What can BPM Vendors Learn From the iPhone?

Over the past few weeks I have been in contact with a lot more BPMS vendors than I would normally speak with. I have found it fascinating to see and hear how many of them are wrestling with the same issue. How can I make my product stand out from the crowd and get more sales?

Now it is not for me to judge in detail, but to my simple mind it appears that so many of these products essentially behave in the same way (I know there are things sold as different, but when one looks at the key functionality they are all getting nearer and nearer to each other). Of course some of the differential depends on the platforms you wish to run on, but in essence they appear to be sailing in a sea of sameness, with convergence being the order of the day.

This set me thinking that perhaps this was similar to the mobile phone market. Mobile phones have been around for many years now and whilst some people prefer Nokia, others Blackberry, or HTC or… handsets. Largely the handset market is pretty similar (and very crowded!), sure we can choose up market phones or basic phones, but in essence you would think that most of the angles had been covered. Major manufacturers have invested many millions of dollars developing their phone platforms and trying to make profit from them. The making profit increasingly be the hard part.

So it is into this market that Apple steps just a few years ago. A market that by all accounts was saturated and filled with manufacturers all struggling to make the returns they need. Whether you love iPhones or loathe them, you can't argue that they are an absolute phenomenon and are driving amazing revenues and profits for Apple.

So what might lie behind this success? Well in the first instance Apple focused on the aesthetics, they designed a quality product that looked both different and enabled people to interact with it in new ways. So tick box one, they understood that having a great platform was only one piece of the jigsaw, making it look nice and work in a way people found more intuitive, was equally if not more important.

If you have ever seen the quick demos of BPM products you will know that to date very few vendors have actually invested in User Interface design, either for their design tools or in their generated applications. Interestingly enough, this is an area where Global 360 with their "Persona based BPM" are taking a different approach. They have engaged with a design agency and are now in the process of delivering new interfaces with a greater focus on aesthetics and natural ease of use. The approach has still to reach deep into their design tools, but it certainly looks fantastic on the generated applications. The idea is simple, if we can generate applications that the user finds easy and pleasing to engage with, then our clients will be more successful and we will sell more of our own product.

This leads us on very nicely to the second tick box in Apple's success. Applications! Apple realized at once that it was not the technology platform that would stand alone, other companies are quickly trying to mimic the intuitive interface of Apple and as a phone it has pretty well the same (in some cases actually less!) functionality than other phones. It would be applications that would make the difference; Apple very quickly built or helped others to build a wide range of applications for the iPhone. As well as making money, it was the applications that made the phone successful. Those who have and love their iPhones are increasingly spending more and more time using the device for a wider and wider range of tasks and activities. (Of course this brings in to focus the challenge of battery life! But we can't have everythingJ)

So, perhaps in order to break out from the pack, BPM vendors need to focus less on their technology stack, their platform and instead focus more on creating or having created libraries of applications. Perhaps the time has come for component based BPM. The idea that we can simply build and assemble BPM applications from various vendors and assemble them together seems to make some sense. Not so easy I know, but if Apple proved that User Interface and applications are what generates sales and profits, even in a crowded market, then perhaps that is what it will take for a BPM vendor or two to break from the pack. We all know that swimming in a sea of sameness is a recipe for disaster and as SAP also proved you don't have to have the best technology underpinning your software product to succeed.

 

The People Side of Change

Watford 25^th/26^th November and Redditch 1^st/2^nd December

A new workshop designed to help you deliver your BPM and Process Projects more effectively

So much of the focus today is on technology, but such projects are largely about change! And change more often than not revolves around people. This highly interactive workshop will provide you with knowledge, skills and insight into how people work and how you can harness this in order to be more effective. Thanks to sponsorship from Casewise, Lanner Group and Global 360, there are a limited number of places available at the highly discounted price of £175.00 per person.

To find out more or to book your place please visit "The People Side of Change" – you will also find a short video which will provide you with the thoughts from others who have participated in the program.

 

Casewise; Taking a Fresh Look

Yesterday I was invited to attend a meeting of the Casewise User Group in Watford. As many of you know I am of course more familiar with the offerings from Popkin, MEGA and Proforma, having worked for those organizations. So it was good to have the opportunity to hear what one of my former competitors has been up to and I have to tell you I was very pleasantly surprised.

In the first instance the company who I had always seen as being in a bit of backwater, now seems set to shake the modelling world up again, just as it did when the company was launched 20 years ago. I was amazed by how many of the people that work there I already knew! I met people I knew from MEGA, Popkin and ID, all of whom seemed genuinely excited by the new developments taking place at the company. This year has seen major management changes and new people from inside the industry joining to add impetus to the company's growth. As I understand it there are even more people from their competitors waiting in the wings to join Casewise, this is certainly a different story to the one I was hearing about just 2 years ago.

Modelling, in the professional sense has always been a passion of mine. So to see companies in the space doing well always warms my heart. However, with the current economic problems, technology companies across the globe have been feeling the pinch and cutting back on staff. So it was nice to hear that Casewise had won over 100 new customers so far this year and had actually been increasing revenues and headcounts, a sure sign that more organizations are waking up to the true benefits that modelling can afford them.

Alex Wentzo, the COO for EMEA is an unassuming sort of person with a strong belief in customer service and quality. It is these strengths that have seen him take Casewise from being almost invisible in France to being seen as one of the dominant players in the French market. He also suggests that part of Casewise's appeal to global companies is the number of languages they support natively, apparently the tool is available in 14 languages. He also suggests that as a company with growing revenues and cash in the bank Casewise are in a better position to capitalize on the current market challenges.

What Alex does not say is that their success is, in part at least, due to the impressive range of new products the company now have to better serve their clients and prospects. To the best of my knowledge the company's Corporate Synergy Product is the only process execution offered by a modelling tool vendor into the market. Other vendors have partnerships with BPMS vendors, but the Casewise approach is to offer their own solution to their customers. The product being sold and supported by them directly means that customers only have to deal with a single vendor and a single development team, always a big plus. During the meeting we were treated to a customer case study on the Corporate Synergy product, and it seems that the customer in question has achieved some very impressive results in a very short space of time. I will talk more about this in a later post.

Many vendors in the modelling space talk about Web based modelling, SaaS solutions, hosted solutions or interfacing with Visio, but it seems that Casewise now offers their customers all of these. Of particular interest to me was the company's V-Modeller product. Here they have not simply provided a Visio interface, but actually provided their customers with the ability to use Visio as an alternative means of modelling. They are working on the premise that the true value of a repository based approach can only be realized if all the data is contained in the repository. So by allowing customers to use Corporate Modeler, Visio or Web Modeler they can make it easier for their clients to roll out the modelling based paradigm to a wider audience. A brave move and one which this writer certainly hopes and believes will pay off handsomely in the months and years ahead.

With the increase in interest in process modelling you could argue that the market is coming back to Casewise. Process modelling is where they started 20 years ago and although latterly the company has become better known for the strength of their Enterprise Architecture offerings, I think it will be the strength of their process modelling that will again provide the impetus to the company. As well we all know successful EA projects are increasingly finding process at the heart of their success, SOA and BPM projects can't succeed without clear process understanding.

Whilst there are many vendors in the space, independent vendors in modelling seem to come and go, Casewise certainly impressed me with how far they have come in the last two years and with other information they shared that is not appropriate for me to publish I think they may once again rise to prominence in the industry. As long as they do more to get the word out and become more visible!

If you would like to understand more about the Corporate Synergy and V-Modeller offerings, simply click the clicks to find out for yourself what has impressed me.

“Chunking” as a Tool for Effective Process Communication and Change

The principle of "Chunking" is said to have first been put forward in the 1950s by George A. Miller, a Harvard psychologist. Most people today will be familiar with the theory he put forward "The Magical Number Seven", Plus or Minus Two". The original research was related to our short term memory, how many numbers we can remember a few minutes after being told them only once. However, his work has gone on to be applied far beyond numbers. The principle of seven plus or minus two, is now well established as a "Golden Rule" for presenting, selling or communicating information to people. We know that we should try to follow the principle on slide bullet points, written communication and oral presentations, but "Chunking" has other applications that are vital for effective business and process improvement projects.

Beyond traditional means of communication it can be, and has been, successfully applied to the creation of maps and models e.g. no more than nine activities/ processes/ objects in a single map/model. If we have more than nine then we should break them down into manageable "chunks". The application of chunking to our maps and models aids comprehension and ensures readability.

"Chunking" is also used in a completely different way in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). It is this alternative use of Chunking that is extreme value in our process improvement or BPM type projects. I am starting with the assumption that many people struggle to either get buy in for change or to have the proper level of detail required in order to be able to implement a solution. In my own experience this has certainly appeared as the conundrum on many projects. Well perhaps you might find the answers you are seeking in the NLP concept of chunking.

In NLP "Chunking Up" refers to our moving to more general or abstract information, while "Chunking Down" means moving to more specific or detailed information. Whilst this may be similar to the point discussed above regarding maps and models, it is in fact quite different. The focus on the techniques in this case is on how we reach agreement with people or how we can elicit greater levels of specivity from people.

Learning the technique and practicing thinking about it will greatly enhance your ability negotiate more easily, to find common areas in order to reach agreement, generate new ideas and to identify the details that matter.

In order for us to chunk up on a particular piece of information we could use questions such as the following;

• For what purpose?
  
• What is the intention?
  
• What is this a part of?
  
• What is this an example of?
  

As an example, let us use sport and I assume that you are an avid fan of soccer, while I, for my sins, think cricket is the best sport. We could spend hours debating and arguing the relative merits, without ever being able to reach any form of agreement, or we could use the technique of chunking to quickly and easily reach agreement. So the example questions might now be:

• What are soccer and cricket both examples of? – Team sports?
  
• What is the intention of a soccer or cricket match? – To win?
  
• What is the purpose of a soccer or cricket match? – To entertain?
  

Thus, we might quickly establish that we both agree that team sports are good, we might agree that we find them entertaining and that we enjoy our team winning.

We can apply the same principle to methods and approaches to process improvement. All over the world people are still arguing or debating Lean vs. Six Sigma vs. BPM, vs TQM etc. What, though, might happen if we asked everyone to apply the following questions to their preferred approach or technique?

• What is the purpose of (Lean, Six Sigma, BPM etc.)? – To improve a company's performance
  
• What is the intention of (Lean, Six Sigma, BPM etc.)? - To deliver performance improvement through the optimization of processes
  
• What are (Lean, Six Sigma, BPM etc.) examples of? – Structured approaches for identifying and removing waste
  

You may have other answers but hopefully you will agree that when we chunk up like this we can see that the essence of all the approaches is the same. In my examples we have reached similarity on one step, but for more complex examples it may be necessary to chunk op to or more levels in order to reach the level of agreement. The principle of chunking up allows us to focus on the "forest" rather than be stuck with the "trees".

At other times we are in need of additional information or detail so we can use the technique of chunking down, examples of questions that can assist in this would be;

• (How, what or who) specifically?
  
• What is an example of this?
  
• (How or what) is a good way of doing that?
  
• When would we use/do that?
  

Going back to our sports example let's assume that I do not want to debate your love of soccer, instead I want to understand more about it, then I might ask the following example questions;

• What specifically do you like about soccer? – Playing it
  
• What is a good way of doing it? – Joining a team
  
• What is an example of this? – I play for the company team
  

If we chunked up as above we could reach agreement, but we might still be missing vital facts, in this case by chunking down we can increase our understanding. Of course we could then chunk back up from here based on playing, teams and the company and it is possible we would reach an even stronger agreement. Even if agreement was not the purpose we would still now have more useful information.

With our examples around methods and tools for process improvement we might enquire;

• What specifically is it you like about (Lean, Six Sigma, BPM etc.)? – A structured approach to change
  
• What is an example of this? - the way we restructured our complaints process
  
• How specifically? – we provided knowledge to enable one touch resolution
  

Here we can see that rather than talking about a method (abstract) we moved down into what it is used for and then drilled down to an example of how it had been used and what we specifically used it for. So now we can talk about the benefits of the approach, rather than simply selling the approach itself.

The examples presented here are kept simple to aid clarity, but chunking is also invaluable in getting us to think laterally. Lateral thinking is often taught and used as a way of getting us away from problems and into solutions. To effectively use chunking in this scenario one simply chunks up one or two levels and then chunks down again. As an example suppose you have to take a package to a particular destination and you do not wish to use your car. To identify alternatives, first chunk up, i.e. what is driving your car an example of? One possible chunk up is a mode of transportation. Now chunking down, you can easy identify many different modes of transportation which are on the same logical level as car i.e., Motorbike, train, airplane, walking, etc. And you can select the mode that meets your other needs.

The principle of chunking is widely used in negotiation and mediation to great effect, which is also the objective of many of our change efforts, and so is extremely useful to process and performance related projects.

Additionally in NLP teaching we make use of two models which help with and can facilitate better Chunking. They are the Milton Model – which uses vague or abstract language – to help us in chunking up and the Meta Model – with a number of different language constructs – which help us in obtaining specifics and thus helps in chunking down.

To summarise "Chunking" can be thought of as organizing or breaking down some experience into bigger or smaller pieces. Chunking up involves moving to a larger, more abstract level of information. Chunking down involves moving to a more specific and concrete level of information. Chunking laterally involves finding other examples at the same level of information. It can be used to reach agreement, obtain additional and accurate detail, to move people from one plane of thinking to another and many other useful ways. I consider it as an important skill in effective process analysis, design, improvement and change.

N.B. "Effective use of Chunking" is one of the many tools and techniques taught in Mark McGregor's 5 Day "NLP for Change Professionals" and 2 Day "The Process of Change" courses, for more information on these please email Mark directly

The Process of Change

With the phenomenal pressure on organizations to make changes and fast, it is inevitable that processes are increasingly seen as a key to success. If you like me spend time talking with people about how they will go about understanding and improving processes, then you will know that pretty quickly the discussion turns to methods and tools. We soon find ourselves discussing the relative merits of BPM vs. Lean Sigma vs. Six Sigma, of EFQM* vs. AQPC*, of which modelling tool to use or which BPMS* vendor talk with.

