Monday, November 19, 2012

“GPS” is Critical in BPM Journey

For many process optimization, process innovation, process harnomization efforts, measuring both effectiveness (ensure process do the right things) and efficiency (assure process do things right) are crucial.


After brainstorming top ten roadblocks in BPM journey, we may consider to bring “GPS” for encompassing the direction, Metrics just like GPS, may help watch over the step and keep focus, here are three aspects why it is so critical to continuously improve process.



1. You can only Manage what you Measure


  • It's all about Metrics. Once Management sees the right metrics, they will become addicted to those metrics and they may not understand how they lived without them before. The metrics tell management when something in the business is going wrong or when something in the business and/or process can be improved.
  • Metrics also help with creating the sense of urgency, which is important for the continuous improvement and a critical step in any change management effort.

  • Process Improvement via Making Comparison: In some instances, people are implementing a change in a process, but they have not measured the old process, so what will you compare to, and how do you make real improvement.
  • Action Follows: The right metrics are very important to know how your processes do. But if you can't act on the metrics; why measure them?


2. Get the Right Set of Metrics


  • Wrong Metrics Cause Project fail: If you don't get the metrics right, the whole project will fail. The metrics have to be measuring the information that is relevant to what you are achieving. It sounds obvious but vital to the success of any change programmed.
  • But not all benefits are easy to quantify, and some of these can be quite important as well. Hard to measure BPM benefits can include, for example:
a) Employee engagement
b) Customer satisfaction
c) Risk avoidance

  • The right metric at the right time with the right audience. So, in a nut-shell, its not just about identifying the metrics but also implementing the right metric at the right time with the right set of audience to get the right set of output and conclude it as a right continuous improvement process.

  • The Metrics will Differ based on the Role: From a Continuous Improvement Process perspective, the metrics will differ based on the role: Every Team, the operations, executives, developers, testers, analysts have their own set of metrics and opinions. For some, it’s about quality and revenue, while for others, performance and consistency might be important considerations and benchmarks for differentiating the end system.        

  • Streamline all Metrics & Select KPIs:  A lot of discipline is involved on the ground, in streamlining all these metrics and honoring every party's viewpoints for defining a continuously improving process, then leverage the BPMS to produce real-life metrics which can be used to improve process. it's always beneficial when creating a process that KPIs and KPM are taking into consideration
        

3.    Measurement and Empowerment go Hand in Hand 


   ·   Measurement and empowerment of people go hand in hand. Once people at all levels see real time activity displayed in meaningful way, as the metric contributes to good decision making and a motivated workforce requiring less “management”.

   ·     Help  to Stay Focus: without metrics, you can’t know how well you are doing, with it, adapt to the process while it still matters, not afterwards, Also the correct metrics will engage employees in achieving the organizational goals, understand where to focus on energy and resources.

·      Metrics is not for “Control” only: However, metric is for empowering, not for “control”: One word of caution is not to confuse measurement with the culture of "finger pointing" that drives the old "command and control" management style which can be so destructive.....


Now BPM projects go beyond process automation, for many process optimization, process innovation, process harnomization efforts, measuring both effectiveness (ensure process do the right things) and efficiency (assure process do things right) are crucial, defining metrics right takes both knowledge and imagination, as BPM is both science and art. 

1 comments:

thanks for the informative article

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