Because Process Matters » Cost Cutting

Change is Necessary – But Can Your Organization Handle It?

Process Matters Blogger — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 14:01:35 +0000

Having trouble managing ongoing business transformation projects – large or small? You’re not alone. Last week, I held a webinar in which I discussed how business transformation efforts are often unsuccessful— and an overwhelming majority agreed.

When I asked the attendees to describe their ability to handle major and ongoing changes within their organization in a poll, 63% of participants indicated that it was “slow, painful and expensive” and 31% said that efforts were “disjointed and siloed.” Meaning only 6% of the 83 participants who responded believed that their organization “could be an industry model for business transformation.”

I’m not surprised. Often, organizations struggle to manage change because they lack a consistent approach to business transformations. Determining the end goal of a transformation (whether it be upgrading to a new technology, seeking operational efficiency, or staying ahead of competitor innovation) is one thing, but trying to figure out a successful, cost effective way to roll out the transformation takes deep insight into the day in and day out activities and processes within the organization.

What organizations need to do is figure out how to communicate and collaborate across the enterprise so they can break down the obstacles to change. One way to achieve this is to align the organizational structures against a framework that enables organizations to prioritize and manage transformation initiatives – while also providing visibility into key organizational practices and providing vehicles to help people in cross-functional roles communicate and work together more effectively.

Today, Metastorm announced a new Business Transformation Practices Framework that is designed to do just that. The framework helps organizations eliminate the competing practices and communication barriers that prevent change and help them prioritize and manage transformation initiatives to achieve consistent and repeatable processes across current and future transformation activities. The framework is complementary to and integrated with the Metastorm ProVision® and Metastorm BPM® software – ensuring that multiple, business transformation initiatives can be tracked, monitored, implemented and fine-tuned through business architecture and business process adjustments on an ongoing basis.

If you’d like more information about the Business Transformation Practices Framework, you can contact me or go to www.metastorm.com/transform to read white papers, download solution sheets and register for upcoming business transformation webinars. An onDemand video of The Power of Business Transformation webinar from last week is also available here.

I also encourage you to join me for my next webinar – How to Manage Industry-Specific Change Using a Business Transformation Practices Framework – on Tuesday, March 15^th at 11:00 am EST, register here.

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Process Predictions and Prognostications – What’s Happening in BPM

Wendy Werve — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 16:45:42 +0000

As part of its Predicts 2011 series, Gartner recently made four predictions about how business process management (BPM) will help organizations evolve and distinguish themselves over the next three to four years. Gartner predicts that organizations – especially among the Global 2000 – that increase investments in and focus on process-related skills, competencies and competitive differentiators, will extend their leadership and competitive edge.

According to the report: “Predicts 2011: Business Process Management Competencies Will Expose the ‘Haves’ and ‘Have-Nots’,” by David W. McCoy, John Dixon, Jim Sinur, Michele Cantara, November 2010, Gartner predicts make four key predictions related to BPM. We will address two in this blog post:

Between now and year-end 2014, overlooked but easily detectable business process defects will topple 10 Global 2000 companies.
By 2015, context-aware computing will be used to rejuvenate at least 25% of “commodity” enterprise processes that are currently perceived as “low value.”

The first prediction is of course a call to action for large organizations to address the need for BPM sooner rather than later. As BPM enters mainstream adoption, those who fail to invest in the disciplines and technology to analyze, improve and automate cross-functional business processes will surely be at a disadvantage. Numerous organizations have proven that BPM does in fact work and delivers high value results – so we are not sure why any Global 2000 company would risk being left behind. Or for that matter, why any government organization would still be watching and waiting.

Of the Gartner predictions in the report, the second is perhaps the most significant from an innovation perspective as it suggests that successful organizations will utilize context-aware computing to not only transform low value processes, but also to more fully leverage differentiating processes in ways that increase competitive advantage and drive value for the enterprise. In addition to delivering value for the organization, Gartner suggests that context-aware computing will benefit end-customers by enabling a more personalized and intimate experience.

According to the report, “Context-aware computing centers around the concept of leveraging information about the end user — the environment, processes, communities and identities employed when interacting with computing technologies.”¹ That end user could be an employee or it could very well be a customer, and if you give some thought to this concept you will likely quickly come up with high-value areas – from supply chain management to customer service to crisis management – where this would add significant benefit. This still nascent application of BPM provides an opportunity to those organizations who have already invested in BPM to take their efforts a step further and continue to drive competitive advantage over their competitors who may now just finally be making the move to BPM technology and business process improvement philosophies.