Very soon people are talking about how they are going to analyze processes and problems and how they are going to improve or automate them. Keep talking and listening and eventually two things will come up. Firstly, there will be a discussion around how the method or technique needs to be applied without the associated training, "because we don't have the budget for training" and "we know how to do it but people are simply not buying into the change". Of course other issues such as communication and lack of management support are also factors, but in some ways these factors also relate to the issue of change.

I have found it fascinating over the years just how few people or organizations have in place or have even studied the "Process of Change." If change is so important to us and is such an ongoing thing, then why does every organization not have a well documented and well exercised process for change? Why do people not understand that effective change begins no t by analyzing the problem, but instead by elaborating the opportunity or eventual goals/aims? Perhaps it is something to do with the lack of breadth of our studies, or perhaps it is because the people we rely on to do the work are analysts and so naturally they are good at analyzing problems.

This reminds me a little of the ongoing debate between those with a background and training in psychotherapy and those who believe in NLP. There are many in the psychotherapy field that have no time for and are dismissive of NLP, they believe in their own approaches which in some cases can take years to produce results in their patients, they diligently work away analyzing their patients problems and slowly trying to chip away at the causes. They suggest that it is crazy to think that people with only a few weeks of training can produce life saving changes in people with only one or two sessions. They suggest that it makes no sense how people can help others without having to know all about the background and circumstances that bring them to where they are today. Yet all over the world there are people who have had their lives changed for the better in a matter of hours, who did find that good practitioners have taken them to where they want to go in one or two hours, after they had spent years in therapy. There are always new ways of doing things, the old is not bad, just old, new does not have to be good, just new. The art is to blend what works from the old with what works from the new and that delivers the best results in the shortest practical time (with the least possible pain)

Within the IT and Process space I am often amazed at just how narrowly people study, we might learn everything about our chosen method and spend a fortune on our chosen tool, but we seem to only pay lip service to other bodies of knowledge. Areas such as creativity, innovation, communication and facilitation are not learned or taught as an everyday part of Business, Systems, or Process Analysis, or when they are it is only to a small degree. I wonder just how many analysts have read Daniel Pink's "A whole New Mind" or Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" and then combined that reading with things like Robert Cialdini's "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" and Marcus Buckingham's "First Break all the Rules" – these are just examples of reading that cause as to have a wider perspective, there are many others and types to choose from.

Personally, I have been fascinated at look at process improvement through the eyes of Psychology & Neuro Linguistic Programming, through the eyes of nature & energy healing, in addition to the more traditional approaches. My reasons and guiding principles have been simple; in the words of Einstein ""We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." So we need to look wider than the traditional ways of doing process analysis and design and of J. Krishnamurti "If all problems are problems of the mind, then surely all solutions are solutions of the mind, in which case if we spent as much time focusing on solutions as we do on discussing problems, we would find that solutions would come with equal measure." So how can we help people focus more on thinking about solutions and new ways of doing things as opposed to simply analyzing where they are now.

Over the past 20 years I have read studied and practiced many aspects of NLP*, I have also been fortunate to learn from many great teachers, but I have also been able to study the subject directly from one of its creators, Dr Richard Bandler. In NLP training we are taught an extensive range of tools and techniques that can help people make changes in their life, overcome fears and phobias, break down emotional barriers and to create the life of their dreams. What tends not to be taught explicitly though is the process of change, it is implicit in the training, but few people seem to notice it. A part of the original thinking in NLP was that if we could find a way to codify how great people achieved the results they did, then we could find ways of learning those patterns and teaching them to others. It was with this in mind that I took the opportunity, two years ago, to discuss with Richard the process of change and to ask him to validate my process for change. What follows is the discussion we had.

"Richard, we have learned many new skills and we have had plenty of opportunity to practice those skills. You have taught us how to make changes, many of which we have seen can be quite profound, yet I am not sure that people really understand what the process of change is, I mean how to consistently apply the learning and techniques such that good results can be obtained across a wide range of issues." To which Richard, as you would expect replied, "An interesting statement, do you have a question?" "Yes" I said, "May I repeat to you what I understand that process to be and have you comment on it?" "Sure" he said "Fire away."

"Firstly, you seem to focus on discovering what it is that somebody wants, have them describe their compelling vision of the future or positive view on why their life will be better. Then you have them go into detail on this in such a way as to have them really associate with it. During this you listen very carefully for clues and challenge them so as to ensure that they really do want to make changes and test for the level of seriousness. Once you are satisfied you appear to move on to the next step. This is when you start to analyze, to ask questions of them to understand more about what might be stopping them achieving the results they desire. Also, to think about which of the tools, techniques or patterns might be the most appropriate to achieve the results they are looking for. Once you are happy that you understand what they want and how you might help them you design an approach to achieve the desired result. Before actually performing any change work, you then check in with them to validate that they are totally happy to make the changes and will be comfortable with the results, only when you are sure that you have total agreement do you move on. If you don't have full agreement, you appear to go back to the first step and once again try to rediscover, analyze and design before one again trying to validate. Now, with their full agreement you undertake the change work, you implement the changes with them and lead them to the point where they are learning new habits, behaviors and changes for themselves, you are providing them with new choices and helping them get a different perspective on things. Once they have come to their own realization, or had their own 'aha' moment, you help them to integrate those learning's. Help them generalize the learning out into other areas of their life, areas where they believe that the new choices will serve them better. Having integrated the change, you provide them with techniques to ensure that they can hold on to the gains they have made to control the changes and themselves. Finally, you have them look at other areas of their life where the new perspective can serve them better, to have them generalize and improve those things that will serve them more usefully in the future."

"Yup!" said Richard "That seems to sum up what we actually do to make effective changes"

So, if this appears to be the process by which one of the most successful change agents of our time uses, and the one on which most other successful personal change personalities have based their own work and businesses, then why is it that we seem to try and avoid using the same process in business? The process of change is universal and the above can easily be adapted to business and process problems. The longer we try to avoid such a process then surely the longer we are going to take to successfully embed a culture of change within our organizations.

Now the question is, where will you look to enhance your understanding of the process of change? How can taking a different perspective enable you to be even more effective than you are now?

If you would like to read and learn more about NLP from the creator, then Richard has released two excellent books this year "Get the Life You Want: The Secrets to Quick and Lasting Life Change with Neuro-Linguistic Programming" and "Richard Bandler's Guide to Trance-formation: How to Harness the Power of Hypnosis to Ignite Effortless and Lasting Change", both of which I would highly recommend.

 

* Abbreviations used

EFQM (European Framework for Quality Management)

AQPC (American Quality & Productivity Center)

BPMS (business Process Management System)

NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming)

 

 

FREE Mapping & Modelling Survey Report Now Available

At last, after weeks of poring over the details and reading the responses, the report is now available. The report gathers together the thoughts and responses from over 500 people around the globe, making it probably the most comprehensive report on the subject to date. In addition to the collation of the survey response I have also included commentary on a number of the topics raised by the survey.

The report at 48 pages provides a detailed analysis of what tools people are using, which methods they are using and what features they rate or use in their tools. Some of the results may surprise you, they certainly surprised me!

Process mapping and modelling is a key skill for successful BPM or SOA projects, yet it is still one of the least understood and least valued disciplines. Given the long history this might be surprising, but it also seems that at least some of the indifference may be down to the number of methods in use and the large number of people who do non-technology process improvement and for whom many of the tools are just too complicated and too expensive.

One of the early readers of the report Dave Curry, Director of Process at Vertex says "The report provides an excellent analysis of survey results relative to the use of process modelling tools. The comparison of perceptions by end users, consultants, and vendors along with the commentary analyzing the results provides the added value." While Jerome Pearce, Executive Director Process Mapping Pty Ltd added "This is fascinating. I don't think I have seen the results of a survey that interested me quite as much."

It was certainly fun to contrast the views of end users with those of vendors and consultants and I am very grateful to all those who shared their thoughts and opinions so freely.

You can access your own personal copy of the report from http://www.markmcgregor.com/report.htm

Effectual vs. Efficient

This particular blog article has been running around in my head for some weeks now. But having listened to Barack Obama's speech to congress this week and come across an article by the BBC business editor, Robert Peston. I decided that I could delay no longer. Originally I was planning to write about effectiveness vs. Efficiency, but as you will read even those terms did not get across the key difference.

Some of the very positive feedback I received in the Cost vs. Waste article started to make me worry. The reason for the worry was that people were very positive about chasing out waste and the benefits that will bring to them. Many of them even relating to the damage caused by previous cost cutting campaigns. People were still looking to use it as a technique to increase efficiency.

So why would people doing great work in chasing out efficiency worry me? It worries me because I see people around the globe using efficiency to try and rescue/recover/grow their organizations. The danger being that we are using the same mindset that created the problem to solve it. Something which Einstein warned us against with his quote ""We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

So, as with other articles in the series let's start by taking a look at some dictionary definitions. As we can see at first glance the differential between the terms efficiency and effectiveness is not as clear cut as in other areas we have considered.

ef·fi·cien·cy

a) the quality or degree of being efficient

b) efficient operation

c) effective operation as measured by a comparison of production with cost (as in energy, time, and money)

d) the ratio of the useful energy delivered by a dynamic system to the energy supplied to it

ef·fec·tive

a) producing a decided, decisive, or desired effect <an effective policy>

b) impressive , striking

c) ready for service or action <effective manpower>

d) actual <the need to increase effective demand for goods>

e) being in effect : operative <the tax becomes effective next year>

Again I am using the Merriam-Webster online dictionary as the reference point. Further reading of the definition of "effective" produces, to my mind at least, the bigger clues to the differential. From the reading of the synonyms we can see that while efficient is all about "avoiding" (loss, waste, energy, money etc.) something we need to do. Effectual is about actually "accomplishing" desired results.

synonyms effective ,effectual, efficient mean producing or capable of producing a result.

1. effective stresses the actual production of or the power to produce an effect <an effective rebuttal>.
   
2. effectual suggests the accomplishment of a desired result especially as viewed after the fact <the measures to stop the pilfering proved effectual>.
   
3. efficient suggests an acting or a potential for action or use in such a way as to avoid loss or waste of energy in effecting, producing, or functioning <an efficient small car>.
   

Now, do we need to be efficient, well of course we do! But, what if we are efficient without being effective? One of my favored examples here is the auto industry. Whether we consider the ailing US firms or the almost totally non-extant UK firm is of no consequence. In both cases in response to pressure from Asian car companies the US/UK manufacturers seemed to chase two things in particular. Quality, they woke up to the fact that they needed to drastically improve their quality and efficiency, they tried (and are still trying) to become more efficient, producing their cars at lower costs. They have all to a greater or lesser degree made some major strides in both of these areas.

However, notwithstanding the current financial crisis, as Barack Obama says, they have still not made the changes they need to in order to give themselves a real shot at long term survival. To my mind unlike their Asian counterparts they were too focused on efficiency and not enough on being effectual. If we look at the world market for auto's over the past 10-15 years we see that it is Japanese companies who have consistently delivered the products that customers wanted, not merely trying to find innovative ways of getting customers to buy what the manufacturers wanted to make!

Another way of looking at the difference between the two is that efficiency tends to be an inside out perspective - what can we do to be more efficient (improve OUR processes, cut OUR costs, remove waste from OUR system). On the other hand effectual is an outside in perspective - it does not matter what we want to do, what does the customer want from us and how can we deliver it to them to the quality they seek at a price they are willing to pay (causes to only do the steps we need to and therefore eliminates unnecessary work and doing things that customers won't pay for.

Anyone who has spent time on process analysis will have countless stories to tell of how when they looked at a process from the outside in the waste became obvious. Going further when the process is looked at properly from end to end the amount of "craziness" that exists in organizations is sad.

Truly successful organizations in every sector have proven that understanding what the customer wants and will pay for is critical. To operate processes that deliver to these criteria makes sense. To then identify ways of ensuring that the required activities are executed efficiently is obvious. It is these things when taken together that means we are and can be effective and makes our processes effectual. To do anything less is to waste time, money and other resources and to risk the entire health of the enterprise.

By way of an example of how "efficiency" by itself can be misleading, consider the following quote:

"RBS was a slightly odd organization in those days. In many ways, it appeared remarkably successful. Having acquired NatWest and expanded massively in the US, it was one of the world's biggest and most profitable banks. But it was always rather secretive and surprisingly defensive: I'm struggling to remember a single on-the-record interview given by Goodwin to a broadcaster or newspaper. It was more inward looking than most huge international companies, and was very prickly about even mild criticism. That said, many in the City, and many journalists,
admired the bank for its efficiency and Goodwin for his "Fred-the-shred" moniker - his reputation as perhaps the most fearsome and effective cost-cutter in UK corporate life. So it's striking that the new chief executive, Stephen Hester, has identified some £1.5bn to £2bn of cost savings at the bank, which are apparently above and beyond what has already been disclosed. And Hester will announce as much this Thursday"

Robert Peston, BBC Business Editor in Feb 2009

Here Peston is talking about a company that was seen as successful as measured by its industry peers and its apparent efficiency. The key points being that it was defensive, unwilling to accept criticism and inwardly focused. How many organizations can we think of that these terms could apply to?

Had they been more focused on being "effectual" I suggest that they would have been better able to find the learning from criticism, would have been more open about their failures and would have been thinking about their business from the outside in. Now, given the problems in the whole financial sector, it would be naive to suggest that these things alone would have prevented failure, but, I strongly believe that they would have a) made even more profit on the good days b) reduced some of the bad lending c) won even more customers as a result of being easy to do business with and d) had a more understanding ear from governments, shareholders and customers when things went wrong.

As a footnote to the story it is also interesting to note that even one of the most apparently efficient organizations in their industry can mysteriously find such amazing amounts of additional savings when push comes to shove.

I suggest the questions we need to pose of our organizations, as well as each of us as individuals is

1. Are we willing to take and learn from criticism? - If not what can we change now so we can

2. What is it that customers really need? - What do we need to do to ensure that we only conduct operations that do just that.

