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?
   

 

Process Driven Enterprise Architecture

The goal of achieving an "Enterprise Architecture" has proved elusive for many years. In fact for many people it is seen as something which is pie in the sky and just plain unachievable. Largely this is because it has been seen as a technology issue, not a business issue and of course this also means explanations around it have been highly technical in nature and unintelligible to most business managers.

As someone who has spent most of the last 15 years working with people in both the technical and business arenas, I can certainly relate to the fact that that it is one area where people have failed consistently to get the messages across. The challenge is that we have to find ways; in its simplest form Enterprise Architecture is about nothing more than ensuring that all the parts of your business – People, Processes, Plant, Premises, Stakeholders and Technology are all aligned and working in concert. In today's increasingly complex world this is something that we must achieve if we are to remain competitive and agile in order to survive. It is a business imperative.

Over recent years, most of the debate in the Enterprise Architecture arena has revolved around debating the merits or not of the Zachman Framework and the work has been data focused. But, now much has changed and it is business rules and process that are responsible for changing the perceptions.

The Zachman Framework, developed by Jon A. Zachman in the early 70s has come in for a lot of undue criticism: it is said to be too IT centric, without enough rigor, and without meta-model or method. Such comments are largely very unfair. It is true that John himself worked at IBM and was heavily into Data Management at the time he conceived the framework, but it is not true that it is IT centric. It is true that there might not be the rigor that would allow anyone to programmatically apply the framework, but then you can't program the classification scheme in a library either! As to meta-model and method, it is fair to say that more work could have been done sooner in this area, but certainly there is a lot of good work going on now.

However much work goes into researching the area, we need to get back, though, to the purpose behind it – to deliver tangible business benefits that business leaders can easily assimilate. It is here that Process Driven approaches are finding favor. However good our data and technical architecture might be, it does not catch the imagination of a business like process does. Process based approaches go to the very heart of an organization and can deliver immediate and highly visible benefits.

At a recent Enterprise Architecture conference I attended in Phoenix, USA, we heard presenter after presenter share real world experiences of how Enterprise Architecture had been delivering real results. Companies like Volkswagen of America, Bank of America shared how they had been able to build Enterprise Architectures, where the businesses, instead of saying "why, are we spending all this money on this!" were saying "If we spent a little more, how much more could we achieve!". This contrasted greatly with the delegates round the coffee tables bemoaning the fact that they could not get buy in at their companies.

When we look at the successes and contrast them with the "Would be failures" we see a number of things in common. Whereas in the case of the "Would be failures" technical people presented lots of information using jargon like Framework and Architecture focused on IT and technical benefits, and of course asked for budget, but not connected to a business initiative. In the successes, very few people used pictures of frameworks or talked explicitly of Enterprise Architecture; they talked of using slides with no more than 3 bullet points on them! (One delegate even shared that their CEO had said if you present with more than that I will not even listen to your presentation!) The people driving the initiatives were very much business oriented and they focused on small quick wins that were highly beneficial to, and highly visible within their organizations. It comes as no surprise, I am sure, to learn that they also focused on understanding Processes and People first and everything else second.

Around 2004, many observers started lambasting Enterprise Architectures, The Zachman Framework and other related initiatives. They were wrong! Enterprise Architecture can, will and must be made to work. The Zachman Framework as a classification scheme is as good as any other, and why do we need to reinvent for the sake of it anyway? The work going on within the Open Group on their TOGAF method for Enterprise Architecture will slowly see a practical method evolving.

On the down side, many US agencies are now mandating Enterprise Architecture and have their own frameworks, based on Zachman (FEAF, TEAD and DoDAF) – so why downside? Well, I hear that as with any such initiative involving Civil Servants around the world, they don't want to deal with people and process issues (they might have to risk downsizing their own jobs!) and instead will just focus on the technology aspects.

The one good lesson to come out of the US Government programs though, is that people are doing it – why? Because they have had their incentive program changed to alter their habits – no Enterprise Architecture, no budget! Another great example of the key lesson from Six Sigma, if you change people's reward systems to suit your desired outcome, then you can change their habits and behaviors far more easily.

To summarize, Enterprise Architecture will become more important, those who succeed will recognize this and build out from People, Process and Organization issues and will remain focused on delivering solid business benefits. In the main these will be delivered one small piece at a time, with the result that the business itself will ask for more to be done and will be happy to fund such work. Lastly, of course, those same people will communicate their needs and ideas in business terms to business people in a succinct manner.

