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BPM: think big, Start small, scale fast
Date : 01/02/2007 Implementing Business Process Management (BPM) is implementing fundamental change in an organisation. The experienced, battle-weary business executive is loathe to making high risk operational change without clear quantifiable benefits. How would a viable implementation roadmap be developed to ensure that the BPM promise can be achieved pragmatically and at the same time ensure real benefits can be achieved? Start small! It is true that you cannot scale a Canyon in a single leap. Some change needs drastic action. This big bang approach does not suit business process change enablement. BPM is about change: organisational, cultural and mindset. Generally people are averse to change. Dealing with change that is viable in the long run is crucial for the BPM mindset to be developed and to take root in organisations. Creating a breeding ground for the awareness to be built at the various levels in an organisation ensures understanding of key issues to be appreciated when leading change. The business benefits of BPM can be immense, both financially and operationally. It is a foundation for future excellence in business. Ensure that the foundations are stable and strong. Spending time ensuring that the foundations being built are particular to your organisation is essential. Start small. Find an area in the business that best reflects the intricacies in the organisation, strategic, operational and infrastructural. Bring your best people together and focus on finding the best BPM solution for that area. Knowing what won’t work and why is just as important as knowing what works and why. Creating a foundation that considers people, process and system issues and constraints are vital. Finding a small focused area for implementation is not good enough by itself. Think BIG! The ‘big’ allows context and perspective. Understand that BPM is about big change for the organisation. BPM exposes the nerves, and core of a business. Some business models have taken years and decades to be established. The custodians for the successful running of these age-old models have a vested interest to ensure their longevity. They have reputational and financial rewards linked to the goals. The appropriate change flag bearers with influence can bring effective perspectives for encouraging change. Each organisation needs an appropriate level of influence for change to happen. Also, change needs commitment. BPM ensures greater transparency and visibility. The level of commitment is reflective of the level of maturity that the organisation brings to the table. Generals of change bring maturity when the troops are scurrying for cover from change. Having a calm and measured approach will help take out undue subjectivity. In addressing change, various sensitive points around strategy, operational performance and monitoring, process and product alignment, human and technological capabilities are laid bare in all its glory. Able management of these issues are facilitated by experience, tact and savvy. How these issues are perceived and dealt with is the vital difference between long-term success and failure. The foundations being constructed are for a growing, thriving organisation. These foundations need to carry the responsibility of an enterprise-wide investment and potential. Get the right minds together to deal with this planning appropriately. Plan the initial efforts with the tenacity and determination that the foundations and the mindsets are developed adequately to ensure that success can be scaled fast! The intellectual property, implementation frameworks and outcomes from earlier pioneering efforts must be developed and packaged for reuse. This includes the newly developed skills and capabilities. The lessons learnt must be reintroduced to duplicate successes and remove bottlenecks. This paradigm ensures that the solutions being development that bring the people, processes and technologies together effectively can be shared and replicated in the organisation. The organisation’s past successful change experiences will determine if the scaling out plan should be broad and shallow, or narrow and deep. The scaling fast draws people into the change vortex, even those people sitting lukewarm on the sidelines, to engage meaningfully with successful initiatives. Start small, think big and scale fast! BPM has the potential to bring about lasting impact in an organisation. Careful considered change management bringing together organisational resources (people, process and technology) within time, cost and risk constraints will ensure that your organisation can get through the eye of the ‘BPM change’ storm, and get to the next stage effectively. Start small creates focus, thinking big creates perspective and scaling fast creates momentum for successful change.
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