BPO, B2B, Business, Technology & Economics, BPM, Work, Economics, Simulation, Business Model, Business Case, Business Function, Sales, B2B, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Enterprise Architecture, Governance, Cloud Economics, Cost of Information, Information Economics, Price of Information, Value of Information
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Both big data and jelly fish can be very beautiful. But if not treated with respect, you might get stung. And how you get stung, at least where data is concerned, relates to the other similarity between jellyfish and big data, which is a lack of bones, or structure. To be in any way useful, big data needs to be used alongside an interpretive structure or model – the “bones” if you will, without which big data is as amorphous and useless as a jellyfish. The necessity of having this model is a critical challenge for any organization seeking to derive benefit from big data. Let's prove the point about the necessity of interpretive structure with the simplest possible model. Consider the results of a query on a joined accounts receivable table. You may have columns representing company names, owed amounts and due dates. And the meaning of the table is completely clear, but only because you know the column headers and table name, which comprise a simple "model" providing the meta-data meaning of the table. Without this "interpretive model" the table could just as easily imply accounts payables as account receivables! . . . read more |
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A short answer is this: "In a competitive world, and for both technical and economic reasons, BPM is likely to play an increasingly important role in customer experience". This blog entry explores this proposition in more detail. But first let's qualify our short answer above by defining the terms "customer experience" and "BPM". (For the purposes of this discussion, we'll focus on BPM as "technology" or "software" and on customer experience as "customer experience system"). . . . read more |
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OK, this trashy "come-on" is only justified because it's almost year end (2012), and time for lots of management how-tos, especially "how to cope with information overload". Most of the advice is common sense, and if we are very disciplined, might even help us to be more effective.
But how about some advice that might actually work?
This blog post is about managing more effectively by considering the cost and utility of information. So much of our work every day is spent wrestling with information management. And information has a whole lifecycle, from identification of need, to acquisition, usage, curation and even secure destruction. In fact, much of common sense management advice is about better information management. (It's not for nothing that computers and software are collectively known as "information technology".)
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Asking this question is audacious. But important. Here's the short answer: BPM projects fail at a rate higher than tolerable (thus the question) because BPM projects, being fundamentally different than all other IT projects, are not yet sufficiently supported culturally, organizationally and economically. In particular, a BPM projects puts pressure on business executives for detailed process leadership, a time-based pressure without precedent and for which many or even most executives are not ready. The first response to ebizQ's question, from Emiel Kelly, alludes to these issues with the statement that BPM is seen as "a project, not as daily business". Subsequent comments by other contributors elaborate in worthwhile ways. But it's worth making Kelly's "not as daily business" explanation more explicit. Specifically, from the original answer above, what does it mean that BPM projects are "fundamentally different", and why is this difference important? And what is "cultural, organizational and economic" support?
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Note that that your host is not making any assumption that corporate size is necessarily a bad thing. Although it's a separate topic, and acknowledging that there are clearly many downsides to large organizations, there are all also examples, supported by research, showing that large organzations can also have many positive attributes, and that by
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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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There are in fact very significant differences between best-in-class and laggard organizations concerning how contingent work is managed. Best-in-class managers get much better results (over 50% higher reporting program objectives achieved), better contingent workforce cost control and most important, significantly better overall organizational efficiency. This last benefit gets to the heart of the whole contingent workforce business case. Why bother with all the effort and management time to organize contingent workforce scaling if your organization does enjoy overall improved efficiency as a result? In a world of intense competition, contingent workforce scaling makes intuitive sense, and it's not surprising the Aberdeen Group has identified characteristics of the organizations that "do contingent" better. But why highlight these insights in this Decision Models forum on business process management technology?
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BPM software advocates need look no further than the regular reports from the analysts at Aberdeen Group for terrific examples of BPM in action. The latest example, by Analyst William Jan, is AP Invoice Management in a Networked Economy (you can acquire this report without charge for a limited time via the embedded URL; registration is required). The world of business process is about the processes at the core of any business. And for this reason unless you are an insider in any given function or vertical market, it's difficult to acquire in-depth knowledge about business processes in real life. Organizations tend to be reticent about revealing the secrets about how they do business; and as well, in any given function the processes reflect the complexity of corporate life and one is not likely to master that complexity over night. So, for these reasons, the work by Aberdeen Group is very welcome. Their analysis work focuses especially on identifying best practices in various corporate functions, such as sales, accounts payables, inventory management, and so on. And although Aberdeen Group includes technology in its analyses, their work is refreshingly "business first". The case of Accounts Payable is a nice example of an end-to-end process analysis of an important corporate function. Using A/P practices as a measure, and compared to "laggards", best-in-class organizations manage their A/P to deliver much better cash flow, which can have a huge impact on bottom lines.
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On his ebizQ blog, Peter Schooff asked an important question (June 2012): "Has social BPM fallen short of expectations so far?" If you are exploring the promise of social BPM, the answers to Peter's questions are worth reading. Your host believes there are two key challenges before we will realize the promise of social BPM: (1) a technology challenge and (2) a governance challenge. Here are your host's comments, mirrored from ebizQ: Some of the challenge around social BPM is associated with expectations and hype contrasted with the immaturity of social BPM software technology. There is a huge amount of research around "work", "narrative", "story" and "annotation", but that research has not truly been engineered yet into social BPM products. The result is that most current social products are not built on a solid model of how narrative works in the human mind and as communication transactions between actors. And typically, a model of "work", i.e. what should be the subject of conversation, is also missing. But, over time we should see these challenges addressed, and surely the result will be very exciting. However, I believe there's another challenge beyond technology, which may be more difficult to solve. This is the challenge of "social technology governance".
