Making Process the Point
Technology or Philosophy? Depends on Whom You Ask

"In times like this, people realize they need to be doing something different, and better," adds Chris Preston. "We’ve been here before; you always ride on the ebb and flow, the ups and downs of the economy. Maybe not as challenging as this one, but we’ve been here before. And in a down economy there is absolute focus on reducing costs: How do I hunker down and get my head below the trench-line? Not so much the ‘transformational’ aspects of BPM, but the more tactical, strong ROI aspects. Before this economic meltdown occurred, it was much more about growing the business. This year…not so much."

But Chris is quick to add that in a slow economy, there is great incentive—do I hear stimulus package?—to do something big. "Making cautious investments does not necessarily translate into smaller investments," Chris points out. He is firm that companies are looking at a platform environment and solving mission-critical issues. "There may be more scrutiny on the investments, but they can be extremely far-reaching."

Laura agrees. "You have to have an education in BPM in order to see it from the strategic perspective. Those who do can look at three or four separate business problems in their organizations, and then have the light bulb go off: ‘I could either have separate point solutions for each of these, or I could deploy one BPM suite and solve all my problems with one platform.’ It’s up to us. If they don’t have the realization that BPM can help them through these difficult times, we need to educate them. We need visibility into a business problem they have, then help them build the ROI case. If you put BPM next to a point solution and make an ROI comparison, BPM is going to win because you can apply it to other processes rather than focus on a single problem," she says.

"At some point in the transaction, IT always comes in," Laura adds. "They have the bigger view. They don’t have only one particular line-of-business owner beating them up for a solution; they have five owners beating them up. And they’re usually smart enough to see when a solution can be deployed to solve all five of their problems at once."

Bruce Williams also thinks that IT has come a long way in recent times toward the strategic side of the moon, but still thinks there’s a long way to go. "IT is sick of being referred to as a cost center. They want to be part of the value equation. But few have managed to make that shift. IT is still a large cost item, and continues to be inwardly focused. That needs to change. The IT community has been an entity unto itself." He uses an example: "We have a telecommunications customer whose IT leaders have only recently begun to identify themselves as being ‘in the telecommunications business’ as opposed to being ‘in the programming business.’ Now, any day they can do less programming and more telecommunications work is a good day. The CIO says, ‘If any of you want to be in the programming business as opposed to the telecommunications business, you need to get a job somewhere else.’"

That’s a great story, but a rare one. "It’s been a long time in coming, but customers are willing to invest in technology not only to improve the process, but to address one of the most overlooked aspects—the customer experience," says Chris Preston. "It’s an interesting duality, and this economy has forced the issue."

And that "duality" Chris talks about is the tectonic stress between "cutting" and "growing." And it’s about to shift the ground. On one hand, Chris says, companies are hunkering down to protect themselves from costs and risks. At the same time, they see the value in improving—expanding, even—their customer outreach efforts. "More impactful communications. More personalized communications that help foster greater loyalty. Sure, everyone wants to optimize their processes and squeeze every cost out of them, but at the same time there is a mature realization that they can’t ‘cut their way to success.’ They’ve got to hold onto their best and most profitable customers first and foremost. All customers are flight-risks; the question is How do I circle the wagons and keep them loyal?" Chris’ question is pretty rhetorical, because he thinks he knows the answer already. "Call it customer lifecycle management," he explains. "The emphasis is on strong customer communication and loyalty building. Part of that is communicating that I know something about you, the customer. That I have that intelligence, and I’m trying to help you, not just blindly marketing to you. And I’m communicating through channels that you (the customer) prefer," he says.

According to Chris, maybe for the first time—finally!—the focus of managing the transaction is on the customer’s view of it, not the efficiency view of it. "Was it enjoyable? Did I provide the right level of service? That’s part of the BPM equation now. It’s not a separate CRM component, but is instead a central focus for BPM," says Chris.

It’s not your father’s workflow. One of the key philosophies of Chris’ vision is that every transaction, every claim, loan, invoice, statement, follow-up correspondence is an opportunity to build loyalty by improving the customer experience. And that’s not just lovey-dovey stuff; in Chris’ view, the retention of your most valued customers is the winning gameplay.

The Science of Process
One thing I learned in this series of conversations is that much in the same way "KM" is both a theory and a practice, "process" is both a philosophy and a science. The so-called "quality initiatives" of the past such as TQM and Six Sigma and even certain ISO-standard compliance efforts had more to do with the science of process than the practice of business. "As recently as a year ago, IT organizations were still living life as they always have, buying prepackaged solutions as they went along. And the vendors were in the packaged applications business, where it wasn’t about ‘process management,’ it was ‘process encapsulation’… putting it in a box and selling it as ‘ERP’ or ‘CRM,’" says Bruce Williams. But process management is much more than that. "Process management is a focused platform for discovery and optimization on behalf of business people: how they really need to work; how controlling it is part of their destiny; then examining the legacy of processes and bringing it all into the ‘operating room’ of the business practitioner…" Pretty language, but "that stuff wasn’t being very effectively addressed," says Bruce. "We had the Tower of Babel problem—technical people speaking their language, business people speaking their language, and very little overlap. Added to that is a third constituency, which is the process community, with its separate language. But through process initiatives such as Lean and Six Sigma, the process people and the business people got together. Business people are now beginning to speak the language of process; they’re beginning to talk about cycle time reduction, variance, optimization, throughput yield, etc."

I had to ask: Are you saying business wasn’t talking about process? "Business people generally run to daylight. They just try to make stuff happen; they’re not particularly students of the science of business process. They do what’s on the table in front of them…get stuff out the door, make quarterly sales numbers, hang onto marketshare. The notion of a process discipline has been very long in coming."

"It varies by organization," insists Laura Mooney. "There are companies that follow the analysts' reports and who have accepted the notion of an overall business process strategy. These are the companies that have been at this for a while. There are also companies that are just getting started."

John Gonzalez identifies at least one of the fire-starters for BPM adoption. "The introduction of SharePoint in 2007 has caused people to at least consider their enterprise content management strategy. In some cases, they are noticing that they don’t have one! They’re realizing they have a gap, and want to address it in some manner."