3. How can we be more open - With our customers, staff and other stakeholders.

If we start to approach business in this way then we will start to be more effectual, it will also cause us to change the way we think about business and avoid the perils as suggested by Einstein above.

On the flip side if we don't then we will I am certain enter a death spiral of "Legislation which will increase business costs. Increased business costs will cause price increases. Increased prices will mean losing customers. Losing customers will result in decreased profits. Decreasing profits will reduce investment. Reduced investment will stifle innovation. Lack of innovation will cause stagnation - all of which will cause governments to think passing legislation!" - Hardly what we could call evolution or progress methinks Charles Darwin would be turning in his grave!

Finally as a reminder to those who are looking at saving struggling businesses by removing waste (cost if they prefer), it is probably already too late. Companies like GE, Toyota, South West etc. never stop removing waste and they know that the time to really keep your foot on the gas is while business is booming and you still have the resources you need to restructure and make changes. Sure these companies will struggle too, but I would bet on them coming out stronger in the upturn. Of course in the process community this is not news, in fact it is history repeating itself. The same could be said for many of those who came late or not at all to the Business Process Reengineering (BPR) party in the early 90's.

Mapping vs. Modelling

If we think about maps the most familiar to us is the road map. Then we can have many maps together and create a road atlas. These are great for allowing us to see where we are and where we might want to go. We could even use our maps to trace a route in order to plan a journey. However, if there had been a new road built or an old one dug up, we would at best waste time and at worst be unable to complete our journey. Our maps or atlases are static representations of the world and once drawn they are difficult to edit and change, especially if a change on one page or map has an impact on another. So in process terms if we are simply drawing pictures on a page then the chances are we are creating maps and most maps are just that – pictures. Visio and PowerPoint being the two most common mapping tools used today.

Something else that we should bear in mind about maps is that we can have many different types. We would not want to use a road atlas to go walking in the hills, or detailed ordnance survey map for driving. We know instinctively that each form of a map has a specific purpose. Maps are also only representations of the world as perceived by the creator of a map, think for a moment about how maps themselves have evolved over the years. You would not want to use a map from even 10 years ago to navigate around the world today.

If having created a map you wish to undertake any kind of analysis, be it impact, time, what-if, resource or any other kind then maps will not be suitable, in order to do this you will need a model. In today's world the best example of rich models which we use can be thought of as GPS Navigation systems. With these devices we can asses multiple route options based on a whole host of criteria. Compared to our road atlas the maps in these devices are seamless. It takes much longer to build a model than a map, as for each shape on the chart one will be required to input additional data about such things as resources, cycle times, wait times, costs etc. The richer the "definition" contained in the chart, then the then the richer the analysis that can be performed. In part this is why modelling tools are perceived as being harder to use, they are designed to provide a richer analysis experience and to allow the use of the computer to do some of the comparisons and calculations for you. Maps can only really be compared with other maps by using the human eye and a whole host of other spreadsheets and calculators. Even then such analysis is not especially efficient.

Whether to use a map or a model depends on your purpose, it may be that using a simple map as a first stage in knowing what the process is and how to simplify it is a good step. Indeed this is the approach taught in my classes and seminars, as first step tremendous waste opportunities can be discovered.

However, if you want to do more detailed analysis you will need to take the simplified map and enter it into a modelling tool for that to happen. It is also better in the long term to store maps in a modelling tool as it makes it significantly more practical to maintain both the map and the interdependencies. Many suggest that the effort to build models is not justified; perhaps what they are really saying is that they cannot be bothered to undertake proper analysis? Or maybe they do not care about calculating timing or cost information – this would be surprising today.

Certainly for those who wish to undertake any kind of automation the models will need to be built. The cost of implementing a badly designed process or procedure is just too expensive. There is also an assumption here that your business contains more than one process and that understanding the interdependencies would add value and enable better business decisions.

In summary, use a map to understand or define a process or problem, then use the map to look at waste reduction or other quick hit opportunities. Then when you have eliminated wasted activities, rules, moments of truth etc. then you would be better to capture the resultant map in a model, adding details as required.

Focus on Removing Waste not Cost

This is a repost of an article I did last year, it is being reposted a) because it is highly topical right now and b) because some nice person hacked it on the blog!

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So at last, governments around the world have woken up to what businesses have known for a long time—we are in a downturn, which seems set to turn into a recession. So with everyone scurrying around looking for ways to minimize the effects and hoping that it won't turn out to be as bad as that of the late 80's / early 90's, what can we do to help?

Well, it is pretty certain that many organizations will look to Business Process Management (BPM) as a way of reducing costs and trying to manage their way out of the situation, and for some this may well be the correct approach. The challenge will be how well they manage the use of BPM; will they go with a sledgehammer to crack a nut, or will they look at the wider possibilities and allow themselves to position for success.

It will be fascinating to see whether we go for the history repeating approach or learn the lessons from the past. Those with long memories will remember that Business Process Reengineering (BPR) was seen as a way and used as a tool to help businesses out of the earlier recession, then as business picked up people said that BPR did not work and was too blue sky. The lesson, of course, is that everyone was focused on removing cost as opposed to removing waste; it is the removal of waste that will serve us when the upturn in the market starts.

Pretty well for the last 15 years or so we have seen steady growth in the economy overall and revenues and profits have grown with it, primarily as a function of scale and market sector growth, especially in newer sectors. Inevitably this means that businesses have not needed to be as efficient as they might otherwise be. Of course many would argue that they have been on top of efficiency or that they have always managed costs—well, I am sorry but this has not been my experience.

Now though, there is a need to chase efficiency and, whilst true to form, many will simply ask their purchasing people to squeeze their suppliers. I contend that this is a lazy approach and is management acting without managing. Simply taking costs out of a business across the board has never been seen as a successful long term survival strategy in the past and there is no reason to believe it will be the right strategy for the future.

Instead, managers should focus on getting a better handle on their cross functional or business processes and allowing their own staff to identify waste or non-value adding activities that can and should be eliminated. By removing waste as opposed to cost will mean that the company is not being damaged in any way and will, in fact, be in a better position to serve its customers in the market upturn. Some smart organizations may well realize that if they do this well, they may actually be able to go to their clients and offer cost reductions without being asked, thus forging stronger relationships and, potentially, even increasing the share of their customers business that they get. Now, wouldn't that be neat; remove waste, leading to lower costs which leads to higher revenues, seems like a win-win to me.

To benefit from waste or non-value add removal it is a simple matter of process analysis and redesign. I say a simple matter, because it does not require teams of analysts to be set running around taking months to report back before coming up with a redesign that is based purely on reduction or deduction. Instead it requires a few good coaches or facilitators to help people identify what they are doing now and get them thinking inductively about how they can make improvements. The caveat, as ever, is that managers need to focus on empowering and leading rather than controlling and managing.

The outputs from such exercises can literally save some companies millions for only a few days efforts. They also serve to provide IT people with a much better brief on what might be expected from, or required of, some kind of process automation. This in turn means cheaper system implementation costs, lower resistance to change and greater value from the IT part of the project.

Now, if we move forward and deliver on this vision people are certain to look make this time and say that BPM helped them deal with the issues and was indeed practical and results focused. In summary, we learned from the lessons of the past, focused on waste and helped to ensure the survivability of our organizations and ultimately our jobs!

Procedure vs. Process

In the course of undertaking the Mapping and Modelling survey a number of interesting areas of "uncertainty" or "confusion" became apparent. So I thought that maybe I would try and address one of them; the thorny issue of the difference between process and procedure. The issue has been hotly debated for many years, but to my mind became red hot at two points in time.

The first time was when the ISO9000:2000 standard for quality was published. This saw a shift away from companies simply documenting and following procedures, to needing to document and show plans for continually improving their processes. With apologies to those companies who did undertake the work required to make such changes, most in my experience simply undertook a global search and replace exercise and replaced the word procedure with the word process. Simply replacing one word with another, to my mind at least, meant confusing themselves, their staff and the rest of us in one fell stroke.

The second time was with the emergence of Business Process Management (BPM) Systems. The people in the software industry who told us that BPR was dead and that brown paper and post it notes would not cut it. The people who told us we needed to draw our models in tools so that we could push buttons to generate software applications. For many of these people process was a nasty thing with a lack of rigor. So they used and continue to use the word process, when actually what they are drawing or requiring are procedures. At risk of over generalizing, while business people can talk about process, IT people have to bring it to procedure. The reason being that if you want to execute something programmatically then you have to have it precisely defined, e.g. converted into a procedure. So perhaps BPMS should really stand for Business Procedure Management Systems. Indeed, my old friend John Pyke has frequently reminded people that for the most part BPMS still the same old work-flow systems that were created in the 80's dressed up as something different (we know that there are now some exceptions, but still the language is confusing)

In order to explain more fully my perspective I would first like to take a look at some dictionary definitions of the two words, they are defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as follows:

Process

(1) progress , advance

(2) something going on : proceeding

(3) a natural phenomenon marked by gradual changes that lead toward a particular result

(4) a continuing natural or biological activity or function

(5) a series of actions or operations conducing to an end ; especially : a continuous operation or treatment especially in manufacture

Procedure

(1) a particular way of accomplishing something or of acting

(2) a series of steps followed in a regular definite order <legal procedure> <a surgical procedure>

(3) a set of instructions for a computer that has a name by which it can be called into action

(4) a traditional or established way of doing things

As can be seen from these definitions they are clearly not the same thing. Process may be seen to refer to a series of actions, but it does not place a particular order on those actions. Procedure on the other hand is very much focused on steps, order and instruction. When we take these two definitions we can see that while a process may contain order, it does not require order to be a process. If we take away the order from procedure then we don't have a procedure, but we may still have a process.

Personally I quite like the idea that Process is very much talking about "What we do" as opposed to Procedure talking about "How we do it" - There are those who suggest that the what and how are actually synonyms, but in researching this article using sites like synonym.com and others I did not come up with any suggestion to support that suggestion.

So perhaps it is time to look at some examples of how the two may coexist but talk about different things. The first example I use is that of "Paying Phone Bill" (a process), you could list the actions you might need including the following;. Decide where to pay from, decide payment method, decide payment date - but these actions could be undertaken in any order as long as all were complete before you decided that the process was complete. Alternatively if we had our "Paying Phone Bill" (a procedure) we would have to take the following actions in order; log on to internet bank, select account to pay from, select payee, enter amount to transfer and then complete the transaction. These last tasks have to be undertaken in a specific order, either because a system dictates it or because to do it another way makes no sense. But we can certainly seeing in this case the process can be seen as a higher level of abstraction. We may even have two procedures "Paying Fixed Line" and "Paying Mobile Phone"

The second is another similar example, but this time illustrating it in a non-technical way. The example might be that of "Arranging a Party". Our process might include; Make a guest list, send out invites, Arrange for catering, Arrange for music, Wait for guests to arrive. Here we can see we need to send the invites after we have a guest list and that it is a good idea to have sent the invites and arranged food and entertainment before the guests arrive :-) but does it matter whether the invites are done before the catering, of the music before the invites? Not really, but our process still has all the actions (abbreviated here). So let's consider our procedure, or indeed just one of the procedures that might apply to this process, in this case the "Send Out Invites" here we find the following steps; Buy invitations, Write the invitations, Put it in an envelope, Address the envelope and then Post the envelope . With the exception of stuffing and addressing the envelope that could be switched, everything else has to have that definite order if we are to be successful.

My final example is a much larger one, but is real and taken from a well known manufacturer of sealable plastic containers - a world brand - the story was told to me many years ago, so it may not still be exactly true today, but, I hope you will agree that it illustrates quite well the distinction between the two. The company in the story is known throughout the world for its sealable plastic containers and it is Tupperware. Wherever you go in the world most of the products they make are available to you. Yet as you might imagine depending on your country the demand for a particular type of container will very immensely. However in order to maintain quality and their enviable reputation they always want to make sure that the same "Process" is used across the world for making their products. Now in Holland where demand is high for a container, this means ensuring that the right molding tool is loaded into a machine, that the machine is correctly fed the right type and quantity of plastic and obviously a hundred other things so as to enable a production run to take place. In order to do this they have a "Procedure" for carrying this out. Now switch to somewhere like a small country in South America, where the requirement is for only a handful of the same product and the "Procedure" does not work. Here they have person who will collect the mould from the store (not a machine mould but a hand mould), they mix the plastic to the right recipe and then fills the moulds by hand. Thus he executes the same Process but with a different Procedure. It may even be that within these two extremes the company may have many other "Procedures". The Procedures contain the tasks or work instructions with the order and detail as to how to perform them. The Process though is at a much higher level of granularity and is focused on the inputs, the outputs and any quality or control measures that are applicable. So as we have seen the same process can and should be undertaken differently according to the requirements.

To conclude, I still very much believe that we need to be more careful how we use the two terms. There are certainly benefits in reviewing and updating procedures to ensure that they constantly reflect how the work is actually taking place in an organization. But in documenting and improving procedures we are certainly not going to drive out the big wins that people are looking for from Business process Management. Conversely, by understanding and improving processes better we can ensure that our processes are lean and effective, thus delivering on the business benefits.

From a systems perspective, I suggest as ever, that we should first examine the process, drive out waste and improve effectiveness. Having done this we can examine the activities left in the process, document the procedures and then consider whether and how to automate them. At risk of touching a another thorny issue (BPMN) then this idea to me sits well, after all a procedure contains nothing more than a set of tasks and in the order and detail to carry them out, the very same thing that appears to be supported by the BPMN symbol set and notation.

Getting More From The Same

Last month I was invited to join a panel of speakers at the launch of a new report into productivity. The report by the Management Consultants Association and sponsored by Trinity Horne, makes very interesting reading. One of the facts that I found quite amazing was that only around 30% of organizations expected to increase productivity by 30% or more over the next 3 years, this seems a very small percentage in my opinion, especially when one asks the same question of others in different markets.

I am sure that it will be of no surprise to those of us who promote BPM as a management philosophy to find that 40% of respondents suggest a failure to engage and motivate employees as the main reason for a lack of productivity improvements. While another 20% are apparently satisfied with their current levels of productivity, I wonder whether given the current climate those companies still feel the same. Of course the rest of is I am sure would love to know who they are in order to go compete in that space.

