Older BPM Quotes of the week

I’m such a slacker…
Taking a holiday has a downside.. a backlog of BPM blogs that I promised myself that I would read… so.. a bit late, but these are quotes from BPM related blog posts that I found interesting. Enjoy!

On BPM ROI – Elise Olding

I talk with vendors, companies, government entities and read lots of case studies. While the results are often impressive, I often feel underwhelmed. Where are the nuggets of radical redesign or breakthrough thinking in the solution? It seems much of the benefit was achieved through automation of manual effort.

On BPM and Operational – Mike Gammage

BPM in its IT incarnation – let’s call it ‘micro-BPM’ – is focussed on automation. But BPM in its wider sense – ‘macro-BPM’ – is about operational excellence. And, in global organizations across every sector, a macro-BPM platform is emerging the essential foundation for operational excellence.

On BPM and Risk – Rob Speck

Why some organizations don’t, especially financial institutions that are particularly vulnerable, is beyond me. Sometimes, it’s just incompetent management, but often it’s a simple lack of appreciation for how solid operational process management requires a sizable investment in process thinking, risk management and development of a process improvement culture

On BPM Axioms – Gary Comerford

At the end of the two weeks I would present a report – along with the rest of the audit team – that would identify weaknesses or deficiencies we had identified. In 80% of the cases the reply from management would be some variation of “We already knew that”. Of course my reply would be “Well if you already knew that why hasn’t it been fixed?” There were always reasons : Time, money, resources, priorities etc. But it didn’t remove the fact that this were generally known issues that could have been fixed.

On BPM Effort – Bart Snell

Due to the size of the effort, BPM realization can’t be achieved overnight. To continuously deliver value in an organization, BPM should be addressed piecemeal with an initially limited scope and success can be built on over time. The BPM Roadmap should include the entire organization, but each group will be addressed over time with a roadmap that can be reused and redefined from lessons learned.

On Adaptive Processes – Frank Michael Kraft

A process (model) is dead, or doomed to death, if the effort/cost to maintain it – i.e. to incorporate ongoing changes and adaptations – is higher than the benefit that results from the changes. A process is alive, if the benefit of adapting the process (model) is higher than the effort/cost to maintain it.

On BPM and Technology – Alberto Manuel

BPM can be done without technology. In another life I was responsible for a manufacturing company that every day I had to find a way to produce more products. During 6 years again and again improved manufacturing cells and assembly tasks 100% without technology. It’s amazing how we can improve a process without any technology.

On BPM and Mobile – Ben Farrell

The traditional view of BPM software – that it reduces cost through automation – is giving way to a larger understanding of BPM’s value for transforming the customer experience. In this new age of customer empowerment, sophisticated mobile devices and global social networking are changing the nature of what organizations must do to connect with, sell to and retain customers. Mobile BPM and Social BPM are becoming integral to a company’s ability to compete.

On Unpredictable ACM – Emily Burns

It’s important to note that taming the unpredictable doesn’t mean eliminating it; that’s not possible. Taming the unpredictable means embracing it. This means creating systems that not only don’t fail in new situations, but that can intelligently react to those situations, which includes allowing people to step in and manage them where the systems are unable to

On BPM and Metrics – Jaisundar

In a sense, I think firms of all sizes, in almost every industry, are grappling with a similar challenge – that of not tracking the real measures of business and operational performance. That of chasing the wrong measures. And then, having to depend more on prayer than other things. BPM has opened up a whole new approach and opportunity to measuring performance and I see more and more organizations looking for those as stated benefits to leverage

On BPM and Strategy – Navin Gopal

Often organizations focus on one discrete process and fail to look at an integrated set of processes. This is one of the main reasons why organizations struggle with strategy implementation, and fail to obtain the desired results even though the organizational structure apparently seems aligned to execute the strategy. The key to effective deployment of an intended strategy is creating an infrastructure that is process-centric.

On BPM and Continuous Improvement – Connie Moor

Fine-tuning or continuously improving your way to a level of operational excellence that makes a dramatic difference in this economy is a huge effort and may not yield major results. But trying to transform a process — or better yet, transform the business — is an even bigger undertaking, with significantly more risk involved

On BPM, Business and IT – Ann All

All of the good advice to bring together business and IT people in the early stages of technology initiatives isn’t worth a hill of beans if IT pros don’t take the time to really listen to what business folks have to say and walk them through how technology can help them. This is true even for technology initiatives like business process management that in theory already enjoy a strong direct link with business.

On Customer Oriented BPM – Thomas J. Olbrich

Customer integration, Outside-In, consumer-orientation, social BPM … the list of terms describing the shift from process silo thinking to a more inclusive approach is as long as the list of companies proclaiming that their customers have always been the centre of their universe. Slight hesitation. Does that mean that the whole company is turning around the axis called customer or do they just mean the place where they left the customer dead and buried?

On Social BPM – Chris Taylor

The same is true of business process. Even before social media becomes the norm, we are in a place where the ability to find and consume process information in a personalized fashion is a growing expectation. Creaky, complicated systems that serve us stale or unmanaged information are no longer acceptable.