Given its potential for being a ‘disruptive’ and ‘game-changing technology,’ context-aware computing as it relates to process management and performance is a topic Metastorm will be delving into at length in future blog posts. In the meantime, we continue on our quest to also educate those large organizations who have still not made the leap into BPM – although at this point, I would say given all of the proof points pointing to the success that BPM delivers, it should be more of a short jump than a leap.

¹ Predicts 2011: Business Process Management Competencies Will Expose the ‘Haves’ and ‘Have-Nots’, by David W. McCoy, John Dixon, Jim Sinur, Michele Cantara, November 2010

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Responding to the Recession

Alison Cooley — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 13:40:48 +0000

As unemployment rates continue to rise and the speculation surrounding a double-dip recession increases, many businesses continue to face difficult decisions in order to remain profitable and competitive during this economic downturn. Now more than ever businesses are searching for a way to dramatically reduce costs, rev up efficiency, and make the most out of what they have. It seems that businesses believe the best way to immediately solve these problems is to get rid of anything they can that reduces expenses, while still being able to function. Unfortunately, this method leaves the organization fragile and vulnerable, and with the uncertainty of an economic rebound in our near future it could ultimately cause the organization to fail.

As the economic recession has lagged on, industry analysts, vendors and practitioners have seen business process management (BPM) solutions succeed. Mainly because these solutions offer organizations valuable tools to design, integrate, automate, optimize, monitor and improve both human-centric and system-centric processes. With organizations reporting 10-20% return on investment per process project, investing in a BPM solution is a smart decision that will produce immediate benefits during the recession, as well as position your organization to effectively and efficiently respond to change once the economy has improved.

By implementing a BPM solution, your organization will have control over key operational processes across the enterprise, inevitably giving users the ability to improve the quality of work produced on a daily basis. Executives will gain visibility into the business operations across all levels, enabling them to identify redundant, complex, and underutilized process areas which will significantly decrease overall costs. Additionally, BPM tools mitigate risk by allowing users to monitor operations. Processes can be documented, enforced through process automation and business rules, and monitored and audited by users from all levels of the organization.

BPM tools also offer the resources to develop standard, automated processes, proven to increase productivity to a fraction of what it was before. By automating processes, your organization will be in the position to do more with less by saving money and increasing agility. These improved processes allow your business to reduce overhead by eliminating redundancies or reusing resources that are no longer needed to meet objectives.

What I find most important in this recession is that BPM solutions offer all users the visibility into organizational practices, capabilities, processes, and activities, allowing them to make better, more informed business decisions. Don’t let this economic downturn force your organization to make decisions it will later regret. Investing in a BPM solution will help your organizations cut costs now, position you to respond to change in the market place, and prevail when we approach an economic rebound.

If you are interested in learning more about Metastorm’s BPM and EA solutions tailored for the economic downturn visit our recession and rebound solutions page, where you can read solution overviews and customer success stories. Also, I encourage you to download Metastorm’s eBook “Two Smart Investments in a Recession and a Rebound” and watch our onDemand Webcast “Key Ways to Maximize the Value of Your IT Investment in Challenging Economic Times.”

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The US Air Force gets Leaner with Metastorm

Process Matters Blogger — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 20:27:32 +0000

This week Infonomics, AIIM’s weekly newsletter, featured a podcast with recent guest blogger Brian Chaney, the Director of IT Strategy and Architecture for Copper River IT.

The podcast, “The USAF, Six Sigma, and BPM,” discusses how the US Air Force utilized Metastorm ProVision® and Metastorm BPM® to achieve a 200% increase in automation to gain more efficiency, productivity, and control.

According to Chaney, the project began when the Department of Defense (DoD) mandated that, in order for DoD organizations to continue receiving funding, their IT investments had to include an Enterprise Architecture (EA) tool.

As part of its new EA initiative, the US Air Force wanted to identify how its IT infrastructure was supporting its business processes, and how well the processes were performing in the supported environments. To meet the goals of an existing initiative, Air Force Smart Operations for the 21st Century (AFSO21), which aims to streamline processes and optimize resource consumption – the US Air Force also wanted to “Lean out” its business processes to do more with less.

