WSJ on SEO (aka CPO)

I found it interesting that the WSJ ran an article about the Strategic Execution Officer (SEO) and described it like I would describe a Chief Process Officer (CPO).  Below are a few quotes, but I think it does a great job of explaining the role.  It is difficult.  It blends technology and business.  Execution is [...]

BPM Lessons Learned

So…many of you thought I was going to offer some BPM lessons learned the other day.  Here they are:

If you jump right to technology, you will go backwards and have to do process mapping and/or reengineering.  Additionally, your project will take longer because you don’t understand your metrics and the business side.
BPM done right will [...]

BPR vs BPM: What’s Different?

I had the opportunity last week to debrief Michelle Cantara (VP at Gartner) about Talisen. We had met at the Gartner BPM conference, and she was intrigued by our offerings around BPM which include several fixed fee projects. In talking with her about BPM and sharing with her our methodology and typical sales [...]

The McKinsey Way

You can certainly never go wrong looking at McKinsey. Their consultants are usually very top notch and their process of thinking and root cause analysis is great. Although this post is more about how you analyze a problem (i.e., business process innovation), it also makes a point about how important process and methodology [...]

BPM + Outsourcing not = BPO

Howard Smith says it well in Business Process Management - The Third Wave “What BPM adds to BPO is the capability it gives to partners to retain control of business processes even if they reside partly or wholly with others.”
BPM gives companies a different option for outsourcing.  Traditional outsourcing was one of several flavors - [...]

Why end-to-end process - Volvo example

I can’t verify this example, but I have heard it used multiple times over the years and think it does a great job of making the point about end-to-end process.
At some point in the past, Volvo had apparently manufactured too many green cars.  They were sitting on the dealer lots and not selling.  The dealers [...]

The Agile Get More Agile

Much like the saying that the rich get richer, I have begun to see more small companies using BPM technology to make themselves more agile.  This to me is a good example of Web 2.0.  In the late 90s, big companies initially shunned the Internet or approached it skeptically.  It rapidly became a basic part [...]

It’s the process not the stars

One of my favorite quotes is the following from Toyota which appeared in the HBR article “Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System” a few years ago.
“We get brilliant results from average people managing brilliant processes. We observe that our competitors often get average (or worse) results from brilliant people managing broken processes.”
I was [...]

Stockholm Process Syndrome

I was talking about Stockholm Syndrome this morning, and it hit me.  This is the explanation for why users or companies struggle to move away from a bad process.  We have all been there where we are part of a process which is obviously broken…BUT, we are so close to it, and it is all [...]

ROT (Return on Time)

“So, what if you could maintain the same work hours and still be able to avoid growing your headcount without compromising quality, customer service, transactional cycle time, throughput, and all those wonderful metrics.” (The Power of Process, pg. 99-100)
I will give credit to Kiran Garimella in The Power of Process for “coining” a new term [...]

Process Rules - The Apprentice

For now, I will stick with the reality TV genre.  If you watch The Apprentice on NBC, the one thing that I notice is there is always a chaotic team versus a well executed team.  Much of this could be attributed to leadership, but a lot of it can be tied to process.  I think [...]

Ubiquitous BPM

Taking a business user’s perspective, I can’t help but think that driving massive BPM adoption includes making it part of our standard workflow.  Now there are still (amazingly) some executives who assistants print their e-mails for them to hand write responses, but in general, e-mail and mobile phones are the two adopted tools of the [...]