In a short article such as this it is not possible to provide the depth of coverage on some of the topics mentioned. If you would like to know more about the Zachman Framework, why not visit http://www.zifa.com or for the Open Group TOGAF initiative http://www.opengroup.org/architecture/togaf/

The Top 10 Reasons Why BPM Will Fail

For too long, people have spent all their energy espousing the benefits of BPM. No-one is really looking at the downside (and it is considerable!) and making people aware of the pitfalls and issues they will face. In this article I will try to explode some of the myths that have built up around BPM and reveal why for most companies BPM will fail to deliver.

Having been writing and promoting the business benefits of BP and BPM for over 10 years, to produce an article entitled why it will fail will surely seem like heresy in many quarters. My hope is that people reading this will do so with an open mind and will take on board the problems discussed. For only by understanding the real motivations of our companies, our clients and our staff, can we possibly begin to develop systems and techniques to help them.

Before we even get into the top 10 reasons we should remember that organizations have built themselves by function for many years. Executives are only just getting comfortable with trying to manage their entire business as one entity using functional approaches. Managers and executives have spent years, both in on the job training and through management training centers, learning how to become better specialists.

The very idea that a few so called "gurus" could suggest that they should turn their organizations on their side and manage the business through processes instead, seems more than a little amusing to them. To many these "gurus" should spend more time in "real" companies, understanding what really happens, instead of causing problems by converting some of their middle and senior managers to a new way of thinking.

It is this apparent lack of understanding of the people issues, by those in the BPM community that will ultimately stall any momentum built. Too many messages speak to the mythical "Company", "Customer" or "Organization" and don't take into account the "Me" factor. This may seem rather strange for an approach which talks of empowering people and promises greater freedom for people. By way of an example, a quick look at the exhibitors at a conference some insight; not one of the exhibitor panels talked of what was in it for "me" e.g. "Why should I engage with your company? You might have the best products, but they all say that, you might be able to save my company money, they all say that, but as a result of engaging with you what will I get out of it? Will you make my life easier? Will buying your product mean I work fewer hours? Will dealing with your company increase my chances of a salary raise or maybe a promotion?"

It may be the fault of marketers, but whether in the vendor or end user community the same lessons holds true. If we want to get people to do something, then in addition to appealing to the corporate issues we need to address the personal ones too. Companies and markets are actually just collections of individual people.

Having said that, we are still left with cultural issues and here, as we see, BPM does not come out particularly well. As we look at the top ten reasons why BPM will fail, we will see that the industry just simply does not understand the culture of either people or indeed organizations. The reasons given below provide a greater insight into our culture and the rationale as to why "BPM might be right for other companies but is not right for us".

As with any other solution, BPM must address itself to the real problems people and companies face and not the mythical ones. So far, the reasons for taking on BPM are not compelling enough to make it worthwhile getting into this brave new world.

So let's take a look at these top 10 reasons:-

Reason 1.    BPM is all about promoting professional change.

"Business Process Management is all about promoting professional change, promoting the idea that we have to move from where we are, to some greener pasture elsewhere. Whereas, in fact we actually quite like being where we are, thank you! We do not see a need for our company to move with all these new fangled ideas. We have been in business since way before you were born and have always served our customers well. The idea that we might not have customers later is just too preposterous for words.

Besides, there is already too much change in society and our customers and staff just won't stand for any more, it is our duty, just like a bank, to always stand firm and be somewhere and someone you can depend on!"

Reason 2.    BPM removes islands of information and silo thinking.

"Business Process Management helps to eliminate islands of information and silo thinking from within organizations. Such things of course may well be a problem in someone else's organization but it is not a problem here. I meet regularly with my peers and can get access to any information I require from them; sure, some of it might be a little out of date, or difficult to track down, but we have people who can sort that out and it does not really add to our costs.

As to silo thinking, we have been all through that debate many times. We cannot see any purpose in giving people visibility outside the areas they are working in. We take great pride that our engineers provide the best components and our marketers know how to market our products as well as anyone could."

Reason 3.     BPM promotes and encourages communication.