Listen to this podcast and read this customer success story to learn how the team used Metastorm ProVision to see and analyze its processes, and to identify time wasters and other areas of inefficiency, how it subsequently used Metastorm BPM to execute the Leaner, more agile processes across the entire enterprise, and how it utilized the power of the Metastorm Enterprise software suite to realize greater efficiency, and meet the goals of AFSO21.

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Get Leaner Faster with Business Process Management

Process Matters Blogger — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 22:08:19 +0000

Last week we hosted a webinar entitled, “Get Leaner Faster with Business Process Management,” which featured Kevin Haugh, Vice President of Product Marketing for Metastorm, and Brian Chaney, Director of IT Strategy and Architecture for Copper River IT. During the webinar Chaney discussed best practices to kick start a Lean initiative using a Business Process Management (BPM) tool, and commented that BPM is a great way to focus on Lean and provides a quick turnaround time.

In order to achieve the most success with a Lean BPM initiative, Chaney recommended that teams be small and agile. He said that it is important to ensure that a team has the right combination of skill sets, and that all members have a well-defined role. Make sure that the team has the correct mindset to work well with the business analysts and developers, and that everyone is brought into an executable environment. As usual, communication is a key factor in making a team successful, as is supporting the team and development cycles with the right tool sets and skills so that the project can move quickly and effectively.

Chaney also recommended that project managers time box the analysis phase so that the project doesn’t fall into analysis paralysis, because this will diminish its overall value. Setting a limit to the amount of time spent on analysis will help everybody on the team focus on what’s important for the project. With an end goal and a specific date, everyone can be better focused. BPM by nature should be flexible and agile, so it is important to ensure that the team doesn’t get so caught up in analysis that they lose sight of that fact.

Prioritization of requirements is also critical. Make sure the team works on the most important things first. Chaney commented that 20% of processes are used 80% of the time, so if a team can get that core 20% “Leaned,” then they’ve addressed 80% of inefficiencies. He suggested prototyping the top 5 processes to show significant improvement early on, and to get everyone on board to expand the project across the enterprise.

Finally, Chaney encouraged rewarding the team if they have done a good job and are tracking ahead of schedule. Morale is very important to any process improvement initiative. If the team is not productively moving, they’re not really adding value. So, if they’ve achieved their goal for a particular day, tell them to take the rest of the day off, and they will ultimately be more productive in the future.

Want to watch this webinar? Check it out as an onDemand webcast .

And don’t forget to sign up for the final webinar in Metastorm’s Lean Webinar Series, Lean to the Power of Three, which will run twice on Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 9:00 AM EST and 1:00 PM EST.

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Lean process agility breeds green viability

Process Matters Blogger — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:56:25 +0000

The new normal business approach is all about purity, and so is the green movement. Businesses today want to eliminate wasted resources, and the green movement wants to stop us from wasting the Earth’s resources. Funny—we’re learning more and more that the two go hand-in-hand.

Coinciding with the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, IDC released a buzz-generating report that found that 5.8 billion tons of CO2 emissions could be eliminated by 2020 with the help of certain green technologies.

The report examined four major economic sectors including the transport sector, which, according to the findings, needs to focus on supply chain logistics and private transport optimization for emissions reductions, and placed IT investments that enhance supply chain logistics among the most important to CO2 emissions reduction within this sector.

Streamlining supply chains is more than just a green initiative, however. In the new normal economy, technology is making the world smaller while greatly increasing the scope of business operations. Organizations who invest in IT to achieve the most agile and cost and resource effective supply chain will realize exponential ROI to outperform their competition.

Emphasizing this importance, respondents in another recent report Greater Innovation through Closer Collaboration said that it is critical for their corporation to respond to “competitive pressures to improve productivity and performance and customer demands for greater speed and visibility into supply and delivery chains” in order for them to survive in today’s fast-paced global marketplace.

The good news is that innovative technology solutions like business process management (BPM), business process analysis (BPA) and enterprise architecture (EA) can help you holistically model and analyze your supply chain and your entire enterprise, test the effects of potential change, and then execute leaner, meaner, and yes, even greener processes across your organization to achieve overall enterprise optimization by eliminating waste and accelerating performance.

Want to know more?