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Some of my best friends are BPM-istas! And evangelists-of-BPM as the second coming of application development. I say bravo! But then I have a few questions, such as . . . 1. How many managers does it take to build a business process in BPM? “None. Managers aren’t allowed to build a process in BPM.” . . . read more
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And thereby submit that enterprise to the will of executive leadership? John Zachman, well-known evangelist for enterprise architecture and originator of the Zachman “Framework for Enterprise Architecture”, says “yes”. Canada’s DAMA affiliate IRMAC scored a coup last week by hosting Mr. Zachman on his road show for an update of the famous Zachman Framework. Mr. Zachman gave a comprehensive tour of the Framework, the reasoning behind it and the advantages that adopting organizations might enjoy. Mr. Zachman’s key message was that the application of normalization and ontological modeling to low-order, high-entropy organizations – i.e. organizations which are failing due to high cost structures and sclerotic inflexibility -- would reverse that state. The sciences of organizational normalization and ontological modeling, defined by the Zachman Framework, unlock enormous benefits for organizational stakeholders. |
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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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Below is a draft BPM sales pitch which is also an inventory of BPM concepts. It's all about business motivation, and revealing the power of BPM. Is this how you see BPM? If not, why not? BPM Provides The Tools For The Job, Now Business process management is about the technology of the work you do. 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 your vision. All other technology is really mostly about technology and bits and bytes and machines talking to machines.
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According to the consulting company, at one representative global firm, 75% of inside sales reps' time was spent not selling! This frustrating sales situation is not uncommon, despite what McKinsey says is "the guiding principle of all sales operations", which is "to maximize time for selling and relationship building". Of course sales people and sales executives, and probably even general management, all know that sales people should be selling. But given that sales people everywhere are facing similar issues, it's helpful to have a spotlight on the situation. As a professional B2B sales person focused on BPM, your host is naturally interested in the subject of the McKinsey article -- and how BPM is one point of leverage for improving sales operations. The McKinsey article also raises larger questions about sales management; your host has now commented on these issues in the letter below. You can read the whole McKinsey Quarterly article and follow up reader comments including your hosts' comment, at the following URL. (Please note you will need to register, although there is no charge.)
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BPM prospects often ask a question about "simulation". Our standard answer is "simulation is best done by a best-of-breed Why is the BPM business simulation question so frequently asked? The reason is that the question is directly related the two main business cases for BPM. BPM is justified either on efficiency terms or on business model terms. The BPM efficiency business case is the same IT efficiency business case that has driven most IT investments for two generations. Efficiency in the best of situations is about dramatically reducing costs for a given business process; in the worst of situations, it's about "paving the cow path"! |
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You'd expect the BPM-savvy practitioners and evangelists such as found on LinkedIn's "BP Group" to be able to easily come up with a good definition of BPM . A specific and actionable definition. You'd be wrong. In a BP Group forum discussion entitled "Can Anyone Make One Sentence Describing BPM", most of the answers were generic and non-actionable and often sounded like mission statements -- the kind of feel-good mission statements that are ridiculed by cynical business writers -- or worse the statements were self-referential ("BPM is about improving your processes"). In fairness. participants shared many worthwhile insights. It's just that the there was a general and disappointing failure to answer the question in a useful way. Let's look at what would be a good top-level definition of business process management -- and then why a good definition is important. On the forum, Kenneth Beard came the closest to a good description of BPM with his "scientific management of work activity to enable informed decision-making", although I would make the case that final phrase in this definition is outside the scope of a definition of BPM. Your host proposed the that BPM can be simply defined as "the modelling and management of repetitive work", which is certainly not original, but this concise definition emphasizes a fundamental concept, specifically the centrality of the question of work to the definition of BPM. |
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Is it possible that even with today's excitement and real achievement in software and technology, especially around mobile, M2M ("machine-to-machine"), the IOT ("Internet of Things"), analytics, so-called "big data" and machine learning, just to name a few hot topics du jour, that there is a major roadblock to further easy progress in technology? After decades of achievement in the development of software technologies and software engineering, the software industry is rightly acknowledged as having contributed enormously to every aspect of business, social and personal life. It is a general belief, fostered by both science and culture that a "long revolution" based on IT will continue on, bringing ever more amazing, delightful and useful innovations. This expectation of progress can probably be depicted as a linear function with a nice upward slope. While "Whiggish" expectations of continual Why is there a potential for disappointment? The current state of software engineering and data management is characterized by what could be called a "semantic ceiling". On the software engineering side, the newest software products and software development are, while often quite wonderful, still rather limited in what they accomplish: mashups, social applications, situational applications, modeling tools, more SOA, point business applications etc. The scope of these new applications is typically either siloed or trivial in some sense. Especially on the data management side, the growth of data resources has exacerbated the data chaos that confronts both business and individual trying to make use of technology. For this reason, it is not surprising that master data management (MDM) is a hot area in the software business. The idea of a semantic ceiling is the idea that further progress in software engineering will only be possible with the development and deployment of a new layer of semantic technology.
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Takeaway Summary: According to the theory of Nobel Prize winning economist Ronald Coase, corporations exist to manage the transaction costs involved in organizing work. And the size of a corporation is determined by the optimal management of those costs. However, new information technologies have changed that transaction cost landscape for business processes. It is now more than ever possible to disaggregate the work of the firm, and still maintain corporate identity and control. And for the intercompany integration technology business, the good news is that integration technologies have a leading role to play in this evolut . . . read more |
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