Speaking to the - BA TimesBPM is an empowering tool for workers in all levels of an organization. The middle and lower rungs of an organization gain direct benefit and are often pushing

Speaking to the

C-Suite

about BPM

SPEAKING TO THE C-SUITE ABOUT BPM

Speaking to the C-suite about BPM What’s at the top of the C-level agenda

and how BPM added value aligns to strategic vision

By Ruth Cernes Fagebaume, VP Sales and Alliances, Bonitasoft

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................................... 2 1. BPM provides powerful company-wide governance capability .......................................................................................... 3 2. The company ERP can’t cover everything! ........................................................................................................................ 3 3. BPM helps fill gaps ........................................................................................................................................................... 5 4. When operational excellence helps your company differentiate ......................................................................................... 5 5. When agility is a key success factor for development ....................................................................................................... 5 6. Boosting employee motivation .......................................................................................................................................... 6 7. If risk management, risk mitigation, and tracking/audit is at the top of the CFO’s agenda ................................................ 7 8. Do employees collaborate or are they “silo-ed”? .............................................................................................................. 9 9. When your business demands flexibility ......................................................................................................................... 10 10. What if your company doesn’t have an ERP? .............................................................................................................. 10 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................................................. 11 More BPM Resources .............................................................................................................................................................. 12

© 2013 Bonitasoft www.bonitasoft.com | 2

SPEAKING TO THE C‐SUITE ABOUT BPM

Introduction Business Process Management, or BPM,

can be seen in different ways. “BPM”

can refer to both a methodology to

improve efficiency through better day‐

to‐day processes, and also to an IT tool

to automate and monitor those

processes.

What BPM can achieve

When done right, BPM involves

business process analysis (methodology

side) together with the implementation

of business process management

software (tool side).

In this paper, the term BPM refers to both – the methodology and the IT tool— to enable a global

approach. This tight interconnection is the key to answer to the core needs of business activities.

This is why BPM is known as the game changer – it can provide a real competitive advantage.

BPM implementation in a company can be imposed from the top down, from upper management,

but it can also begin and grow locally. BPM is an empowering tool for workers in all levels of an

organization. The middle and lower rungs of an organization gain direct benefit and are often

pushing the BPM agenda.

Yet wide‐spread adoption needs the buy‐in of top management.

How to talk to the C‐Suite about BPM?

What’s at the top of the C‐level agenda?

Governance & sustainability

Quality of service & customer satisfaction

Operational excellence & productivity

Business agility

Employee motivation & collaboration

Risk management

3 | www.bonitasoft.com © 2013 Bonitasoft


By addressing the issues that the CEO, COO, CMO, CFO, CTO, CIO, and other top managers are

concerned with: the ways that BPM can be specifically applied in an organization to improve

governance and sustainability through improvement of operational performance.

In this paper, we’ll look at the following and provide examples of the strategic value of BPM.

• Quality of service & customer satisfaction

• Operational excellence & productivity

• Business agility

• Employee motivation & collaboration

• Risk management

1. BPM provides powerful company-wide governance capability Value from BPM implementation comes from continuously planning, doing, measuring, learning

and improving. It’s an iterative process, where your company can repeat cycles as required.

You can compare it to the PDCA (Plan Do Check Act) management method made popular by Dr. W.

Edwards Deming, and widely adopted in many industries, or the DMAIC (Define Measure Analyze

Improve Control) cycle in the Six Sigma methodology.

Like these approaches, BPM as a methodology can be applied to any

organization or process within the company, from the smallest to

the largest, from the simplest to the most complex, from technical

to business. The difference is that BPM can also be applied directly

as an IT tool.

The company can imply BPM incrementally to make the entire

organization lean. As process after process improves, your company saves costs and improves

operational performance, bottom line; but also top line, with increased quality of service leading

to higher customer satisfaction and more sales. BPM solutions provide the means to actually

monitor efficiency of all the processes in an organization, to identify bottlenecks, and to report the

improvements made in efficiency, easily and clearly with actual measurements.

BPM gives employees the right tools to be more efficient. They can focus on added‐value, hence

more interesting activities and projects. They feel more empowered and engaged. Return On

Investment is maximized, leveraging all three dimensions of cost, revenue and motivation.

2. The company ERP can’t cover everything! Today, your company may have an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning system), a CRM (Customer

Relationship Management system), a CMS (Content Management System), an HRIS (Human

“ROI is maximized, leveraging

3 dimensions: cost, revenue

and motivation”



Resources Information System) and other – sometimes many other— software applications that

support its business.

Some of these are complex software systems that require expertise, time and money to be

deployed and additional time and money to be fine‐tuned after first release. Most of them, when

not from the same software vendor, don’t even communicate together without a lot of

adjustments and modifications, if at all.

