The Process Ninja

Why speed and flexibility will be the new process essentials for 2010

We are in the midst of a process revolution. At no time in our history have businesses been so prone to the speed of change. Technology today has changed the game plan and the field is becoming more level. Big businesses no longer have the advantage they previously had. New media has turned things on its head.

But it’s also a consumer revolution – never have we had the ability to express ourselves so rapidly or as effectively as consumers.  What does this mean for organisations? It’s a case of adapt or die. Social media tools such as Twitter are meaning that customers are venting like never before (both good and bad), but mostly bad. They now are able to be heard by the world – and heard instantly.

Those blundering corporations that don’t return calls, don’t respond to e-mails and don’t give the service that they spend so much money advertising are going to have a wake-up call. They have never been at risk of such consumer erosion in their history. They are at risk from upstarts, from small business, from competitors who “get it”.

In the last 30 years or so we’ve become accustomed as customers to being disappointed. We’ve gotten used to “press 1 for blah, press 2 for blah…” and being shunted around in circles, our problems being passed around like hot potatoes until we give up. Not any more. Consumers now have the power and they’re using it. We are entering an age where they will expect a higher standard of service than ever before (and so they should). Remember “good old fashioned service”, well it isn’t old fashioned anymore.

As a result Business processes now need to be flexible enough to change to rapidly respond to customers’ needs and wants. If ever there was a time for BPM to prove its worth, that time has come.

Is BPM a Dirty Word?

 It has become increasingly popular these days to bash BPM and, in particular, to propose that BPM is dead. Whilst not wishing to sit in my glass house and throw stones after my Lean Six Sigma obituary post I don't think that BPM is dead. It does, however have a major image problem.

Part of the problem is that for want of a better reason we've given it a name - BPM. What do you mean? I hear you cry...well BPM isn't really about BPM is it? It's about what BPM achieves that is the important thing. Managing processes for the sake of managing processes isn't what it's about - it's all about making businesses make more money at the end of the day (unless you are public sector or charity of course). But making money requires looking after customers and looking after costs which is where our old friend BPM comes in.

The problem with a three letter acronym comes with the association that every three letter acronym requires an IT solution and a six figure software package. BPM or whatever we decide to call it next doesn't have to be so complicated that we have to spend millions on software solutions. Don't get me wrong I am not knocking IT completely, just saying that there are simpler and more flexible ways to get started without shelling out your hard earned company dollars. Start simple, prove the concepts, get some quick wins on the table THEN sell the six figure software solution to your company!

So whilst BPM may be starting to become a dirty word to some, it's really an irrelevant discussion as BPM to all extents and purposes is just about doing business and doing it well. The names will change but essentially the overall concepts will remain the same.

So what I'd like to suggest is that while the process academics waste their time arguing over what to call BPM next you should be quietly getting those post-it notes, brown paper and highlighters out. It's time to get back to basics and prove what we're doing can be both simple and effective.

Eat Your Own Dog Food

I worked for an  IT Company that had an IT helpdesk that was beyond helpless. I worked for a Telecommunications company where the boss created an atmosphere of fear and hatred. I worked for an insurance company where the staff would burst into tears. I worked for a bank with a stationery cupboard with no stationery in it.

If this is the way we treat our employees, how do you think our customers will feel? But no, we treat our customers like kings, right? But if we look upon our employees, no matter where they sit in an organisation, they all have (or must have) an end impact on the customer experience – we are all part of the chain that leads to the customer. Break that chain or pass the wrong message down the line and we do damage.

So when you come to work for a company that earns billions of dollars profit a year and you don’t have paper to write on, don’t have a cup to drink out of and the printer has been broken for a week, what is the impact? Do you turn up at work full of the joys of spring? Or do you brood and fester your discontent until it spreads like a slow poison?

For too long now businesses have been treating their staff like disposable assets, and in the last year or so employees have been taken advantage of more and more. Whilst many organisations have suffered, many still continue to reap huge harvests – but that doesn’t stop them from cancelling xmas parties and forcing “imposed leave”. So when you talk in fuzzy Marketing speak about how you are going to look after your customers, remember that it all starts within your gilded doors. If you can’t eat your own dog food then how do you expect anyone else to?

The tide is turning, the boats are waiting on the shore.

Are you going to be one of “them” or one of us…?

- TPN

Outside-in Part 3 - The Method

So I've talked about what outside-in has achieved and about successful customer outcomes - by how do we practically implement outside-in?

Outside-in is fundamentally about aligning processes with successful customer outcomes. Through workshops with little more than than sticky-notes, brown paper and the front line staff in the room we can start to radically change our thinking of organisational processes.

When we look at the customer experience we are looking for three key items within the process:

Moments of Truth – any interaction with the customer – this could be a customer to person interaction, for example or a customer to system interaction. These moments represent an opportunity in time to delight the customer or to fail!

Break points – any hand-off in the process – these represent potential points where the process can break down.

Business Rules – any decision point in the process. These can add complexity, increase effort and be a potential failure point.