Trinity Horne are a specialist consulting firm headquartered in Ireland with offices in the UK and India, they have a pretty innovative approach to helping firms improve the productivity of the staff and management. CEO Brendan Cahill working with a leading Business School has created a unique productivity index that compares the relative performance of leading organizations' around the globe.

You can get a copy of the report "Getting More From The Same" from the following link.

http://www.trinityhorne.com/press/Productivity%20Improvement%20Report.pdf

New Mapping & Modeling Tool Survey

What is really happening out there in the Business Process Mapping and Modelling market, are people actually buying and using tools? Are they using specialist tools or just the modeling front ends that come as part of their BPMS suite? Is the modeling market saturated with free tools? These are just some of the questions that I get asked as I travel around the world.

It is now quite a few years since a really comprehensive study of the mapping and modeling tool market has been undertaken. So I thought that as the year drew to a close it would be nice to do one. The aim of the survey is to look at what tools people are actually using and find out how they are being used. For me it will be fascinating to see how people differentiate BPM from BPMS or whether people actually understand the difference between mapping and modeling (initial indications suggest there is still much confusion around this) Hopefully this will help us all to get a picture of real world utilization, rather than just the usual marketing story. It will also be interesting to see how the real world usage compares to the Analysts perspectives of which tools are being used most widely. I would ask that as many people as possible take the time to complete the survey and indeed pass the link on to others. You can access the survey via the following link:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=5zzVg5I4HCC8bU7v4COqsw_3d_3d

Already the survey has been taken by a few hundred people and the data is making fascinating reading.

By way of a thank you/incentive then there are prizes on offer for those who complete the survey. There are two first prizes of an in-house 4 Day BPM Certification course (all expenses to be met by the client and a maximum of 15 delegates will be accommodated) and 10 runners up will receive a copy of "Thrive – How to Succeed in the Age of The Customer." In addition all those who participate will be entitled to a free copy of the report once it is complete.

Prize winners will be notified by the 10^th January 2009 and the report will be published by the end of January 2009.

In order to qualify for entry into the prize draw all questions will need to be answered properly.

Conferences Galore!

The conference circuit seems to be even busier this autumn than those that have gone before. With the major Gartner BPM event having taken place in the USA in September and events by IRM and Management Events in the UK. Personally I only attended the Project, Program and Process Challenge event in London in September (www.projchallenge.com) it was truly amazing to see the level of interest in process at this event, which I suggest may actually be the largest such event that takes place in the UK. Free to attend it has been consistently drawing in around 1,000 plus people per event (the event runs twice a year – spring in Birmingham and autumn in London). This year the process program, a series of free sessions delivered over two days drew in some pretty large audiences, the organizers tell me that there was an average of 60 plus attendees per session across the nine presentations given in the zone, providing great exposure for the speakers and vendors who were present.

This autumn's event saw an even greater emphasis on the people side of change and the soft issues surrounding process success, which as regular readers will know is music to my ears. So if you are looking at a great way to keep current and at the same time meet with a wide range of exhibitors then I strongly urge you to give the show a look. With no cost, other than your time and a speaker line up every bit as good as many of the paid conferences you can't help but win.

As I prepare to head out to Vienna next week for the 4^th Annual BPM in Telecoms event (http://www.jacobfleming.com/conferences/telecom/4th-annual-quality-and-bpm-in-telecom), I have to share with you that it was great to attend their earlier conference on HR this month. With so many of the issues of BPM success being centered around People and Communications, it was great to have had the opportunity to directly work with and communicate with one of the key groups in any real change management initiative. I just hope that in my interactions I helped them understand a little more of the key roles we need them to play in helping us transform our businesses using BPM.

Process Management in The Boardroom

The success of CEOs like Sam Walton (WalMart), Fred West (federal Express), Herb Kelleher (Southwest Airlines) and Jack Welch (GE) has been pretty amazing. They have delivered some outstanding results for their shareholders. Unlike many CEOs they have delivered this through customer understanding rather than pure financial and risk- based management approaches. The result is not only that costs are kept under control for enhanced productivity, but also that sales revenues have grown impressively above the norm.

In the current climate there is much focus on Process of Business Process and the how and why it is needed in order to improve and transform business. For the most part, however, the responsibility for doing the work and delivering the results has been delegated down the organization, or in some cases outsourced altogether.

There is no doubt that a well-managed process- centric company is more agile, more able to keep costs under control and to better understand the value of any investment it might make. But are such companies in a better position to deliver real growth? My contention is that, in the final analysis, revenue growth will deliver the ultimate long-term returns that investors seek, while also providing the security of employment that employees want. To merely utilize Business Process Management (BPM) in any form purely as a strategy for cost or risk reduction is to squander the real competitive advantages that it can bring.

It is also pertinent to ask at this stage if boards of directors really believe that, when outsourcing under the label BPO (Business Process Outsourcing), they are really outsourcing processes? A quick scan through the financial and business press will reveal many deals, but in reality these firms are just outsourcing departments or functions based on the traditional structure. Indeed, for many organizations outsourcing processes is probably impossible. Why? Because few organizations have actually mapped their business processes – and, if they don't know what or where the processes are in the organization, then how can they be outsourced?

On the other hand, if process-centric management enables greater agility and better financial control, then you can see the value in making use of techniques in this area. Presumably all can agree that revenue growth is key to long-term financial success. That is the truth emphasized by the customer-centricity of the CEOs mentioned above; each attributes much of his success to an intimate relationship with and understanding of customer needs.

Perhaps it seems that the combination of customers and process equates with increased revenue. Certainly these two factors have a major bearing, but studying successful organizations brings out another two factors as well - those of culture and organization itself. It appears that the equation for long-term success looks more like:

Customer Knowledge + Customer-Centric Processes + Culture of Service + Customer-Oriented Organization = Superior Profitable Revenue Growth

The business model looked at in this way shows that it is not a responsibility to be delegated or outsourced. This equation should be managed from and by the CEO and the board of directors.

Outsourcing of non-care activity has a valuable part to play in serving customers and investors efficiently; all customers want to know that they are getting products and services at the best possible price. But customers do not expect the responsibility for serving them to be outsourced.

Process Management can, of course, be delegated within an organization. Indeed, in some ways this leads to far better execution; the further down the organization you go the better people are able to address any inefficiency. But again customers expect management to take the ultimate responsibility for ensuring that all parts of the organization operate as single coordinated units. Process Management that uses the customer as key focus and customer-related metrics as the key measures tends to simplify organizations, leading to lower costs and better service. The customer benefit is clear, meaning that supplier and customer are more likely to continue to do business in the future (and with customers more likely to tell others about the supplier's virtues).

Customer knowledge is not about surveys and second-hand evidence; it is about meeting customers to understand their real problems and needs – and then using this knowledge to develop products and services. It is about creating an intimate relationship in which customers are truly valued.

Directors need to answer a question or two. You may be a top-tier member of numerous frequent flier and hotel guest programmes, but how valued do you really feel? When did you last meet with or talk to the executives of those companies? It is not enough to go spouting words and putting out gold loyalty cards. Customers appreciate suppliers that provide the most important commodity of all - someone's time and a listening ear that responds with action.

The CEOs mentioned at the start are each reported to spend upwards of 30% of their time meeting with and talking to customers. The rest of their customer input comes not from management, but from the front-line staff who deal with customers everyday; these staff are such a valuable source of information, but are usually treated as just some kind of blunt instrument.

A culture of service appears to be sadly lacking in the Western business world these days. There is so much focus on numbers that staff have forgotten how to serve. Yet companies like Tesco and Virgin stand out, not only for their financial success, but also because these results have come about through a deep-rooted culture of serving customers well. This trait is evident in many Asian companies. As a customer, how fast will you choose to move your spend to organizations that do understand service?

The culture of service also touches on the issue of delegation. While you can't delegate the overall responsibility for customers, you can at least empower staff to resolve customer issues at the point of impact, without the need to refer to management. You can ensure that staff work with processes that are designed to enable them to serve customers better. And you can change reward structures so that staff are better rewarded for serving customers than for hitting purely financial targets or other non-customer relevant KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).

A culture of service is also far easier to achieve if you take the time to change your organization chart from a functional hierarchy to one that is organized along process lines. This will enable your teams to support customers better.

The combination of these changes is what enabled those four celebrated CEOs - Sam, Fred, Herb and Jack - to grow more successful organizations than others in the same market. But these Americans are not alone, for as noted Virgin's Richard Branson and Tesco's Terry Leahy share many of these beliefs. The list could also feature leaders like Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google, Bill Gates of Microsoft, and Andy Grove of Intel – and there are several others. All are examples of what can be achieved if the responsibility for business and process management begins in the boardroom and is married to successful customer outcomes throughout the business.

Product Innovation Alive and Well (and Living in Scotland!)

For many years now I have watched UK Software industry seem to wither away. The software jobs being outsourced around the world or pulled back to "Head Office" locations. There has never been an issue of inventiveness, just one of funding and cost. So it was with great pleasure that last week I had the opportunity to meet with Graham Twaddle and some of his team at Corporate Modelling (www.corporatemodelling.com) in Glasgow.

As I thought about it, it struck me that in some ways perhaps Scotland is more the home of UK software development than "Silicon Valley" in the South of England. In the area of Business Process, we already have CRM/BPM vendor Graham Technology, and in the Simulation space Simul8 (www.simul8) and I am sure many others that I don't know of. To my family north of the border this would of course surprise no-one because of Scotland's long history of invention – Television, Telephone, The Steam Engine, Iron Bridge, The Kelvin Scale of Temperature being among the more significant, while of course Golf may be the most popular!

So to Corporate Modelling, I have to say that while the name was familiar, the company was not. I was put on to them by an old friend at Forrester, who suggested that I should talk to them. The first thing that surprised me was their pedigree. CEO/CTO Graham Twaddle has spent quite a number of years in the Business Process space and is credited as the driving force behind the success of Sherwood Internationals achievements in the process arena, especially within the insurance and finance sectors, he and his team have an amazing amount of experience in this area. In fact many of the people at Corporate Modelling were part of the core team that developed and supported the Amarta and LogicWare systems. Graham also co-authored a book, Business Process Implementation, way back in 1997 with Michael Jackson of Jackson Structured Programming fame.

So it is with a deep understanding on the insurance business and a track record in delivering solutions to that sector, which Corporate Modelling sets out to address the Business and Process needs of an organization. There offerings include a range of products, covering everything from the modeling, through to the implementation and monitoring, not just of business processes, but of rules and all the other associated parts of an organization that are needed to deliver successful monitoring and change programs.

The company, although in relative infancy, is already starting to build quite a reputation for delivering programs and systems that meet the needs of the 21^st century businesses.

Another area of interest for the company is grid computing and they are leading, along with Microsoft, the Financial Services Grid Initiative, which seems to offer some promising solutions to age old problems, you can learn more about this at www.fsgrid.com

With the number of vendors in the BPM space being high and the names fluctuating it would be easy to suggest that there may not be room for another, but given the background and pedigree of the team at Corporate Modelling it would be foolish to ignore them. Their strength comes not just from the technology, but also from their deep understanding of their target audience, not something that can be said of many of the vendors in the space.

Are You Really Doing BPM

In Europe as in the States, the conference market around Business Process Management (BPM) has been buzzing for a while. They can be great places to mix with "real people" and to hear what they are actually doing rather than what we the analysts and commentators suggest they are doing. The contrast between events can be quite startling. While the something like the GBPF event was a full blown conference with a mix of expert input and user case studies, the Gartner events have mainly analysts and, the IQPC Exchange was made up almost entirely user case studies, and focused on the financial sector.

What I found particularly interesting at the latter, was that over 80% of the audience claimed to be doing BPM, while less than 5% saw it as involving the executives. There can be no doubt that with over 20 highly interesting user case studies and presentations being made, serious work is obviously being undertaken. But, in my mind this begs the question "Are they really doing BPM?"

Listening to the presentations, many from some of Europe's leading financial institutions, it very quickly became apparent that companies who focus on Business Process can deliver some quite amazing bottom line business results. At the same time however it also became apparent that many of the projects undertaken were focused mainly on workflow and process automation. I guess in an industry that deals with low margins and high transaction costs that even the smallest saving multiplies the benefits to a point where the apparent savings are huge. But, again the question by simply focusing on the cheaper, faster better school of process are they really doing BPM?

It was the banks from South Africa and India that particularly impressed me. Companies from these Countries talked far more about BPM as an enabler. They saw BPM as a way for them to identity new and different ways of doing business, a way of creating white space between them and their competitors. It was this desire to seek new and innovative ways of doing business that both impressed and scared me. For, if we too cannot rise to that challenge then the chances are that we will increasingly lose market share to these more innovative companies. Of course, they too were also saving money through automation as well it was simply that they did not see it as the end goal.

As an aside I heard a great line from the Director of an Irish Bank "We did not set out to save costs or improve revenue, we set out to improve customer service. But as a result we wound up making far larger savings and drove revenues far higher than we might ever have expected." a great lesson in the value of focusing on the customer.

It is this focus on the customer that perhaps truly differentiates those doing real BPM work from those who are just focused on process mapping, documentation and automation. These are the companies who are really looking at themselves from the outside in and questioning everything they do and asking whether it really makes a difference in the eyes of the customer.

This external focus is one of the key points in BPM, others would include the fact that it is a management discipline and therefore needs to be supported by if not driven by the most senior levels of management within an organization. Additionally, if you are truly doing BPM then you must be looking across functions, not just carrying out incremental process improvements within them. Of course, incremental improvements are not to be belittled or ignored, they play a valuable part in consistent improvement, but neither should they be confused with true BPM.

I should point out that while these comments are aimed quite generally, some of the presenters were from companies who were achieving stunning results and had organized themselves in such a way that they were able to combine all of the various facets of process in such a way as to provide an extremely comprehensive toolkit. Again for example I can recollect a South African Bank who had created a specialist team whose role was to facilitate and mentor process teams, taking with them high level views of the business to put context around any given project. This team is also trained in techniques like Six Sigma and so is able to assist teams in creating measures, whilst also having the ability to encourage creative thinking in order to ensure that all solutions are considered, not just the obvious ones.