Large, globally deployed systems can also encounter challenges addressing specific or local needs

that are not widely shared in the industry or worldwide. For example, locally relevant information

missing from the company workflow may result in holes that people have to fill with other locally

created or purchased systems, or with home‐made spreadsheets.

While it is not an issue to have both ERP and stand‐alone systems coexisting, getting them to

communicate is often challenging. Implementing yet another module or developing customized

changes in your company’s ERP would probably be

costly and time‐consuming; stand‐alone systems are

often single purpose and may not be easily leveraged

to support other tasks.

After a few years, the company is dependent on many

different applications and databases. Employees start

complaining that the various systems do not

communicate smoothly and they need to complete more and more manual steps and data

extracts and compilation. Your company ends up with a system like a Rube Goldberg contraption!

This is where Business Process Management comes into play

BPM is a business management approach that helps your company gain visibility into how your

company truly operates in the field. You can quickly see:

• what’s covered by current systems like the ERP and

CRM,

• what is addressed through stand‐alone systems,

and

• where the “holes” are.

This overall knowledge of operating processes allows top

management to make shrewd, prudent decisions more

quickly, increasing business efficiency and operational

results.

What if you don’t have an ERP? This doesn’t mean that BPM isn’t useful to you. See Section 10,

What if you don’t have an ERP?

“After a few years… you end up with a system like a Rube Goldberg

contraption!

With increased visibility, management has better control, and

can make good decisions more quickly.



3. BPM helps fill gaps Through BPM, all stakeholders work together at mapping processes. Some tasks will be handled

within existing tools like ERP, CRM, and so on. Some tasks can be automated. Some tasks will

continue to be done manually – because your differentiation, where it depends on unstructured

processes, is also key to improving business results.

But they will all be linked and will start communicating together, enabling end‐to‐end traceability

and continuity. C‐level management keeps control of what is happening in the company.

4. When operational excellence helps your company differentiate When an organization is achieving results – good or bad –you can retrace how those results are

obtained by using BPM. You can easily replicate successful processes in other organizations or

subsidiaries. Where there are issues, you can quickly identify bottlenecks, understand root causes

and apply fixes.

Thanks to this continuous improvement loop, your company’s

processes can be optimized to best serve your markets at any

time, leading to great operational efficiency and higher customer

satisfaction.

CMO and COO teams can review, simplify and structure processes, focusing on value delivery and

removing everything else. At the same time, they can identify the processes that lead to business

differentiation and increase customer knowledge.

Replicating the company’s best practices ensures internal coherence and consistent delivery to the

customer, whenever and wherever it happens. This is the

path to operational excellence.

In addition, your company becomes a learning and agile

organization, able to quickly adapt to the changing

environment we all live in today.

5. When agility is a key success factor for development In our global economy, new competitors are popping up everywhere with new business models.

This can happen seemingly overnight, breaking former rules and habits and changing the

paradigm. To remain competitive and survive, your company needs to be able to anticipate these

changes and act before competitors. If your processes are clear, robust and efficient, your

company will be better prepared to tackle tomorrow’s market challenges.

BPM is the path to Customer Value Delivery & Operational Excellence

BPM improves your

Speed‐to‐Market.



With its solid framework and clearly‐defined steps, owners and interactions, BPM puts you in an

ideal position to catch new business opportunities.

6. Boosting employee motivation Study after study1 around the world has shown that motivation has a positive influence on

financial results. However, companies encounter more and more difficulties to maintain a high

level of employee engagement, at a time they most need to drive strong performance in a more

and more volatile, complex and global environment.

When engagement starts to decline, company performance and customer satisfaction inevitably

drop. Most of the time, things are going wrong inside the organization. People may be less

confident because they don’t perceive enough interest

coming from above; or they may think management

does not provide them with the right support and

structure, clear roles and responsibilities, processes and

tools. At first, people tend to compensate for the

organization’s lack, but beyond a certain level, they

often just … disengage. When they don’t feel their

company (or department) is the best place to work, they

start looking around for other job opportunities

BPM is a motivation enabler

BPM addresses organizational gaps, making operating processes clear, simpler and automated. It

makes work easier and saves time, for employees and for their line of management. And with

more efficient processes and higher customer satisfaction, managers will have fewer problems to

deal with.

Time freed up from “meaningless” tasks performed in an information vacuum can be used wisely

to create the energizing and caring environment employees

expect from their management.

With BPM, people know clearly what’s expected from them

and understand how what they do impacts company goals and

performance. It gives their job more meaning, while also

helping them to manage their time and their daily tasks.

1 Towers Watson 2012 Global Workforce Study; Motivation: The Not‐So‐Secret Ingredient of High Performance Motivation Is All About the Managers...Duh!

