Governance

A Story Of Installed Base Upgrades, Lost Business, MDM, Analytics And Politics

Lost business. The phrase strikes a chill into any CEO or line-of-business ("LOB") executive.

Lost business is also a special data management challenge.

So, let's see how a story about the "business of lost business" plays out between LOB execs and IT.  There is a data management angle on this story, and e
ventually we might even find some leverage for master data management (MDM) and analytics, but first we need to understand the all-important business drivers behind the scenes.

In our example, based on real events, imagine a technology services business employing close to a 1,000 people, and with accelerating product life-cycles. In only a half decade, the field refresh period for installed systems has fallen from seven years to five. This change means system sales reps must be on their toes for the upgrade sale, and ensuring the upgrade is even harder when smaller systems are sold through channels where warranty registration isn't complete.

What kinds of lost business events are there? First you have to understand that "lost business" as defined by Field Service means a "lost service contract" -- not a "lost system sale", although of course the two are closely linked. And in the distinction between services sales and systems sales we see the collision between three huge organizations: engineering, systems sales and services sales, each with different metrics and P&Ls! And to make matters more interesting, the engineering bill-of-materials ("BOM") has never been shared with customer services!
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A Three-Part Business Case For Business Process In The Cloud

Stork-At-Sunset-Over-WavesNo business person really cares about technology except insofar as that technology helps get the job done. But there's one technology that's different.

Unlike most or all other technologies, BPM software technology directly and explicitly concerns the work of business and can be therefore directly of concern to business-side executives. Ultimately, business process management software (BPM) is THE technology for getting work done.

Let's explore this proposition in more detail, and then see why the question of BPM is exciting in the context cloud technology. (This posting was originally featured on the Canadian LinkedIn discussion group Cloudfingr.)

There are many important business-enabling technologies, including technologies "further down the stack" (e.g. "SOA") or which hard-code business semantics (most "ERP" systems and purpose-built applications).

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Real Life Business Debacle Highlights Importance Of BPM System Robustness

On his ebizQ blog, Peter Schooff, based on a posting in the the MWD Blog, asked for a definition of  systems robustness.  (July 2012): "What makes a business process robust?"  The question of robustness is much more important than you might expect.  The definition of robustness gets to the heart of what it means to build successful systems for business.  Addressing the question of robustness is one antidote to the "magical thinking" which is sometimes found in the executive suite.  But to think about robustness, one must have an understanding of the technical meaning of the term.  The term is sometimes bandied about along with other feel-nice business jargon, including the word "agile", with the result that the word loses it's power and your dialogue is robbed of meaning.  Here are your host's comments, mirrored from ebizQ:

In the context of several recent banking debacles, a question on the definition of system robustness is a good question. It's a good question because at least one of the UK banking failures appear to have happen at the intersection of technology, business process outsourcing and business process management. The failure was very high profile because thousands of customers were reported to have been locked out of their accounts for extended periods of time.   (This failure was not the same issue which was the trigger for the ebizQ thread; however interestingly, both issues conceivably involve business process.)

Why is "robustness" a good question in the circumstances? Because the ostensible failure of consumer banking services could correctly be characterized as a situation where the system "lacked robustness under conditions of outsourcing." The statement "conditions of outsourcing" gets to the formal definition of robustness.

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Magical Thinking A Stumbling Block For Business Process Champions

The promise of BPM technology is only realized within the context of traditional management skills and discipline.  Ironically, it is an erroneous common pattern of “magical thinking” that impedes success in both traditional- and new "BPM technology"-enabled management environments.

Intervention Warning Against Overselling BPM Technology

On a discussion hosted by the BP Group on LinkedIn, member Mr. Ajit Kapoor has made an excellent intervention in this discussion.  Our root discussion concerns an “experimental BPM technology sales pitch” which posited that “for the first time in history, we have a technology that is explicitly about taking your vision about how your business operates, and building tools that directly make it possible to run your business, according to that vision."

Specifically Mr. Kapoor has articulated a powerful position that new technologies such as BPM software should not be pitched as "nirvana".  And his riposte comes with powerful credibility based on his achievements and career.

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