In summary, if you are working on process improvement or automation and delivering business benefit you are to be applauded, improvement is never a one shot process. If you are simply automating the existing processes without questioning them, then you may either be carrying unnecessary overhead or missing out on greater opportunities.

If the program you are working on does not create a culture of change within your organization then the chances are that you may find that people quickly slip into old habits and you can't retain the gains you make. People and culture are talked of as a cornerstone in process projects but very often get forgotten. I prefer to think of it as a three legged stool – the legs being made of People, Process and Systems – if only two are present (whichever two) then you don't have anything as it will simply collapse.

Lastly true BPM as we have said requires cross functional thinking and management, if you are not looking across your whole organization through the eyes of the customer, then the chances are that you are not really undertaking BPM. Of course in not doing so you are not alone, as we said at the beginning, the vast majority of projects being undertaken today under the guise of BPM are still nothing more than functionally based process optimization projects, and there lies the challenge – can history really judge whether BPM as a paradigm was successful or not when in reality we simply used the name and carried on doing what we always did?

Note: This article first appeared in June 2004 on Mark McGregor's "Postcard from Europe" Series of articles on BPTrends

BPMN and Executable Businesses: When Will We Learn

A quick look around the blogs and latest articles reveals a lot of discussion (again!) about BPMN and what it is and should be used for. We seem to have endless debates about why and how it is easy for business people vs. why it is not, now we are seeing increasing debate about whether it is the right notation/approach for Business Analysts – I think it is perhaps time for us to remember whose role is what in the organization and what they are supposed to be able to bring to the party, then we can consider what tools, notations etc. might be appropriate.

For the purpose of this post I want to draw the parallel with data modeling, a field that is well established and in which everybody has their part to play. At the lowest level we have our Database Administrator (DBA), they live in the land of "Physical Models" and know that they have to fine tune them, breaking some rules and adding others, so as to ensure that the "Database" performs at its optimal speed. So from a BPMS point of view we can see that there is a definite role for a BPM Administrator, someone who is very familiar with the engine and knows how to find tune the "Execution pr Physical Model" so that the system performs at its peak – For these people BPMN makes sense as a notation as it is very closely tied from the model/code/execute perspective. So I contend that BPMN is the right approach for these people.

Then stepping up a level we have our Data Analyst, these people live in the realm of "Logical Models", they take the inputs from Business and System Analysts and look at the business problems and system requirements from a data perspective and create the logical models from the conceptual models. They know that nobody would expect to implement an efficient database purely from their model and that it requires work and tuning in order to create the optimum physical model from the logical models they create, whether they use Chen, Bachman or UML for notation the Business or Systems Analysts don't really care, for that is the role and domain of the Data Analyst. Could BPMN be used in this area, yes it probably could and we could have BPMS Process Analysts to carry out this role. Again a specialist knowledge is required to ensure that the model is complete and consistent, helped of course by an appropriate modeling tool with model rules being enforced (A point worth noting is that for years many Data Analyst resisted using tools that forced rigor on them, with the result that hundreds and thousands of man hours were wasted building inconsistent models that could not be used to generate good physical models and databases).

Then we come up to our Systems Analysts, whose role was always to look at the business requirements and translate those that required systemizing into specifications that could be implemented, these are the people who also start to take into account hardware platforms, software applications and corporate standards for databases etc. It is their job to help to create and put together the systems that will solve the business problems at hand. As inputs they may well have the "Conceptual Data Model" among other things. But, we know that the conceptual model was just that a collection of "things" that the business saw as relevant data with lines that indicated there was some kind of relationship between them, though not what the relationship was. So we would indeed need a similar role for our BPMS world a BPMS Systems Analyst.

Then we come up to the Business Analyst, whose role is to help the business in identifying and solving business problems which may or may not require systems or systemization. If we really think that we should be turning them into low level implementers then take a look at the IIBA website (www.theiiba.org) and review their Body of Knowledge. I have just finished reviewing the soon to be released version 2.0 and you will see that our Business Analysts has more than enough on their plate already, they have to learn a vast array of skills in order to be effective at what they do, to my mind the last thing they need to be expected to learn is another low level notation, just because some IT people find it too hard to learn the language that the business speaks.

So if we want to have an effective debate about modeling and notations for Business Process I suggest that we talk with true Business Analysts to see what sort of simple "Conceptual" approach makes the most sense for them. Then we can look at what the best way of creating "Logical" models is for our systems analysts and finally we can allow our BPMS Administrators to play till their hearts are content with the BPMN notation that is created and designed for them and for whom it is ideally suited.

Another group of people who I have not yet mentioned are "Architects", a group who are popping up increasingly, either from an Application, Software or Enterprise perspective, but most of whom seem to exist under the wing of the CIO. The business belongs to the business, the Chief Enterprise Architect role is already occupied in business, it is the CEO and contrary to what one senior enterprise architect told me recently – he suggested that I am too old fashioned and that I should just get used to the fact that process would all be automated and businesses would just do without people, that the 21^st century business model was a) Enterprise Architecture b) Business Architecture (using OMG MDA) c) Business Process Models (Using BPMN) and D) Automated Processes; without involving people – an executable business – it is people who will use the systems, it is people who own and run businesses and it is people that systems in the main are supposed to support. So a little more time speaking with people to find out what their problems are will make live a whole lot easier for people to get budget and resource to build and implement systems. If this thinking makes me old fashioned then so be it, but if we truly believe that we are moving to a world of pure system executable businesses without human intervention then it is a sad day for the human race (and one that poses some even more interesting change management issues and barriers)

Of course these are just my opinions and I am sure that there are many who will disagree, but for those that chose to do so, please don't write to me about the origins and purpose of BPMN, I was at the original meeting where the idea was first muted by two people from two vendors in the UK over a beer in London many years ago. I understand exactly why BPMN as originally created – I also accept that it has come a long way since then.

Destination Dubai

Last week saw me attending the IIR BPM conference in Dubai. The event which took place 19th-20th May, was my first opportunity to actual stay in Dubai, usually I am just passing through on my way somewhere else. The agenda seemed impressive and I was very much looking forward to listening to what was happening in the BPM sector in the region, and of course sharing my own observations.

The range of speakers was quite exceptional, as was the number of speakers talking about taking a top down, leadership led approach. If these companies can truly stay the course, then we should be seeing some pretty amazing results over the next few years.

One interesting thing was that many of the speakers came from manufacturing organizations or government agencies, this is in stark contrast to most other conferences I have seen where Banking and Telecoms are the dominate stories, perhaps in an ideal world we could see something that balances and blends the two camps better.

Overview of the Conference Messages

Rather than simply trying to paraphrase all the presentations I thought it might be nice to take pieces from each of them and try stringing them together in such a way as to give those who attended some picks and those who didn't an easy story of what we learned. So I thank all those speakers who either donated "words" or sparked the thoughts for what follows.

Success begins at the top with a promise from the executives "To be the best for the good of tomorrow". Of course all of our tomorrows will be based on the customer and they only exist outside of our organization. Every process and every project we undertake needs to be able to flex and adapt so as to ensure that they are finely tuned to deliver excellence for the customer. By delivering on our promise of excellence to our customers we will find that our costs are kept lower and that are revenues will rise faster.

These things can only be achieved if we are willing and able to continually challenge the current business practices and models and very rules by which we operate, this constant challenging is required if we truly believe that we can and will be world class, not just telling people that we are world class.

These ideals when taken together require us to change our culture, to a culture of change! Although they are driven from the executive suite and reinforced by the actions of business leaders, it is at the management and operational level that we actually need to make the changes that will make the difference. This requires us to provide suitable training and then coach our teams in how they can consistently deliver success. Nobody suggests that the path is easy, it requires persistence and commitment, but building a track record of small quick wins can help us to build credibility. Not all of the benefits we deliver can be seen as hard or concrete benefits, many are of a more softer nature, but even these can and should be quantified as they are very often the most useful ones, especially we are to engineer for constant improvement, and will be in many ways critical to the long term survival of our organizations.

In order to increase our chances of success there are a number of key things that we need to remember. First and foremost it is fundamentally about the customer and becoming even more customer centric, without them we will have no business and it is the delivery of successful customer outcomes that is the ultimate measure of both our corporate and process success.

Skilled Communicators

In addition to the attitude and behavior changes more important might be our skills as and ability to train others as great communicators that will really define how good we can become as organizations.

The great thing about teaching people real communication is that by doing so we are equipping them with skills for the whole of life. Every day in every way we are communicating, we are even communicating when we don't communicate! So the more we understand about what we are doing and saying and how we affect the people around us then the better we will all be.

Something to remember is that one size definitely does not fit all when it comes to communications, food for thought it is frequently stated that only 7% of our message is delivered through the words we use, 38% is delivered according to our tones and tonality and a whopping 55% is delivered through our physiology. So if we are avoiding sitting down with people in either meetings or workshops, then we are giving up on 55% of communication and limiting ourselves to only getting at most 45% of what is possible. Even if these statistics were out, there is still a good chance that words alone word still command only a relatively small percentage. When deciding on the means and manner of communication it is worth remembering that the meaning of communication is the reaction we get.

Putting all this together we realize that it is our ability or inability to communicate that not only decides how successful we will be, but also how successful those around us can be, we could be holding them back instead of helping them forward. These comments on communication serve as a nice reminder that as managers we need to learn to be leaders and to fire up our teams, point them in the right direction and then get out of the way and let them get on with it.

Additional observations

Sometimes we have to remember that Human Interactions is about just that; interactions between human beings!

One amusing comment was over the use of the term BPR, it was suggested that if people kept talking about it then they were still living in the ark, in fact many presenters talked about it, looked pretty human and did not look like they came off an ark, so I decided to have some fun with the "R" in BPR and use the "R" to describe the stages of a BPM process so first we have Realisation – we have a problem, then we have Revelation – analysis reveals the current state and the problems then we have a choice either Redesign or Rengineer the process, before we implement and test the Results to ensure the desired effect then Record and Remind to monitor and constantly improve. The point being it is not about the letters BPR or BPM or BPA or any of them, it is what we mean by it and what we do about it that will dictate our likely success.

BPM Without Technology

To many the idea of Business process Management (BPM) without technology is considered heresy, after all most of the marketing dollars that are spent promoting BPM are spent by the software vendors themselves. It is however something that I believe in passionately, the mantra upon which my work is based is that "People performing processes produce profit" – I am sorry but I do not subscribe to the school of thought that suggests that IT is the business or that IT should be driving the business.

Unlike many who preach or teach in the area of BPM, I have held executive positions in the areas of sales, marketing and product development, as well as sitting in the CEO chair, and I can tell you that in every one of those roles it was people and process that made the difference. Sure, technology was helpful, but it was not the business. In every one of those roles I was interested in how technology could assist people or help with process, but I was never willing to accede the way my business was to run to a computer. Fundamentally I believe that as a business owner it is my business and therefore any technology should be seen as a supporting infrastructure, albeit one that might enable me to do things I had never previously thought possible or that could help me enter new markets and serve new types of customers.

It is worth reminding people that me "BPM is a management philosophy for doing business differently, for producing extraordinary results, through innovation and creativity, aimed at serving the customer better and empowering people – this may then be supported by appropriate technology.". So when I hear people discussing how to use technology to get rid of people, or talking of Human Interaction Management (HIM) when they actually mean Human to Computer System Interaction, it actually makes my blood boil – who are these technologists to tell me how to run my business or to twist every business concept into an IT one?

One only has to look at organizations such as FedEx, SouthWest Airlines, General Electric and Wal-Mart to see that the very essence of their success has come through people and process, sure technology has helped, but it was not the essence. So when considering BPM, why focus on the detail of technology, when instead you can focus on the essence. In doing so you can create increased value for the business, ensure your customers are happier, and that staff morale is boosted – all of which seem, to my mind, to be the things that executives really do care about. Then when these things are taken care of, you can see what technology can do to help support the processes and people and make them even better.

So how to actually realize some of these benefits using BPM without technology. The approach used in my classes makes use of good old fashioned brown paper and post it notes, the approach that is taught is how to run a two or three day workshop where the users of the process map it for themselves and then analyze the process and present the actions they would like to carry out to improve the process. The role of the process or business analyst is merely that of a facilitator. When using these techniques with technology people you can imagine the resistance one gets from them. But for the most part they all list two particular obstacles they find in their daily work a) that they find people resistant to change and b) that people won't do as they are told. Funny that those same people who raise this also agree that they don't like being told what to do and they are resisting the very change we are working with J So the smart ones have an aha moment when they realize that if they don't like it then they can't expect others too.

It is an approach I have been using and teaching for some time now, but it was only last year after conversations with my good friend Dick Hilbert that I came to understand that the approach is very similar to the GE Work-Out approach. Something which Dick tells me is probably responsible for more savings and improvements at GE than any of the other fashion approaches which we all come to talk about when discussing GE, e.g. Six Sigma. Dick suggests that is the simplicity of having people at the sharp end focus on eliminating waste in a process that allows those doing things like Six Sigma to really hold on to the gains.

Indeed from my own perspective I have seen clients saving millions of pounds as a result of running these three day workshops, and they are just so easy to do. The benefits are nicely summed up by perhaps one of the techiest in the world, Bill Gates, when he said "a lousy process will consume 10 times as much work as the work itself." - So why wouldn't one want to make sure that the process was effective and remove waste before one even considers technology? Especially when the process itself leverages one of our key assets, our people.

So back to my original premise, if Business Process management is all about Managing our Business better and if we believe that processes are the key to how we actually do what we do, then technology is not a pre-requisite. It is merely a supporting act. Yes, we can document processes with it, best done after the initial improvement, it is far cheaper to capture what you will be doing than what you were doing. Yes, we can automate the process, but again let's automate the value, not the waste and finally the workshop approach links purpose, strategy, people and processes together to produce a more effective system – as opposed to focusing down at too lower level of detail.

I am certain that if more people approached the problem this way then they would find it much easier to engage with and become the credible partners for change of the business owners themselves.

