional unit performance.  BPM focuses on the management and continuous improvement of cross functional processes.  This involves continuous monitoring, evaluation, measurement and process innovation.  These cross-functional processes must be clearly defined and documented.  Process performance objectives in terms of time, quality, cost and productivity must be defined.  Process teams and process owners must be established.

In December 2011, the BPMInstitute participated in a Forrester research report entitled “The Forrester Wave: BPM Training And Certification Programs, Q2 2012” (May 2012) of the training and certification programs offered in business process management.  BPMInstitute.org has made the report available to our readers, for a limited time.  This article provides additional comments on the topics presented in the Forrester report.  The report’s research findings agree with our own research into our student’s objectives for taking BPM training.