In his recent post, Should You Double Your Bet on BPM, Jim Sinur from Gartner Group debates both sides of the issue of increasing an organization’s BPM budget for next year.

For the “pro-increase” side, Jim points to BPM’s proven track record of solid success in process improvement projects that deliver over 15% rate of return. His counter-argument (Jim likes to argue both sides of an issue) is that it’s not BPM that’s delivering the success, but rather it’s solid project management and involvement from the business that is improving the overall process. Jim’s conclusion (not to steal his thunder) is that the combination of BPM’s process model-driven methods and business-led project management makes BPM worth a bigger bet.

I agree with Jim that process improvement initiatives are worth an increased bet.  But I also think that successful gambling is all about managing the odds.   There are 3 key things that companies getting ready to invest in process improvement initiatives can do to reduce risk and increase their betting odds :

1. Improve the accuracy of process discovery. Understanding what actually happens  in your existing process (the main flow and the variations) is a crucial step in defining the new, optimized process. A common method of process discovery is to interview users on what they currently do in the process, and then capture the findings using tools ranging from the white boards to Visio to online process discovery tools. The risk is that  the results from interview-based process discovery will not be accurate. People tend to focus on the main flows, and underestimate the frequency or impact of exceptions. They talk about the way they think they are supposed to do the process, but not describe the personal workarounds that they actually use. The result is that the process you document, and the new process you define, will not be prepared for the exceptions and variations – so workarounds will spring up immediately. It typically takes 3 or more iterations of the process to identify and manage all of the exceptions that occur – a long time where you are leaking process value and unnecessarily introducing risk. To increase your odds, use automated process discovery to capture the actual activity of the process participants, and see exactly what is occurring with the users in your process – exceptions, workarounds and all.
2. Improve consistency in existing processes instead of making major process changes. As discussed in a previous post, Pragmatic Process Improvement, What is it?,  we’ve seen it’s possible (and smart) to generate value from improving process consistency in existing processes, without making major process changes. Introducing new processes to an organization, or making major changes often requires changes to the organization, technology, culture and more. Improving the consistency of existing processes using process guidance reduces costly variations, but keeps the core process intact. It also takes significantly less time than driving process change, so your costs are significantly lower. By focusing on process consistency in exiting processes, you gain efficiency and save money, but avoid a lot of risk.
3. Monitor how your workforce interacts with processes to identify process exceptions and workarounds as they happen. The third way to improve odds in process improvement is to improve visibility in process execution- specifically by focusing on the how the workforce interacts with the process,  including activity outside the expected process to support exceptions and workarounds. If your focus is only on the process (and not on how its actually executed), you will miss this new workaround activity, and you’ll begin to leak productivity. By monitoring how the process and all the exceptions are executed by the workforce you create a “listening post” that can quickly identify activity that’s different from standard process flows – often an early indicator of business change. You can quickly react to the workaround, adjust the process guidance rules if needed, and stop the leak – or propagate an improved business process.

With these  three strategies  in place, your investment in process improvement initiates becomes a sure bet.

Shuffle up and deal!

Process improvement is a very hot topic today, with most organizations focused on reducing costs and improving business performance. Recent studies have shown that over 90% of CEO’s have indicated a strong need to change and improve the way their organizations operate, and their attention quickly turns to process improvement as the solution.

And here’s where it gets interesting. Many organizations begin their process improvement initiatives with the impression that process improvement requires process change. I think that assumption is wrong. Why? Because process change introduces too much risk, takes too long, and costs the business too much – and it’s only practical for a small percentage of an organization’s processes.

Our belief here at Iontas is that there is a better, more pragmatic approach to process improvement that delivers significant increases in process efficiency and effectiveness, without the risk, time and cost required for process change. This approach is focused on improving the consistency in the way your workforce executes in your existing people-intensive  business processes.

People-intensive business processes are everywhere in an organization. Inconsistency plagues people-intensive business processes – often impacting process performance by over 30%. Without the right tools, it’s often difficult to identify when, where and why inconsistencies happen, and more importantly, it’s difficult to control. This process inconsistency is expensive, costing organizations productivity, process quality and revenue.

One executive we recently spoke with said it best: ” I have 100 employees doing the same core back-office process 100 different ways, and I can’t really see and control what’s going on.”

So the goal of Iontas is to help you gain increased visibility and control of your existing  people-intensive processes, and to provide the foundation for process improvement moving forward – all while minimizing risk, time and cost. With our pragmatic approach, we use automated process discovery to quickly understand what’s happening in an existing  process, and use process guidance to help users more effectively and consistently navigate through that process.

The payoffs?  We can eliminate the inconsistencies that are draining performance from your existing processes. It’s a low risk because we’re not changing the core process and infrastructure, we’re just making it more consistent. And because this can be done quickly, you realize value quickly. The bonus? Because of the speed of this approach, you can touch many more processes (and deliver more value) than you can with an approach based on process change, making the payback for pragmatic process improvement very compelling.

Agree or disagree with our view on the value of pragmatic process improvement? We’d love to get your opinion.