Customer Age Thinking – Changing the face of Public Service

In many countries, the phrase public service is considered something of an anachronism. At all levels of government and government led services, customers perceive that overall they get a raw deal when compared to the levels of service they now regularly expect from privately held organizations. In this article we will explore how Customer Age thinking and the concepts of Successful Customer Outcomes and Next Practice are helping to change that perception and lead to increased efficiency in public services around the globe.

With regard to the issues of local, regional, or national government we firstly need to remember that in a democracy government is of the people, by the people, with the will of the people. As governments increasingly raise taxes and start to play a more active role in the everyday lives of people there is a real risk that if they do not focus on their "customer" and what the customer wants, that they might lose that will. So for government departments at all levels there needs to be very clear on who the customer is and what they want. In this they are no different from a private enterprise, customers do not care about your internal bureaucracy or your policies and procedures, they do care about being able to access your services in an efficient manner and know that they are being cared for.

Nobody is suggesting for one moment that you can please everybody. But if those that you are not pleasing are displeased through poor service or overly complicated procedures and policies then they have in most cases good cause to complain. Indeed, employees in the public sector would do well to remember that it is their tax money that is being potentially wasted too!

Many people might feel that government and public sector is "different" and that the same rules cannot apply. To a small extent this may be right, but in the majority of cases fresh thinking can still lead to increased service and efficiency.

Take the case of a police force. While recently working with a regional police department the point was raised, that they are a very different business, and unlike anything in the private sector. This is typical of the inside out thinking that tends to occur in public service. It we look at it from the outside in, the police force could be considered rather like an insurance company. The parallel is quite a simple one. With insurance we pay a monthly or annual premium to a company on the promise that if something goes wrong we can contact them and they will sort it out – cars, home, or life. So in the case of the police we pay taxes each month (our premium) so that if something goes wrong we can contact them and they will send someone to help us – surely this is just the same, from the customer point of view, as the insurance scenario? The same also of course can be said of the fire and ambulance services. Why then can such services not look at what insurance companies are doing in order to improve service and responsiveness?

As a side issue in another discussion with a different police service the issue of customer became apparent in a different way. In this force they felt that the way they had been organized was to ensure that they provided the best service to their customer, it was just that in their case they saw the criminal as the customer, not the victim! So when identifying your customer you do need to be clear on your purpose in order that you are serving the right customers.

The example of the emergency services given here is a good example of how "Next Practice" can be applied in the public service and how in looking for new and innovative ways to improve service and increase efficiency the public sector can benefit from looking at how the very best people are handling that situation, regardless of geography or industry sector.

India’s TATA: Effective BPM and True "Next Practice" in Action

Regular readers, training course and conference delegates who know me, know that I work with a much wider definition of BPM than many. They know that for me BPM is interpreted as Business Process Management and the definition I work with is as follows:-

"Business Process Management (BPM) is first and foremost a management discipline. It is about helping to deliver extraordinary results, through Innovation. This is achieved by being creative while focusing on successful customer outcomes, and communicating your strategy honestly to your staff and customers. This approach can be well Supported by new BPMS type technology, where appropriate."

To this end I am always on the lookout for great stories about companies who have made changes that have resulted in massive disruptions' in their marketplace. Of course such major disruption usually only occurs when organizations break the fundamental rules of their industry and rearrange the way they work, resulting in completely new business models.

To my mind one of the best and worst examples of this is the Ford Motor company. When in 1908 Henry Ford started shipping the Model T he forever changed the automobile landscape, or did he? Henry made it clear that his objective "I will build a motorcar for the great multitude." Meant that things had to change, it was never going to be possible to build and sell a car for the masses based on the old way of producing cars, he had to create new ways of building cars. More to the point he had worked out who his customers were, what they wanted and how much they might be willing to spend, he then set out to achieve that, while at the same time making money. When the final Model T rolled off the production line in 1927 over 10 million vehicles had been built and sold. To give an idea of just how disruptive the Ford approach was, in 1914, 13,000 workers at Ford made 260,720 cars. By comparison, in the rest of the industry, it took 66,350 workers to make 286,770!

However, just as this thinking led to the rise of the Ford Motor company, then surely it could also see the demise of the company. Even in Henry's lifetime and under his leadership the company has struggled to deal with change, fundamentally it has forgotten what the "secret sauce" was that built them up from nowhere. Of course Ford are not alone, most western car companies to the best of my knowledge are still building cars the same way as Ford did in 1908, so 100 years later we are still producing cars for the masses of 1908! Sure the Japanese and the Koreans have shown us how we can do the "faster, cheaper, better" dance, but in essence the formula for success seems to have been lost, until now!

It is my belief that just as the Model T Ford had a radical impact on the way cars were built and priced in 1908, the TATA Motors with the introduction of the "Nano" on 2008, could well have the same profound effect. Ratan Tata, chairman said at the launch "I hope this changes the way people travel in rural India. We are a country of a billion and most are denied connectivity. This is a car that is affordable and provides all-weather transport for the family." – Gosh, the idea of looking at mass market denied the opportunity of having cars because of the restrictive costs associated with the current offerings; I bet Henry Ford is smiling in his grave. It does not matter what the critics say the fact is that nobody else in the world is able to sell a car for 100,000 rupees (£1,300) and make a profit. But, I wonder how long it is before others have their own offerings.

The impact will eventually I am sure be felt all over the world, due you think that Bosch who developed a completely new low cost fuel injection system for this car won't be looking to use that same technology when selling against their competitors to other manufacturers?

Could we yet see £10,000 Land Rovers or £15,000 Jaguars? (For those that have not noticed, despite the protestations of some US dealers apparently concerned that brand would be devalued, it is looking increasingly likely that TATA will complete the acquisition of these two British marques in the near future).

As an aside TATA are not the only Indian car company to be making big inroads, while the Land Rover dealers were busy complaining to Ford about an Indian owner, elsewhere in the USA Mahindra Mahindra were finding that a whole new dealer network was willing to invest millions in setting the company up in the USA, if my understanding is right they already presold the 500,000 vehicles they were looking to sell into the US market – Just another example of consumers voting as they know best – with their wallets!

There is no doubt in my mind that this is an example of true BPM success, of course we will have to wait and see whether TATA will remember to keep using the special sauce and avoid going the same way as their friends in Detroit.

P.S. TATA If you are reading this then I would love to test drive one on my next trip to India :-)

The Three M’s of BPM

It used to be quite simple, we used to have and do BPM right? Then of course we learned that we did not do BPM but instead BPM, now owe are being told that it is not BPM or indeed BPM that we need to worry about but instead BPM – confused? Well I certainly am!

So let's rewind a little bit, in the beginning BPM was used as the acronym to refer to Business Process Modeling, then software vendors decided to change the landscape, those without modeling capability but wanting to muscle in on the Business Process act decided that they would offer and market Business Process Management solutions as a way to sell their execution approach to the market whilst still being able to claim they were involved with BPM.

Now we see that another class of vendor who feel threatened by the mind share that these execution companies are garnering feel that it is time to change the game again! They have decided that they to want to play in the BPM space but have neither the modeling capability of the initial players nor the agile execution engines of the second tier – so their answer, simple! Just persuade the world that what they need is Business Performance Management, thus meaning that they can differentiate their offering but still ride on the mind share for BPM built by the previous two groups.

The end result of all this, total and utter confusion! How on earth can three so different solutions, each to different problems, all claim to be BPM solutions? All that can be achieved is confusion in the marketplace and in the end a lack of credibility for the BPM acronym. For vendors in the latest group this serves their purpose well. They are nearly all very large players with a very definite agenda, to strangle at birth any potential threats to their monopolistic positioning and to ensure they can continue their cozy long term relationships with their customers.

If we step back a little and look at the propositions we can see that there are of course merits in all of the approaches and solutions, it is merely that they address different issues or problems faced by the modern organization.

Firstly, BPM as in modeling, you can't manage what you can't measure and you can't measure what you can't see. So it makes sense that before doing anything else you need to capture the information on what processes you perform, how they are carried out and who performs them. Such knowledge is crucial if you want to manage or measure around process, furthermore it is critical if you want to make changes, or assess the impact of change. Due to the complexity of modern organizations this involves more than just sketching out a few pictures in a drawing tool. It requires powerful modeling capabilities with cross linking of people, process, data, locations and resources. It is exactly for this type of understanding and analysis that Business Process Modeling as a paradigm was born.

Secondly, BPM as in Management, in the second wave of BPM the emphasis was on delivering the ability to simply manage their business by enabling business people to "re-route" or alter processes "on the fly" thereby creating highly flexible organizations that could move into new markets or reorganize by simply pushing a few buttons. These second wave vendors in the main suggested that the modeling of the first wave was over complicated and unnecessary and instead provide simplistic process visualization techniques. Now such vendors have "grown up" and realized that having nothing more than visual representation of software processes is not enough and many are starting to either provide more powerful modeling capabilities or partnering with vendors from the first wave to provide more complete solutions.

All is far from perfect in this world of course as the second wave vendors are still in the main trying to find ways of implementing software systems rather than actually enabling you to address both the automatable and the non-automatable aspects of your organization. They also still do not assist in helping you deal with the people or cultural aspects of change which form a major part of any initiative to manage your business around processes.

Thirdly, BPM as in Performance, yes in the third wave we leave the "M" for management and instead change the "P" from Process to performance. Why? Well, a quick look at the vendors espousing the technique shows they are more into package solutions and business intelligence than process, so it makes sense for them. Putting this to one side what they are really suggesting is the third "M" is key, Measurement. From that perspective some of what they say makes sense, if we have modeled our business processes and have decided that we wish to manage our organization by use of them, then, of course we need to be able to define performance metrics and then manage our performance against them.

So in the end the concept of Model, Measure and Manage makes perfect sense. The problem lies with multiple vendors with multiple solutions all trying to market and sell under the single banner of BPM. Of course a cynic might argue that what they are all doing is recognizing that Business Process Management is the right way for companies to organize and run themselves and that each of their offerings provide an incomplete solution to the problem. For it is certain that if a client could purchase a solution that enabled them to capture and model all aspects of their enterprise define metrics and have those populated and updated in real time, whilst enabling them to run simulations of change before implementing them either by people or where applicable by automation and could then view a digital dashboard that allowed them to monitor the key aspects of their company, whilst communicating all this with their staff, they would buy one! But for now at least, in order to get such a solution they will need to assemble a number of tools from different vendors, each of whom is likely to make exaggerated claims over the level of functionality they provide in their non-core area.

Note: This article first appeared on Mark McGregor's series of articles on BPMG.org

Bumper End for BPM in 2007 – Personally Speaking

Well thanks to many of you reading this, 2007 has been a truly memorable year for me in the BPM arena. I said when the year started that I hoped to visit as many countries as possible with my 2007 mantra “Think Differently!” – Well, with your help I managed Austria, Belgium, Dubai, Holland, Sudan, South Africa, India, USA, Portugal, and of course England and Scotland. If I have missed one or two then please accept my apologies.

Special consideration has to go to India, where I have in fact spent almost 8 weeks in the last 5 months. As many of you are aware, India is a give and take relationship, where I learn as much as I teach. Over the past months I have made so many friends in the academic worlds and in the spiritual worlds too, but lately I have also been privileged to spend time with CEO’s of a couple of leading India companies. So if you are among the over 1,200 people in India that I have been able to spend time with in sessions, conferences, seminars or training classes – thank you – for you have given me back every bit as much and I hope to be able to put these learning’s to good use around the world in 2008.

For those outside of India, then trust me, the lessons I have learned are invaluable in helping us to better understand and apply change in our organizations – I am assuming of course that those undertaking BPM or SOA are in actual fact trying to effect some change? And that the purpose behind such change is to deliver increased business performance? And that in doing so the biggest obstacle is usually that surrounding the issue of people changing? - - I only ask because sometimes in our technology centric world I think we forget what the purpose is!

In 2008 I will be making use of all the learning that UI have done and all the experiences that these CEO’s have shared in order to help others achieve even greater success. Sure we will be using process as the vehicle, but as recent attendees have discovered there are many ways to make ourselves more effective and process maps is just one excuse to enable us to really transform the lives of the people in the process and to convert even the most cynical of business users to the idea that we really can help.

So I will finish by wishing you all the very best for the Christmas season and hope that you and your families have a peaceful, happy and prosperous New Year. I look forward to having the chance to work with even more of you in 2008 when the theme for the year will be “Act Differently!”

P.S. You can catch me at the ABPMP Chapter meeting in Tampa on the 9^th January www.abpmptpa.camp7.org or the at the BEA BPM and Collaboration Briefing on the 17^th January in London

Updated 8 Omega Framework

It is now over two years since we released the original 8 Omega Framework. During that time it has been adopted and adapted by literally hundreds of organizations around the globe. Despite the demise of the BPMG, interest in using the framework remains high and a couple of initiatives are underway to keep support for the framework moving. In the first instance I , along with David Lyneham-Brown have been reviewing the materials and will soon be releasing refreshed information concerning how best to utilize the framework in your organization. The results of these efforts should be available soon (drop me an email if you want to see what we are up to).

The second thing is that based on additional thoughts and further learnings in the area of both business and personal transformation a new version of the framework itself has been released, a simple graphic of which is reproduced here. (If you are using the framework in your organization and would like a higher resolution version let me know).

The more observant among you will notice that there is now a new element, Purpose, this is so as to enable us to be sure of what it is we are about and allow us to look at strategy in the context of achieving and maintaining our purpose. All too often great strategies seem to fail, but only because they no longer serve or suit our purpose. Together these five elements provide a compressive view of what is required to enable transformation to take place.

On the verticals we have made a couple of other changes, we have decided to remove the Integration phase, as this is really covered in a combination of Implementation and Control phases. More importantly we have added a new penultimate phase, Management; this is because we felt that the old framework did not fully address the needs for the ongoing management of the business. Now improvement "projects" effectively finish at the Control stage with the use of effective project controls being used to measure the effectiveness of the project, while moving toward more appropriate management controls for use on an ongoing basis. The last piece of the project, other than reporting back, is ensuring that project controls that are not needed on a day by day basis are removed.