"Business Process Management promotes and encourages communication, which is all very well if you want to do that. But, in this organization we have management and it is their job to communicate what is needed, to the people that need to know. And to be honest we probably already have more communication than we need. It is far easier to manage our people, if we only drip feed the information to them. They are probably not capable of dealing with much more anyway.

Here in the emergency services, we really do understand communication. It is not as if you dial 999 and get the police instead of an ambulance. When special arrangements are made, everybody who needs to know about them does."

Reason 4.     BPM focuses on managing by measurement.

"Business Process Management focuses on managing by measurement, which is all very well but we have all the measures we need. What I don't need are more measures. What you don't understand is that measures mean accountability and I quite like the fact that I can fudge the numbers in the current system. The idea of greater accountability fills me with dread and the fact that they might all be linked up in a cohesive manner, will sound great to the bosses but down here we don't want that.

In any case, I am not aware of anyone who has found themselves earning more money or getting promotion as a direct result of managing more measures, especially here in areas like quality."

Reason 5.     BPM is about moving away from a Command & Control Structure.

"Business Process Management is all about moving away from a command and control structure, which makes it simply unworkable in our organization. Our very strength and indeed that of our competitors lies in organizational structure. We have spent years creating and honing it to perfection and it is the very heart of our company. People rely on it to know their status within the organization and what is expected in their role. It is also vital in establishing pay grades, salary structures, benefits and bonuses, such things would just not work in a flat organization.

In our business, tomato products, it would be just ridiculous to imagine someone flattening the organization. No one would know what to do or what was expected of them, if they had no formal structure."

Reason 6.     BPM is not all about technology.

"Business Process Management is not all about technology. However, we have had numerous presentations from many vendors who say just the opposite. In fact we like the idea of a pure technology solution. As an IT group we know how to handle such projects and have the knowledge and capabilities, built up over many years, to implement them. The last thing we need is a concept that requires us to further engage with the business. The idea that technology is just an enabler for business is not something we believe round here.

I work in the automotive industry. I know of no-one who has reduced costs, by allowing the business to get more involved in technology requirements. In fact usually they only increase costs because they never know what they want."

Reason 7.    BPM is not Rocket Science.

"Business Process Management is not rocket science, so it is not really adding anything to our existing knowledge base. We have a highly experienced executive team and numerous MBA's within our senior and middle management teams; these people know how to go looking for solutions. We have invested in them, to enable them to seek the solutions and many of them could deal with rocket science. If it were that straightforward we could just train our existing people and empower them to make the changes we need. No, it can't be that simple or straightforward.

The software industry is full of very bright people. And it is not very likely that any significant market player developed with a simple idea from mere graduates. It might work for small companies, but not one with wealth larger than most countries."

Reason 8.    BPM requires investment in training and education.

"Business Process Management requires investment in training and education. Here in our company we can't be spending money on training in this stuff. If we do that they will all want training. Besides if everyone was trained in it, they would all be asking questions all the time and we can't have that. The managers and executives won't know the answers, which would lead to anarchy. Anarchy, because we won't be able to spare the time of managers and executives in education, they are too important for that.

I just can't imagine any multinational tobacco company putting together a plan for even three days training for employees and managers, never mind 6 or 7 days on this stuff. It is too difficult to organize on a worldwide basis."

Reason 9.    BPM promotes common sense.

"Business Process Management is all about common sense, understanding what you have, where you want to go and developing a plan to help you get there. This all sounds very well in theory. However, if business was just about common sense then everyone would be doing it, wouldn't they? We have worked very hard to create something very special and complexity just adds to our competitive advantage.

After all people will always want books and our search and indexing systems combined with our local store network gives us the edge, sure the website is a little complex to use, but our customers have to understand the system is vast, to have a simple one-click system might sound like common sense but it does not apply in our business."

Reason 10.    BPM is a boardroom issue.

"Business Process Management is a boardroom issue, perhaps you don't understand but we have a very full agenda here in the executive suite. We are with trying to figure out strategies for growth and corporate direction. We don't have time to waste on new-fangled ideas that have yet to be proven. We employ people in our technology division to look at these sorts of things, if they are any good, we will soon hear about it from them.

Besides last time I looked it was all about process, people and technology. We focus on bigger things up here, real numbers and real strategies. Here in the airline business, I can't imagine anyone improving their bottom line significantly with this stuff."