Metastorm’s complimentary eBook Green BPM- The Best Kept Secret for Meeting Your Company’s Green Mandates explains how BPM can help organizations:

Reduce paper consumption,
Reduce fuel and transport costs,
And, of course achieve greater efficiency in their manufacturing and supply chain processes.

This eBook is absolutely a must-read whether you are looking to purify your enterprise for greater business value, to go green, or both!

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States streamlining tax collection process to mitigate budget shortfalls

Metastorm PR — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 13:29:49 +0000

While some sectors of the economy are showing positive signs, budgets in key states around the country continue to linger “in the red” as rising unemployment and reduced spending have decreased income and sales tax revenue, respectively. According to a recent Financial Times article, despite receiving federal stimulus money, 46 of the 50 states show a whopping $142.6 billion shortfall in their cumulative 2010 budgets.

Some states, however, are proactively turning toward innovative IT initiatives to achieve greater efficiency in their tax collection process– with the goal of extracting the greatest value possible from their underfunded budgets.

For example, one of Metastorm’s state government customers used Metastorm BPM® as a foundation for developing a streamlined, simplified and centralized system for managing liens and tax information within its Department of Revenue—the department that is responsible for collecting personal income tax, sales and use tax, all corporate taxes, inheritance tax and all other state taxes. The department used BPM to develop a single system that houses all tax data—allowing employees to easily access taxpayer information in real-time, and more accurately enforce the collection of delinquent accounts. Prior to implementation, it took the department up to 4 weeks to research and gather information on particular tax liens. Now it takes less than a day.

The reality is that states will continue to struggle with budget deficits as the country weathers the current economic storm. Fortunately, however, as governments reevaluate their IT spending to best utilize their resources through business process management and enterprise architecture initiatives, their overall efficiency will be greatly strengthened today and in years to come.

Because states cannot best utilize funds without perfecting their collecting process, a great starting point for these initiatives is leveraging BPM to create efficiencies in the area of tax revenue collection.

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How to use BPM and EA tools to thrive during a recession

Metastorm PR — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 13:16:20 +0000

Laura Mooney, VP of Corporate Communications for Metastorm, authored this article in eWeek to explain how investing in relatively low-cost, quick-to-implement business process management (BPM) and enterprise architecture (EA) tools can help you make smart cost reductions, operate more efficiently with fewer resources, and keep your business operating at an effective level.

The article titled, “How to Use Business Process Management and Enterprise Architecture Tools to Thrive in a Recession,” first outlines four ways BPM software can allow for cost savings. BPM software can:

Increase efficiency
Maximize current resources
Lower risk
Gain greater visibility into dead weight

While an EA software tool can help organizations evaluate and make critical infrastructure decisions that can dramatically reduce fixed-cost expenditures and ensure that any reductions are the right reductions to make. EA software can:

Identify duplicate or underutilized overhead
Optimize your value chain
Quickly and effectively assimilate mergers and acquisitions

Investing in these types of tools will ensure that you are well-positioned when the economy rebounds.

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Enterprise Architecture still delivers in recessionary times

Process Matters Blogger — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 16:17:58 +0000

Enterprise Architecture (EA) increasingly covers a broader role in an economic downturn as reported recently by ZDNet. The challenge for IT departments is, according to Dana Gardner, “to balance the long-term goals against the pressing short-term needs of the business.” In fact, while most firms think they are applying what seems to be a logical approach – cut, cut, cut – in reality they are just starving themselves and will pay for it later.

In a recently published eBook entitled “BPM and EA – two smart investments in a recession,” Laura Mooney, Vice President, Corporate Communications at Metastorm, highlights how EA helps firms achieve and balance these goals: it delivers operational efficiency by identifying duplicate or underutilized overhead, it optimizes your value chain, it quickly and effectively assimilates mergers and acquisitions and it drives cost savings. Metastorm’s clients have showed real ROI by adopting EA. For example, a retail franchisor consolidated its databases from 35 to just 4, saving significant time, money and energy resources.

The panellists who took part in the discussion at the Open Group’s 22^nd Annual Enterprise Architecture Practitioner Conference highlighted some further interesting points about the need of EA during times of recession: it becomes a tool for strategic business transformation, it should demonstrate a long-term path while creating short-term value for the business, it makes a business impact by working across silos, and across HR, Finance and Operations. Finally EA should be seen as a business tool that can add value rather than an IT tool.

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