The new framework is being used in training classes now and additional information will be made available over the next couple of months.

Understanding the Business Process Overload!

I am really not sure how many of you are as sad as I am in terms of following Business Process related news as it happens, but true to say there is not a day that goes by without my searching out the latest news and announcements on the subject.

Most writers and Analysts talk of their being over 200 players in the BPM space and 15 to 20 in the BPA sector. Now we are going to have to start rewriting those numbers. In this article I first look at the BPA (Business Process Analysis) market and then the BPM market specifically.

In addition to announcements of new releases from Telelogic, Proforma, and MEGA, just last week Sybase with its PowerDesigner toolkit announced it was joining in the Business Process Modeling space, meaning that players such as Oracle and Rational can't be far behind – in fact over the next 3 months don't be surprised to see modeling tools in all other sectors (Data, UML, Enterprise, Drawing etc) joining the fray.

Now we all know that multiple companies in the same space is good, it provides choice to the user and helps to create a market. The downside however is that when every tool on the market starts to claim that it is the best tool for Business Process Modeling, users actually face more confusion. Especially, when many of those tools are quite obviously better suited to some things than others.

This is where I anticipate a major problem and probably some market polarization occurring. You see many of those tools are probably well suited to describing Business Processes from a highly technical perspective, as required to implement a software system, they are probably easy to use from an IT or technical perspective and they will certainly be of value to some organizations.

On the other hand their potential users out there who are genuinely looking to undertake some type o corporate change project. They want to focus more on linking things like Vision and Mission with Strategy and Value Chains, people for whom descriptions of their business processes and an analysis of these is going to create more than enough return to justify the costs involved.

These people will be more interested in the Organizational and Functional aspects of change than with systems. Typically they will be business users who don't want to be reliant on IT people and who do not wish to become systems experts to use a tool.

For this latter group of people this headlong rush into BPA by vendors is at best going to cause confusion and at worst is going to cause them to throw their hands up in horror and decide that Business Process is not the way for them.

I think the upshot of this will be that within the next 3 to 6 months we can expect to see some further fragmentation of the BPA tools market as vendors of "purer" Business Process Modeling tools seek to distance themselves from the "newcomers" – only time will tell if they can be successful or whether BP will simply be absorbed into the technical market – if they fail then I suggest that we might all be wise to invest our money in stocks – stocks of companies making whiteboards and markers! As we can be sure that the business users of business tools will not be suckered into going the technical route, instead I predict that they will seek to find alternative (and dare I say proven) methods for achieving their goals.

So you have captured, understood, optimized or designed your shiny Business Processes and now you want to use BPM – or do you? There was a time when I thought I understood what BPM was, then I realized that I didn't and so studied again to learn that it was not what I thought it was but something completely different, but still I just about worked it out. Now I realize that I was wrong twice – confused? Well I certainly am!

You see it appears that what I thought was all about a principle (e.g. managing your business based around process rather than function) turns out to have been all about technology all along. It would appear that BPM is really an acronym for Business Process Management Systems, a technology designed to provide executives and managers with an approach to change their business on the fly, to be able to monitor processes in real time and take actions to correct or change directions – although futuristic and not to be used by everyone today the vision and with any other vision has merit and seems to be built on the premise that if we want to run and manage our companies around process the we need a different kind of IT infrastructure to support us. All harmless enough and seems to make some sense.

But then we here that BPM is actually nothing more than the next incarnation of Workflow, but with features and technology to make it more easily accessible to the business user (I hope my CEO is not reading this - I dread the day when he draws a process, pushes the button and suddenly the 200 of us in the company find the way we work has changed overnight! maybe even several times a week!).

Now we are hearing that actually all those package systems we have been buying – ERP such as SAP, Oracle or Baan – or CRM systems such as Siebel – are actually all BPM systems – Funny, I thought they were just large and expensive software packages with tightly embedded software processes that were difficult to change and that dictated we had to change or business to fit the software!

Elsewhere on the BPMG website you will find many articles by people far more able than I, that provide detailed technical breakdowns and product type comparisons, so it is not for me to add my own definitions to theirs. My only purpose is to highlight the fact that it is a minefield out there! And that you should look carefully at the business problems you are trying to address before considering which sector of the Business Workflow ERP CRM Process Management might actually be right for your need never mind which of the vendors you would like to evaluate.

So perhaps you think I am overdoing it? Well I did not even mention the fact that most Portal vendors, Document Management vendors and Content Management vendors along with many others all now appear to be trying to convince us that they do are BPM players too! Perhaps in the end we will wind up accepting that BP should be pervasive and that it actually becomes a feature checkbox on all other products – at least then we can decide whether we want to address Content, Document, Portal, ERP, CRM or Workflow issues, without having to sort through a single toy box like some kind of lucky dip.

Note: This article first appeared on Mark McGregor's series of articles on BPMG.org

India Week – The Problem With Managers and Management

I am sorry to tell you that while a quick look at the CEO's of leading companies inside and outside of India will show just how many Indians are highly successful; it does not tell the full story. There is another side to Indian management which is a lot less positive and may even prevent India from growing as she should.

As with anything in life there are many different levels of truth and while what I am about to share may be one of them, because it is anecdotal and based on my limited research it is certainly not an absolute truth. I know there will be many counter arguments to what I am about to say, but if my reading causes just one person to think or act differently then I will feel the rewards will have been worth it.

Firstly, Indian Managers and Leaders need to put a little more effort into continuous learning, the world has changed a lot since they were in University and whilst the internet can be a useful source of information and seminars can provide ideas they are only one source. I was amazed to find by a simple show of hands poll at my seminars across 5 cities in India, that of the three books on Indian success and management that I had read in the previous week, not one person had read them all and one book by no one, one book by around 6 people and one book by 10 people. ( my sample size was around 400). I was also very surprised that for an audience concerned with BPM and Business Improvement that almost no one had read a recent copy of a particular magazine that detailed India as she was now, as she was 60 years ago and as she hopes to be in 10 years time – from a business perspective.

Now I am not suggesting that the people in the rooms were not actively continuing to learn new skills and keep their technical skills up to date. Merely suggesting that perhaps the learning is too narrow and also that there are many lessons to be learned in India about doing better business in India.

So I guess some of the most interesting questions would be around what did I discover? Well I discovered that like managers and executives around the world Indian CEO's say one thing and do another! E.g. in Outlook Business Magazine they asked a number of CEO's what the top 10 things that would prevent them achieving the dream of 2017, number two on the list of potential issues was "The availability of sufficient properly trained and motivated staff". Now, in simple terms if this was really an issue then we would be able to find numerous initiatives underway to mitigate this risk right? Wrong! Again in my simple surveys the announcement of this raised more than a little laughter (another good gauge of reality), and suggested that most companies would only conduct limited training and even then would focus more on price and technical relevance than on quality or value to the organisation and not consider training that broadened the knowledge of the employee. It appears that the worst in this regard in this respect are the Indian IT services companies who appear to see training as an overhead as they chase each other down to the bottom of the pile on price with their customers (but perhaps this a subject for another day).

This training example highlights another trait which became apparent in my reading and in talking with people, Indian managers seem to have higher rates of "denial" than might be seen elsewhere in the world. By this I mean if a company has a slogan like "we are the best multi global provider of widgets at the lowest cost and highest quality" they actually believe it and so tend not to see that they need to fix of change anything, therefore could have a tendency to act with the Ostrich syndrome. The Americans have a saying which Indian managers might like to remember as it may help them on this one "Never believe your own marketing bull***" – of course you have to put up a positive front to the world, but on the inside you have to have a firm grasp on reality and deal with where you are not where you say you are.

My last two observations come from a book called the "Indian CEO". I am still reading this and so there may yet be more insight, the book compares the attitudes and behaviours of Indian CEO's of companies inside India with those of Indian CEO's of companies outside India. Outside of India they have found that in business terms the CEO's are great chess players, making good use of the available talent pool and management at their disposal, like a good general they make use of all of their assets. This contrasts with those inside India who appear more likely to play draughts with their chess pieces e.g. they see everyone else as pawns rather than understand and make use of their strengths.

This tendency may be linked to their second find, which is that Inside India the CEO's appear to have a much lower Emotional Quotient (EQ) and will often talk of "their people" rather than individuals my name, they will also know and understand less about their people, which of course means they can neither use their strengths, nor expect them to be highly motivated as individuals.

Although the books and articles talk about the CEO's we can, I think, reasonably extrapolate that if this behaviour is exhibited by the top management, then it is likely to result in similar behaviours percolating down the organisation. It would also explain why it may prove difficult to get buy in for BPM and other change initiatives within those organisations.

In closing I want to make it very clear that the comments here are not meant as a criticism of Indian Management – hey many of them are better educated and more successful than me!, but to act as a bit of a thought jog, after all these are behaviours and attitudes that can be easily refined and changed if required – provide one is aware of them.

I may be wrong, but I think that more companies would do well to look at the success of Pantaloon the Indian retailer, form what I see and read this much maligned and press abused company appears to already be one jump ahead in actually implementing policies that ensure these traps are avoided. In this I speak as a customer as well as an observer.

Thoughts for the day

1. How will you take the time to stop talking about people and learn about individuals?
   
2. Are you walking the walk or just talking the talk.
   
3. If growing people is the number two obstacle for CEO's then what are you spending to invest in people ?
   

India Week – IT Service Companies Chasing Each Other to the Bottom of the Pile

Of all the articles published this week, this is bound to be the one that causes the most controversy and I am going to make no apologies for that. Sometimes even when we don't want to see or hear it we must. One of my former bosses once described me as a "suppository" - one of things that you don't want to take, gut you know it will actually be good for you! So here goes.

From what I have seen both inside and outside India SWITCH as it has been given to me (Satyam, Wipro, Infosys, TCS, Cognizant and HCL), seem along with the other such companies that we will now consider members of SWITCH, appear to be still chasing each other to the bottom of the pile in terms of price cutting. After all much of the Indian IT sector has been predicated on cost. But although cost was the driver 5 or 10 years ago I am not so sure it is now. Even if it was then surely the work that India had done will simply move on to China? In today's world surely value and customer experience are more important? In which case why are we not seeing more of them competing based on these tenets?

The above is one of the reasons that I believe they would do well to consider undertaking some serious BPM thinking for themselves. In some cases it may already be too difficult, the sheer size of the employee base is causing them to act like an oil supertanker. But then, this should be no surprise, as generals through the ages have learned you have to break your forces down into smaller units with good leaders in order to remain agile and flexible, to try and run based on control and policies will not enable that flexibility. Oops, surely not having to deal with the thorny issue of actual organisational change!

Of course most of the SWITCH players will tell you that they have a strategy to move of the value chain, providing more added value services and business consulting services – which I happen to think is the right place for them to go, but for the most part they appear to be trying to get there with the same management approach as a bodyshop contractor – which is not going to work. The salary structure, motivational needs, training and investment needs for running a truly successful consulting practice are different, if you want o succeed then you need to break free from the existing model – remember retain values and rewrite the rules – it applies to us as well as them.

Of those that are doing better there is another question, are they really doing business consulting? From what I hear when they do they are still only looking at the business front end of an IT project with the aim of shipping the IT implementation work back to base. (Please don't write to me with the exceptions, I know there are some out there – we can't have rules if we don't have exceptionsJ)

Some SWITCH players have clearly stated that they are not interested in solving business problems, merely wanting to solve IT problems. On one level this is fine and admirable, on another level why would I want to buy from someone who does not know what business problem I have and can't elaborate how they can help solve it for me?

Clients increasingly want to buy solutions to problems; they don't want to have to separate the pieces and to deal with the politics of multiple suppliers. We either have to grow up and recognise this or forever be a sub-contractor for someone else.

All of the thoughts contained here are my own, but I can tell you that they are based on literally hundreds of interactions with staff in SWITCH at many different levels of the organisation over a period of more than two years. The examples may not happen every day, but they don't have to happen that often to have a serious negative impact.

This point is bound to raise some controversy, but in my interactions with SWITCH over the past few months I have not yet heard many example of how they used or are doing BPM to improve their own business. Which is a shame, because from my perspective they just might find that BPM offers them their best chance for long term survival? because we as they know that price won't. So the question to SWITCH is this – if you don't believe or practice BPM to help your organisation, then why should I believe that you can do it for mine?

SWITCH as a group has phenomenal intellectual power available to them, it is going to be fascinating to see whether they actually unleash that talent on the market, for now, to me it seems that are still content to hold that talent on a short leash and in some cases that leash is actually causing people to stop believing in both their companies and themselves – definitely a sad state of affairs.

My final thought is aimed at only one or two you and you will know who you are. If you want to survive and to continue to prosper then perhaps a quick look at the ethics of the way you conduct some parts of your business might be in order, honesty and integrity are pretty vital traits for the long term success of any business. Unfortunately I have had firsthand experience of the negative side of this and the excuse that we are a large company is simply not good enough. Just think how many people might tell the other side of the story to other people and what effect that could have on business in the long term.

Thoughts for the Day

1. Are you still focussed on the lowest price in a value based world?
   
2. Are you making best use of the talent you have?
   
3. If you won't do BPM in your organisation, then why should I let you do it in mine?
   

India Week – Indian Hospitality at its Worst and Best

As you might imagine, visiting 5 cities in 10 during days in India means a lot of travel and a lot of hotels! But it also means you get to meet and interact with a lot of people.

Such travel also provides great insight into the area of Indian hospitality and the Indian travel and hospitality market sectors. In case you are wondering, there is absolutely no relationship between the two and any experiences you have had of the latter will certainly give you a wrong impression of the former

To start with I want to use my regular example of hotels to illustrate a contrast in styles and management thinking. The hotels we will use are the TAJ President in Mumbai and the Rain Tree Hotel in Chennai, because I am very fortunate, these are both 5 star hotels that I have used during this trip. As we will see, one of them is actually more like a 3 star hotel, just at a 5 star price.