When we map out the process we start to identify where these three factors occur for each step in the process. We then use these to calculate the point of failure factor for our process. This point of failure factor gives us an idea of how optimised (or not optimised!) our processes are from a customer point of view. The point of failure factor has been proven to directly correlate to customer satisfaction – so a high level of potential failure will equal a propensity for customers to be dissatisfied (I wonder why?!)

Thinking about our process with all its moments of truth, break points and business rules for a moment it is easy to see how customer dissatisfaction can occur. You may think that having lots of moments of truth (i.e customer interaction) might be a good thing, but think of it this way: if you had to call up a company to get some information but each time you received the information it was inaccurate and had to call again, how long would it take to irk your dissatisfaction? And what if instead the company had not only given you the information, but had given you extra information that had helped you further?

So once the point of failure factor has been identified we seek to improve our processes. But how to we do this? We need to:

1. Eliminate
2. Improve

Each moment of truth, break point or business rule represents an opportunity, but the more of them we have the greater our chance of failure occurring. So to reduce our point of failure factor we seek to eliminate as many as we can. Obviously we can’t practically get rid of all of them, but we need to ensure that the ones that we leave in place are improved as much as possible and that they are aligned to successful customer outcomes.

This is a very high level overview of how outside-in works. If you’d like to find out more or to become trained in the technique I’d recommend you visit the following links:

BP Group - http://www.bpgroup.org/

BP Group on Linkedin - http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1062077&trk=myg_ugrp_ovr

Steve Tower's Blog (World Outside-in Guru) - http://successfuloutcomes.blogspot.com/

Remember, The Process Revolution Starts Here...

- TPN

Outside-in Part 1 - The Process Revolution Starts Here

Six Sigma and Lean's bodies lie smouldering and decomposing in the ashes of the 20th century. A revolution is upon us. Some are wise enough to have seen it coming, some have only recently found it and the others, well, they'll soon adapt or die.

What I am talking about is an approach that is so radically different from the ways that we have traditionally approached process improvement that it forces you to totally alter your current mindset. It is an approach that is the secret weapon of some of the world's greatest companies such as Google, Apple and Virgin.

It's called Outside-in.

On paper outside-in sounds like a "no brainer" - it's about looking at process from the customer's experience. I'm sure you think you already do that, but if you aren't using outside-in already I can categorically tell you that you aren't. Outside-in uses a method to systematically look at the customer's experience from end to end, rather than looking at improving the customer's experience by altering internal processses - this is inside-out thinking. Whereas inside-out thinking puts a bandage on the effect, it doesn't eliminate the cause - the wound still bleeds.

As organisations we have become crippled by our internal processes. We've become so entwined in what we do day to day we've forgotten why we exist - to serve our customer - to give them what they need, to give them what they want and sometimes to give them what they don't know they need yet! The customer is our reason for being, without them we cease to exist, yet through our bureaucracy and our bulk we become a bloated beast of burden - unable to move rapidly to meet the needs of the lightning fast pace of life around us. In the end, we sink and die whilst the nimble climb higher and higher.

When we use Outside-in to optimise process we achieve three things simultaneously - We reduce costs, improve the customer experience and as a result improve revenue. This we call "the triple crown".

Sounds to good to be true? Well, it's not. And here's why:

• Whilst Marks and Spencer flounder in the UK, Zara are achieving world domination
• Whilst Delta and United airlines are dying in the states, Southwestern airlines is flourishing
• Whilst Best Buy expand, their major competitors have gone bust
• Whilst Nokia try to sell outdated phones Apple kill the market with the iPhone
• Tesco has surged to be the no1 supermarket in the UK, now bidding to buy the former no 1
• Ryanair become the most profitable airline in Europe whilst BA implode
• Whilst british banks go bust, bank Santander is posting huge profits

What do these victors have in common? They all use Outside-in to achieve the "triple crown".

So, do you think Lean and Six Sigma will help you to achieve all that? Thought not.

Welcome to the revolution.

- TPN

The Church of BPM

I see a lot of "Process Evangelists" out there in linkedinland. Some of these guys seem to have almost cult-like following. Don't get me wrong, I don't think that's a bad thing at all - in fact it gave me an idea.

A few weeks ago I had a coffee with a fellow BPM enthusiast - a recent convert to the process way of thinking. After he was finished with his enthusiastic speech I said to him "Finding Process must be a bit like finding God..." - he agreed. We'd both had that lightning bolt moment when suddenly the way that we saw business had changed forever - and it was a powerful moment.

So maybe what we need to do is not to educate the world in BPM, not to send out white papers, not to hold conferences - maybe what we need is to be fundamentalists, preachers and pilgrims. Maybe we need to start shouting, singing and clapping our hands and saying "praise be" to the church of BPM. So what I say to all of you out there that feel the need to spread the word - let's stop being timid and let's start making some noise.

If the brothers out there aren't a listenin' yet, then they'll be a hearin' the callin' a real soon...

Process for Small Business - The Undiscovered Country?

