For those of you who have known me over the years, you may recall that when I was at Delphi Group, we had a conference that we called the Business Process eXcellence Summit (or BPX), that had run over the course of a few years, extending from our earlier International Business Process Summit (IBPS) stretching back to 1998 I believe - speakers included our Delphi Group analysts, including Carl Frappaolo and I, as well as James Champy, Howard Smith, Tom Peters, and a wide variety of very well known to up and coming speakers.
I bring this up, because it's all to easy to fall into the trap of thinking that when YOU or your peers know something, to believe that everyone else knows it (and acts on this knowledge) as well.
I still find it amusing that over 14 years ago, I didn't know much of anything about this industry (or set of industries perhaps) I've been involved in since first starting at Delphi in 1994. One of the first books I read on the topic of process was "The Workflow Imperative" written by Delphi co-founder Tom Koulopoulos. The book was already several years old at that point. Having come from a non-business and (officially) non-technical background, I thought I was merely playing catchup to the "normal" business/IT crowd in learning about workflow (now [mostly] BPM).
Turns out that memes, awareness, understanding, and action take a while - and while many organizations struggle to merely update their desktops to stay ahead of viruses and spam, their true business operations are woefully manual and error prone.
Our next major research project is wrapping up, and will be available in early/mid-October, focused on Business Process Management, as a set of methodologies, technical capabilities, and business drivers.
While we have once again asked a battery of "Crossing the Chasm"-style questions, we also examined where respondents would place their organization and their own departments within the 5 levels of the Business Process Maturity Model (BPMM) - ranging from:
Level 1: Initial
Enterprise lacks consistent practices and management is reactive. Little to no BPM strategy, process redesign is ad-hoc at best.Level 2: Managed
Stabilization of local work through department-level expertise, control, and metrics. Processes are repeatable and documented.Level 3: Standardized
Enterprise-wide process improvement competencies with product and service orientation. Best practices are standardized and documented.Level 4: Predictable
The enterprise has established common, integrated assets and processes with measurement and predictability. Variations of process performance are minimal, and processes are stable.Level 5: Optimizing
Process excellence and re-engineering is fully integrated into the organization. Emphasis is now on the continuous pro-active improvement of processes, narrowing the gaps between objectives and capabilities.
And while you might expect this type of maturity model to end up with a bell curve, we instead have a heavy front-loading of process ignorance, with 48% of respondents saying their organization is at Level 1, versus the extreme of a mere 3% at Level 5.
Wow... If you are even ALIVE, you are at Level 1. Seems to me, it's time to start moving along the maturity curve. It's not magic, it does not have to be expensive, although it is work, I'll grant you that. But the pursuit of process improvement sets the stage for higher margins, reduced costs, faster time to market, easier ability to partner, do mergers and acquisitions and survive the journey, etc..
Stay tuned for more - and in the meantime, feel free to sign-up for direct notification of the publication of our Business Process Management research, below.
Comments