The difference between the customer experiences at these two hotels was truly remarkable. In the TAJ I received phenomenal service, far above what anyone might have had the right to expect. The staff went out of their way to provide help and support not just in matters of food and lodging, but also in acquiring phone SIM cards and photocopying – all of which was organised with no fuss and a warm smile and the added convenience of putting it all on my room bill – I did not even need to step out of the hotel, they did it all for me and without charging a mark up on the goods or services. When I did want to leave the hotel on a shopping trip everything was organised for me and this led to a totally relaxing and pleasurable experience.

It was very apparent that the only Business Processes that mattered to them were the ones that delivered on serving the customer better – I might also add that within checking in all the staff were addressing me by name – now imagine how good that would feel.

From time to time in my travels when encountering good or bad service I invite managers from the organisations I interact with to send a couple of their staff along to the seminars I am running, free of charge by way of either a thank you or a wakeup call and a way of helping them improve (far more effective I think than filling those never ending guest comment cards you get in India). The TAJ President, becomes the first hotel in the world to actually take me up on that offer and for the whole of my seminar in Mumbai had two of their people attending, their desire to learn how even if they are good they can get better. This is truly the attitude of a successful organisation and inspired management. (Of course it also means that the other attendees can be sure that the catering service will be top notch J )

Unfortunately such kind actions, deeds and words cannot be used to describe the Rain Tree hotel in Chennai, where the service was nothing short of diabolical, everything was a real effort and even getting a cup of coffee or a good night's sleep seemed a challenge. I even took the time out to chat with one of the senior managers and this still had no noticeable effect on the quality of service – amazing.

As I sat down and reflected on how it could be so different I came to a realisation that the difference could be summed up in just one word – Fear! The staff at the Rain Tree serve guests out of fear, fear of management, fear of losing their jobs, fear of not being able to feed their families. Now, I do not know about you, but I am not convinced that is a good idea to have people live by fear alone and then expect them to deliver good service. The resultant lack of smiling and warmth is instantly transmitted around the hotel. I can assure you that I was very glad when it came time to leave.

I also then realised that the opposite was true of the staff at the TAJ President, they were warm friendly and genuinely seemed to be enjoying their work. While I am sure that they share many of the same worries as their counterparts at the Rain Tree, it was very apparent that they were not motivated by fear but by success, an altogether much more positive emotion and one which we as the customer can sense.

So the key lesson here is to make sure that we motivate by success to ensure that we both get the best from our staff and give the best to our customers.

So if service in the hospitality market sector is mixed, what then can we make of Indian hospitality in general. Well, the first thing I have to say is that I do not know about in general, but I can tell you for my part that along with people I have met in Sudan they are among the most generous and most hospitable in the world. For me Indian people in life and in work have gone out of their way to make me welcome, to share their lives with me and to make sure that I understand much about what constitutes the success that India is today. People I do not even know and who had never met me agreed to meet and spend time with me, patiently teaching me things that I never even realised could be so. Now where else in the world could you go and be offered two days of personal one to one teaching in one of the holiest cities in the country from a total stranger?

I said at the beginning of the first article, I love the place and the people that are India. My comments, observations and questions are aimed at helping people inside and outside of India to do better business in India and to learn from the mistakes of others – this is far cheaper than having to keep making the mistakes ourselves.

Thoughts for the Day

1. Are your Business Processes centred on delivering outstanding customer service?
   
2. How else could you improve the service through the eyes of the customer?
   
3. Are your staff stricken with fear or motivated by success?
   

India Week – The Dabawalas of Mumbai

Thanks to numerous TV and film documentaries people all over the world have heard of the Dabawalas of Mumbai, and I am sure that most like me were amazed at the staying power and creativity of the business. They are also an inspiration for anyone looking at doing BPM without technology. For anyone that is not aware of them the following is a (very) quick explanation of them and what they do.

The Dabawalas collect and deliver home cooked food from your home and deliver it to your office in time for lunch, then after lunch they collect the empty lunch box or "Tiffin" as they are called and return it to your home. So they are merely a delivery service, operating a simple business – or so you thought! – Consider the numbers, the Dabalwalas collect deliver 200,000 such lunches every day to people within a 60km radius within a 3 hour time period, because they collect and return the empty boxes too, this amounts to around 400,000 transactions per day. For their delivery method they use people powered hand carts and the public railway system. All of this being carried out by around 5,000 semi literate, but totally dedicated staff. By any stretch of the imagination this simple business is actually extremely complicated indeed.

In such a business quality counts for almost everything, what many people may not have realised is that in fact if the Dabawalas of Mumbai only operated at Six Sigma then they would multiply the number of errors or mistakes they made by 54! You see they operate at an error rate of only 1 in 16 million (or 6.79 Sigma for those that are numerically inclined). So what kind of systems, quality checks, automation and IT must they be using to do so well – of course the answer is none! They are the very epitome of the principle that quality should just be the way of things and of empowering people to manage themselves.

Unlike Richard Branson of Virgin, I have not yet had the pleasure of spending a day with the Dabawalas and experiencing first hand just how they not only do it, but do it with a smile and a happy heart. To hear firsthand how a business created over 100 years ago in a very different world has stood the test of time and has in fact grown over the years, to hear firsthand how their customers have been customers through generations and how they have generated so much goodwill that most new business comes from recommendations alone. This surely has to be very close to the perfect model of business, with perhaps for many business people, one small twist – the issue of profit.

Certainly the Dabawalas make a profit, they need to to support the charitable work that they do in the villages from where there people come from. What makes them different is the way that they think about and calculate profit, in simple terms their formula is cost plus a little bit. They understand only too well that if they just keep pushing up the prices to a level beyond what the majority of customers could afford they would quickly lose business. They also find that by operating this way when they do need to increase prices that the customer understands and accepts it – how many of your clients are so understanding when you increase their prices?

In the space available here it is not possible to list all of the lessons that can be extrapolated from the way they do business, but one that sticks in the mind and is a salutary lesson to us all would be the following. There are always simple solutions to complex problems, but man has this innate ability to create complex solutions to even the simplest of problems. More often than not it is not the simplicity or complexity of the problem, but man himself that creates the complexity, aided and abetted by an education system which seems dedicated to teaching people to look for and create complexity at almost every turn.

The story of the Dabawalas is one of the best examples I have come across of the power and effectiveness of BPM as a thinking process and a philospophy.

Of course as with any business the future has to be uncertain for the Dabawalas, but I for one would hope that they can continue to survive and prosper, if ever there was a business that deserves to then this is it. It would be nice to think that of the many businesses all around the world who have benefited from learning lessons from the Dabawalas, some at least will have made sizable donations, at least as big as they would have made the management consulting forms that they might have hired to hear the same story  So, if anyone should be reading this to a Dabawala, then please praise and thank them on my behalf and to tell them that I look forward to one day being able to spend some time with them personally.

Thoughts for the day

1. What simple processes has your organisation made unnecessarily complicated and how can you remove that complexity now?
   
2. Do you give all that you could to those that could benefit? Don't wait for others, do your bit now and feel better. Sometimes you will find that time and knowledge is more appreciated than money.
   
3. What are you doing to make quality and service a way of life, instead of hiding behind a standard or so called badge of honour?

India Week – Why BPM Does Not Resonate in India (Yet!)

During the past 3 months I have had the opportunity and pleasure of working with, presenting to or training over 1,000 people from literally hundreds of organisations in India. My experience to date shows that BPM faces a real uphill struggle to show itself to be relevant.

Just as elsewhere in the world there is the perception that BPM equals BPMS, and we all know that BPMS's mean automation. Well if BPM is all about automation and the elimination of much work, then why would a country that is more focussed on the need to create jobs have any interest in it?

Let me give you an example. Just last night I needed some photocopying done and so went down to one of the many Xerox shops here in Chennai to get it done. I had around 50 pages and I required them to be printed double sided. The whole job took no more than 10 to 15 minutes and cost very little, but the experience said so much. Firstly, the copy shop made no use of auto sheet feeding on the copy machine, it was all done manually by the operator – the shopkeeper told me that he would have to do literally years worth of double sided work to justify sheet feeders and duplex units, far cheaper to pay operators to do the work, and besides it creates employment. Secondly, we also see that quality is something that is talked of but not always delivered. The same copy shop had posters everywhere that were motivational, inspirational and assuring the customer that they cared. However, when my copies came they were of an extremely poor quality, despite complaining it was stated that it did not matter if I did not like the output, they had done the work and so I had to pay – Hmm... behaviour follows reward, they are rewarding themselves for the work not for success, the probability is that this particular copy shop may not last too long.

So if we are to make BPM interesting to the Indian market, then we have to show it to be relevant to the market, which it most certainly is. Indian businesses, just like any other need to work smarter, need to acquire new customers faster, need to control costs, need to increase revenues, need to generate profits and most of all need to keep customers happy. Well the good news is that BPM is done properly can help them achieve all those things and more. I would also add that there is another imperative for BPM and Business Transformation here in India, one of scalability. This is a vast country with many different cultures and unique challenges, not least of which is transport and distribution.

Unfortunately, to date it seems that too few people talk about BPM this way in India, to date most of the people talking about and promoting BPM are Indian IT companies, and as we shall see in a later article these companies are not well suited to looking after the interests of the Indian people and do not necessarily have a particularly bright future. Indeed many of these companies actively state that they are not wanting to get involved in the business aspects of change and are not interested in the Indian market –a question I have is if you do not care about India and the Indian market then why should India or the Indian market care about you?

BPM if applied as a philosophy will help to unlock some of the massive potential that exists here in India, but it will require forward thinking, better training and most of all action – it is not something to be talked about be too be acted upon. Whether the actions take place at the board level doing full blown BPM or whether they take place at a lower level in the guise of some flavour of continual process improvement it does not really matter as long as it is about processes, always doing better and focussing from the outside in.

If it is taken on board then it can help to address not just some of the business challenges of India Inc. But some of the social challenges too.

A final thought would be that if Indian businesses don't work fast to address this, then there will be plenty of opportunity for international players to enter the Indian market and then as we all know customers will vote with their wallets (but staff will vote also, with their wage packets!)

Thoughts for the Day

1. If you are not going to be Customer Centric then why should your business survive?
   
2. How man the products or services you provide be applied to a wider market in India?
   
3. Do you reward the behaviour you desire or just pay for work?
   

India Week – A Week of Thoughts, Ideas and Observations About India

Given that I have spent the last week and will be spending the next week in India, I thought it might be useful to you if I shared some of my thoughts and observations. I think you will see and feel that the observations are pretty universal, although of course with a local twist.

We will look at why BPM does not resonate in India, some of the issues around creativity and innovation, some of the problems with Indian Management style and philosophy, why there are bad times ahead for the Indian IT Industry and more importantly why it is not too late, why there are great opportunities and here about some of the many successes that there are here in India.

As anyone who has spent time with me here in India or heard me talking about my experiences in India will know – I love the place! I especially love the people and truly appreciate their great personal qualities and their individual strengths. As we will see later in the week it is just a shame that this same love of individuals is not always shared my Indian Managers and CEO's. They would do well to remember better the lessons of their teachers and of the deep cultural and spiritual heritage.

The thoughts I am sharing are not shared as a criticism, but are shared so that people can see the effect of many of their actions and to think about how it feels to receive the results of some of those actions. The thoughts are also shared in order that I hope I can help or persuade more businesses to focus on doing business in India. I would especially love to see more of the Indian companies focus a lot more on their home market.

Whenever you speak with people here about why they do not try to generate more business locally and to use the local market to learn about business and how business actually works (not how it is taught in the thousands of Indian Business Schools), you almost always get the same answer – "Mark, you don't understand the market is not big enough and there is not enough money." Well I have news for you all, this is just a joke and people are just kidding themselves. Let's consider a few facts about India.

Yes, we know the population is around 1 Billion and growing at the rate of around 50,000 people per day. We know that there are many poor people and that there is great poverty in the country. But, consider also the following numbers – India can be divided up into three main groups or categories of people a) The Consuming Group – India 1 b) The Serving Group –India 2 and c) The Rest – India 3. Would it surprise you to know that the Consuming Group is said to account for 14% of the population, or around 140 million people – a consuming class that is around 2 ½ times the entire population of the UK – sounds like one heck of a local market opportunity – and these are considered the group with money to spend on cars, houses and all the rest of the trappings of the west. Then we come to the Serving Group, said to make up 55% of the population or around 550 million people, who while they certainly do not have as much money to spend are still spending in ever increasing amounts and seem like a growing market sector opportunity. Finally we have The Rest – these people are vital to consider too, for they number around 310 million, although they do not yet have the money or resources to be seen as much of a market, they will actually be the ones that control the fate of India Inc. For either the other 69% of the population will work harder to help them and to improve their lives, or the entire democracy is likely to come under threat – it sounds like an exaggeration but how many democracies do you know – bearing in mind it is about the government of the people, by the people, with the will of the people – that could survive with 31% of the population feeling disenfranchised?

So we know that there is a large number of potential consumers we can sell to, but can they afford to spend? Yes they can! Another habit that is plain to see in India is two tiers of pricing – one price for Indians, say 30 or 40 rupees and another for non-Indians, say 50 or 100 rupees. At a simple glance this sounds fair India 3 or even India two does not have the money and many of us from elsewhere in the world do. But, India 1 as we can call them are earning salaries on a par with many people around the world doing similar work and can afford the higher prices too. A recent study in a business magazine here on the equivalent spending power of managers showed that a senior Indian managers is actually greater than their counterparts in the UK, Canada, Denmark and many other so called developed nations. We also know that there are many very successful large international companies coming out of India, and we know these too do have the spending power. So there can be no issues that the money is there in the market to buy, use and consume. So it must be something else that holds things back.

Based on my (limited) experience, it is not just one thing that is holding back market India, but many things, as we go through the week I will attempt to peel back some of the petals of the lotus flower and we will see if we can get closer to the jewel that we know lies within.

Thoughts for the day

1. Are you really making the most of the opportunity that is India?
   
2. If you can't demonstrate how you can help transform an Indian business then why I should I believe that you have the skills and knowledge to help transform a non-Indian business?
   
3. Do you really not have the money to but the knowledge and skills you need or are you just stuck using the same old mantra in the same old way and just pretending?