“When engagement starts to decline,

company performance and customer satisfaction inevitably drop.”

BPM translates your vision

into concrete actions



Employees:

• can serve customers more efficiently with less stress and more ownership, thanks to clear

processes, computer‐aided task management and reminders,

• have time freed up to do productive activities such as leading a project or task force, adding

value and interacting more with their coworkers and managers, and

• have better visibility on what others are doing in the company, improving collaboration.

Managers:

• understand and show interest in what their employees are doing, provide more accurate

job descriptions and fact‐based performance evaluation metrics,

• can balance workload in their team, and

• save time that they can reallocate to spend more time with their employees and make their

company a better place to work.

7. If risk management, risk mitigation, and tracking/audit is at the top of the CFO’s agenda

Depending on your industry, your company may be subject to

more and more complex regulations. By bonding systems more

tightly together, BPM formalizes processes, all of them, even the

ones between two existing systems. It ensures complete

traceability, hence better compliance with your industry’s

standards and regulations.

But risk is not only about legal compliance. If your company’s processes are clear, well‐established,

automated and secured with electronic signature for approval, it considerably reduces the risk

that any employee might not follow correct procedure, or forget steps like asking for an approval.

Companies have gotten into trouble because they failed to monitor and control their activities and

processes: materials ordered without proper authorization that are contractually obligated and

can’t be returned; accounts payable surprised by the amount and number of purchases affecting

cash flow, and other such familiar situations.

We all remember the Deepwater Horizon disaster and oil spill

on the Gulf Coast…

Companies have gone under because of quality and liability

issues. Others have been working very hard for years to rebuild

their brand after a bad experience, especially on the social or

environmental side.

Reputation has an impact on sales. BPM helps guard

against misconduct.

BPM is insurance that

you’re compliant.



Business Example

Imagine your company is the leader in high-end cars.

Your company’s vision is to “provide elegant, safe, high quality cars to our customers” and

to “provide excellent customer assistance in case of any problem.”

In the event of a break‐down, customers call your help line. You have management directive

to act quickly; for example, to figure out that a tow truck is needed and to get it out to the

customer as fast as possible.

However, despite consistently fast service, top management has learned that customers are

not finding the after‐sales service for problems to be very satisfactory at all. This is now

driving down sales. A shift in vision is needed.

The company’s new vision is to “make the customer’s life easier

while taking care of their car if something happens.” You now have

to align the help line call center’s processes to match the new

strategic vision for your company.

You propose to shift focus to making help line calls the best interaction possible with your

brand, whatever the duration. Before sending assistance, the service rep can find out more

about the specific situation, which better pinpoint a better solution than an automatic call

to a mechanic– perhaps the rep can explain some action that the customer can take to get

driving again, without the need to wait for a tow.

The rep can empathize with stranded customer’s plight, give them real‐time status on what

help is coming and when it will arrive, and offer additional services and perhaps a gift to

compensate for the unpleasant experience.

How easy will it be to implement these changes?

Mapping inter‐related processes – internally with sales, after‐sales, the call center, and with

external partners such as tow services and mechanics– allows you to collaboratively design

a process that the company can execute quickly. For example, after the tow service has

electronically accepted the service call, they can also confirm the dispatch and arrival of the

tow truck. BPM will allow you to implement the processes with all involved stakeholders, to

collect data from tracking each customer event and supplier commitment, and to report

results. All this can be done in incremental steps, to aid adoption by building on success.

Change is made easier.

BPM provides a good way to make the company’s vision clear and understood. It makes strategic decisions meaningful and concrete to employees and partners who then feel involved and committed.

BPM is a change enabler



The company is also better protected against fraud, corruption or ethics violations. What everyone

does is recorded and electronically signed when needed, making it more difficult for someone

with bad intentions to bypass validations and controls.

Another point to consider: when describing, formalizing and

automating processes, the company also ultimately depends less

on individual knowledge.

If key employees happen to leave, general expertise stays in the

company and you don’t need to recreate what they knew that

wasn’t captured. New hires can build on past experience and make their contribution from there.

This saves time, preserves core competencies and enables new expertise acquisition.

8. Do employees collaborate or are they “silo-ed”? Maybe teams used to collaborate well, but after several years of

growth or changes, it looks like their collaboration has been

reduced to the bare minimum. People are working in silos, not

seeing the big picture any more, generating duplication, rework, or

bottlenecks.

Does IT need to be closer to your business challenges?

When it comes to IT, the gap may be even bigger, with misunderstanding between IT and business

functions. Business develops requirements and hands them over to IT, who then buys or develops

an application that seems to fit. When it is released and business teams start using it, they report

issues nobody talked about before. Thus begins a ping‐pong match between business and IT.

