Your kickoff meeting is scheduled and you have carefully put together your change management communication strategy and plan. You have spoken to the CEO and he is happy to speak at the kickoff and has given you his commitment to provide ongoing support. You have been diligent, meeting with him several times to go over the key points that you would like included in his messages. You have even begun to have informal discussions on the CM strategy and plan with key impacted stakeholders, and are gaining their support. This all sounds great doesn’t it? So why are you, getting resistance from your mid-level managers every time you speak with them?

In my last article, I talked about selecting a BPM tool while keeping in mind both the short and long term needs of an organization’s process needs. But as we are all aware, whether we acknowledge it or not, tactical views and immediate implementation needs take priority over strategic needs. People tend to overlook long term process needs while focusing on only the immediate process automation needs. Moreover, while focusing on tactical needs, organizations tend to overlook areas such as process ownership and governance, roles and responsibilities, Service levels, and standards that should be associated with any process initiatives. More importantly these need to be thought through prior to embarking on the BPM journey. A BPM Center of Excellence (COE) can help with all of these areas.

In a continuing series evaluating the tools used by Business Process practioners, this article looks at Ascentn’s AgilePoint. Criteria for evaluation are ease of use, a short learning curve, and good collaboration features.

AgilePoint is a full-featured BPM suite. Ascentn distinguishes their market as one of “people and culture, not technology.” After looking into their products, I understand this to mean their focus is on the process practitioner.