Okay, so if you are still reading this then you have realized that perhaps it is a little tongue in cheek. But it serves to highlight the real issues faced by any and all of us in the BP or BPM fields. Largely we are offering help and solutions to problems people don't perceive they have. The challenge we all face collectively is how to ensure that our clients, our companies or our executives understand that these are the real problems they face. And that BP really is an ideal way for them to start tackling them. Certainly it does not solve all the problems of the world, but then what new management paradigm can?

For anyone who is not totally convinced, let's reconsider the examples in mind when writing the answers above. I fully accept that they are not all directly related to Business Process, but they do serve to illustrate the types of thinking we come up against, almost on a daily basis.

In example 1 we heard from what might be a typical banking executive. The news for them is that banks are not the reliable stalwarts they used to be. Competition is fierce and a lack of on-line or telephone services means customers will leave them in droves. The cost of not changing from a branch based model is far greater than the cost of doing so.

The second example would be fairly typical of an engineering company (especially one which has adopted Six Sigma). We see that engineers build great components, but no matter how good Marketing is, if Engineering are making something that the market does not want or at a quality the market will not pay for then we are just wasting money again. So much easier to remove the silos and have them engage much earlier in the process and continue to do so throughout.

Next we took the example of the UK emergency services, all three of which (Fire, Police and Ambulance) while managed separately, spend a significant amount of their time working together. However, recently when the Countess of Wessex needed to get to hospital urgently for the birth of her baby, it was a policeman that arrived and not an ambulance. It turns out that everyone thought someone else was sorting the ambulance and so a well thought out plan fails in execution, due to the lack of communication. Luckily enough for all concerned, this potentially life threatening situation had a happy ending.

In our fourth example I had in mind the positive side of Six Sigma and companies like General Electric and Motorola. In these companies significant amounts of executive and management pay, are directly linked to their achieving the requisite measures set by the company.

For the fifth example, I considered the "Morning Star" company and their highly unusual flat structure. More of which you can read about in my friend Doug Kirkpatrick's article "The Flat Organization" which appears on the BPMG.org website. Through a set of contracts and service level agreements Morning Star have created the world's leading tomato product company.

Sixth in our list of examples is the Volkswagen car company in America, who outsourced their IT to a newly created subsidiary, GEDAS. Meanwhile inside the company they continued to examine the structure of their business and the IT required to support it. As a result of the work done they were able to go back to GEDAS and significantly reduce the costs for their service provision.

The seventh example, if you did not already guess was Microsoft. In the early days they were just a couple of graduates who saw an opportunity and with a couple of quick moves created the beginning of what is now a monster company. Of note though is that, while many see Microsoft as a software or technology company, the key to Microsoft's strength lies not with the "Rocket Scientists" in their lab but with their smart use of marketing, for me Microsoft are a marketing company who happen to deliver software.

The strength for our eighth example, British American Tobacco, according to recent presentations given by the company, lies not with the extensive program. Or indeed with the executive buy-in to the 7 strategic imperatives or with the management buy-in to the resulting 160+ strategic initiatives underway (many of which are business process driven). Instead, they attribute most of their success to the inclusive training programs they have put in place. When rolling out their Business Process and Enterprise Architecture initiatives, the company took a great deal of time and trouble to put in place a training and education program. This has enabled managers, process engineers and line managers to all learn the same approaches, tools and techniques. This has resulted in extraordinary buy-in from the business.

For the ninth example, I imagined the sort of conversations that might have been taking place in companies like Waterstones or Borders, while Amazon marched on. I wonder now how they feel about the decisions they made at that time. And also how many other retailers will ultimately go to the wall. Before realizing the world has changed and they need to change too, and fast.

Finally for the tenth reason, I had no specific example in mind. However, if we take the sum of all the previous examples, as well as many other published case study examples, it is simply not possible to ignore the business benefits. However, the language used in the case studies may not yet be right for the boardroom. Indeed, the media too may be inappropriate. Perhaps when such stories are regularly carried in publications such as the Harvard Business Review, as was the case with stories such as GE and Motorola years ago, then we can hope to win the hearts and minds of the boardroom.

In closing, I hope you can see it is not a matter of doom and gloom at all, but significant work needs to occur. To change the language we use, to focus on the people issues and to destroy the plethora of myths that are building up around the BPM industry. Such myths are being built in both the vendor community and within end user organizations.