One of the biggest issues I have with BPM is it's focus on big business. We all sit in our shiney office blocks buying our big, expensive BPM tools and talking about governance, etc, etc. But outside our freshly cleaned windows is a little world filled with shop and cafes, butchers and bakers - small businesses "the lifeblood of the economy".

What use is ARIS or BPMN to them? How can they implement SOA? They can't - it's totally unfeasable - but does that mean that we should designate small businesses as process free zones? Of course not! There are still practical process solutions to help small businesses.

I onced owned a cafe - when I bought it all the knowledge was in the previous owner's head - I sucked all this information out and documented the entire business - I made the knowledge transferrable. I turned the little cafe into a totally process centric business (and it worked!) Let's not forget how McDonalds started - once it was just one restaurant until they developed it into a process centric business (a franchise!)

But this isn't to say that every small business should aim to be a global giant - process can help small business owners to build better businesses. It can help them become more efficient, save money, improve customer service, improve standards - all the things we want for big business.

So the next time you think about BPM, spare a thought for the little guys - they need our help too.

Process Days 2009 - Reflections & Highlights

I was lucky enough to attend Process Days 2009 this week. I attended some of the masterclasses and most of the two day conference. Overall I really enjoyed the experience - I met a lot of great process people, learned a bunch and was inspired, awed and somewhat depressed by the whole experience!

I have to say it was also a great experience to meet the guys from Leonardo Consulting - a nicer bunch of people you could not wish to meet!

At the conference there were some truely brilliant presentations (and if truth be told a few truely awful ones) but there were three presenters that really stood out for me:

- Alec Sharp. Alec is a process modelling guru and gave one of the most highly useful and practical presentations that I've ever seen. He is a brilliantly charasmatic presenter with the ability to keep everything simple (even when on the phone from Vancouver!). I'm going out to buy his book as soon as I can. In just a few slides he changed how I thought about process modelling forever.

- Professor Michael Rosemann. Prof R works at the Queensland University of Technology where he runs the http://www.bpm.fit.qut.edu.au/ - however this alone doesn't encompass all of his work - he is one of the world's best BPM gurus. He gave a few different presentations - all brilliant - and I recommend you look into some of his works and books.

- Joerg Kluckmann. Joerg is the Marketing Dude from Aris and he gave a brilliant presentation on New Generation Process Inteligence (including a fascinating presentation which included Football!) Some of the stuff that IDS Scheer are working on is really exciting. They are launching a new free Aris product (Aris Express) as well as an Aris "MashupZone". Check out the IDS Scheer website for more details.

Overall Process days was a great event and has really given me a huge amount of inspiration to keep spreading the BPM message. On the other hand I felt a little bit depressed and envious when I saw some of the big BPM initiatives that people are involved with at the moment and some of the cool software tools they are using to do it. I live in hope that I will soon get the opportunity to test myself in one of these organisations!

This is just a taster of what I experienced of Process Days 2009 and it has helped to stimulate a maelstrom of ideas in my little Ninja brain that I'll look forward to sharing with you over the coming weeks and months. Until then I encourage you to investigate some of the previous links in more detail and should you require any further details on Process Days, check out the Leonardo Consulting website.

Till then, keep spreading the BPM message.

- TPN

Stop Making BPM More Complicated than it actually is

There was a recent discussion on "What do you think business process management is?" on the BP Group linkedin discussion board.

Firstly, do we actually care about the semantics of what it actually is? Why do we always need to come to some sort of consensus on what BPM is? Is it really that complicated?

I'm concerned by the number of process professionals trying to turn BPM into some sort of pseudo science. I'm concerned by BPM textbooks, I'm concerned with academic studies with ludicrously long names and diagrams the size of an office block - but most of all I'm continually concerned that we are making our own lives as process people more complex than they need to be.

In my eyes, process is the purest, simplest component of human behaviour. Process in an organisation can become complex but it can always be stripped back to a few simple things:

• Meeting a need effectively
• keeping the customer happy (relationship)
• Doing things efficiently and productively (costs)

Doing the simple things right is the cornerstone of BPM and is the cornerstone of business.

To me, BPM is the active management and continual enhancement of all processes within an organisation.

Does it really need to be any more complicated than that?

10 Things I hate about BPM

I bet you never thought you'd hear me say it, but here we go. I hate:

The fact that it's reduced to yet another boring ackronym - it's so much more interesting than that

The fact that people are still arguing about what BPM / Process improvement and all the other phrases including process actually mean (it doesn't matter!!!)

Boring, elongated articles on process that try to turn it into a science - please people, go back to university and leave us alone!

People arguing over their tools "my tool is better than your tool!" - stop it - you're all tools!

People jumping on and off process bandwagons "Ooooh Six Sigma was so 2007" - it's not fashion so get over it

Lumbering software giants that charge a squillion dollars for poor installations that give process a bad name

People who write process blogs, but who can't write (does that include me - ha!)

Senior Managers who can't see the value of process (go die you dinosaurs!)

People who think because you've drawn a process map you've solved world peace

Those who cannot see "THE GOAL"

Harsh, aren't I?

- TPN