The way BPM software has been designed invites and reinforces direct collaboration: business and

IT teams work on the same tools, in nearly real time, with graphical tools that make it much easier

for them to talk the same language and avoid misunderstanding or

omissions. Feedback is incorporated as they go along together.

More feedback may arise at a later stage, once a specific case is

encountered. BPM systems are flexible enough to let you implement

changes afterwards without mobilizing a full IT project team.

On the IT side, there is a common architecture for all the company’s specific applications, instead

of many independent stand‐alone systems. This homogeneity makes it possible to leverage

successful processes and applications consistently and across the entire organization, including

subsidiaries, locally or abroad.

Relying too much on people‐dependent

processes is a risk too!

Collaboration leads to efficiency

BPM brings homogeneity and scalability



9. When your business demands flexibility BPM allows top management to implement change quickly and smoothly.

Radical changes and big IT projects take time and always carry some risks. With BPM, you can start

from current processes, improve, implement and automate to achieve first outcomes. This allows

a quick win, even while preparing the next steps. You see

results early and validate that things are going in the right

direction.

You can then iterate as much as needed. Those multiple

iterations are not disruptive as BPM software is highly

flexible and can deliver fast and frequent changes.

10. What if your company doesn’t have an ERP? Depending on many criteria, among them size, complexity or volume, your company may not need

to invest in such a large and expensive system. Not all businesses need a sophisticated ERP,

especially if the company is small and doesn’t manufacture products.

But this doesn’t mean you don’t have to formalize and structure the

way you operate and deliver to your customers.

Your company just needs a more

simple, yet expandable, tool. A

BPM suite can be that tool. You first describe and refine your

processes with all stakeholders collaborating. Then, you define

what needs automation, validation and tracking. This applies to

many processes, such as:

• Quotation to a customer that need to be validated by technical staff for feasibility and

management for pricing. It may also involve several versions before reaching an agreement

and these versions need to be tracked and archived

• Employees’ vacation, with management validation, system recording and linked to payroll

• Invoicing automation, validation, recording and archive

Without having to invest in an expensive and heavy ERP, your company still gets what’s needed to

structure and monitor the business:

• Operational performance and cost reduction

• Quality of service and customer satisfaction

• Visibility, Control and reporting

• Agility and Adaptability

• Team and individual productivity

• Traceability and Compliance

“Radical changes and big IT projects take time and always carry some risks”

Incremental implementation

is low‐risk

“Our company just needs a simple,

yet expandable, tool.”



Conclusion

BPM improves the company’s overall efficiency today, so executive management can focus on the future.

As we’ve seen, BPM can have a positive impact on many aspect of a company, from governance

and sustainability to motivation and change management, to agility and collaboration, to

compliance and risk management.

All these aspects have an influence on business performance and contribute increasing Return on

Investment. It’s not just about cost savings. With BPM the

entire company gets much more.

It gets happy employees, happy customers, and a well‐oiled

operational machine, optimized for the best outcomes, not

the lowest costs. This is a positive feedback loop where

satisfaction leads to more success, which leads to more

profits that can fuel company expansion and stakeholders

satisfaction, and so on.

Is this something that can be quantified? Definitely.

Classic ROI calculation builds upon:

• efficiency models measuring cost savings, lost productivity, rework and duplication, and

• statistical and probabilistic model for risk evaluation.

The good news is there’s a very good chance your company will get a higher return than your

calculations will anticipate. And you will be able to show this with process measurements.

When done properly, with all stakeholders’ involvement and empowerment, and strong

management support, a BPM project – whether company‐wide or at department level – will help

people understand business goals and strategies and mobilize energies towards a common project

serving common purposes. Engagement and motivation will naturally get boosted, and by

rebound, customer satisfaction will increase.

This is the human factor effect. People engagement and motivation are complex and difficult to

link directly to a saving or performance increase, as are word‐of‐mouth and referrals among

customers.

But we all know it works and can produce real results.

Once the company’s processes are structured, optimized

and automated, management can focus more on defining

and implementing strategy and less on logistics. Teams have

time to get customer insights, and to anticipate and get ready for the next challenges.

The C‐suite and the Board of Directors are better prepared to work on their vision of the future.

“There’s a very good chance your company will get a higher ROI than your calculations

will anticipate.”

Executives can focus more on strategy

and less on logistics



More BPM Resources

See our webinar BAM, BI & KPIs: 3 Ultimate Tools for Operational Efficiency

Best Practices for Getting Started with BPM

Why Choose Open Source BPM?

Understanding Business Process Automation

More information available at www.bonitasoft.com

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Speaking to the - BA TimesBPM is an empowering tool for workers in all levels of an organization. The middle and lower rungs of an organization gain direct benefit and are often pushing

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