EVOLUTION OF BPR

Wrecking the 80-20 Rule

Posted on the March 24th, 2008 under BPM, CRM, Sales Force Automation, Value of BPR by Gregory Yankelovich

  CRM, if it’s working right, is a tool for destroying the 80-20 business equation.

The best examples of CRM wrecking 80-20 rule are experienced when methodology is formalized, integrated into business processes and encoded within software. Few examples to illustrate the point are dramatic improvements in

• margin via elimination of excessive discounting caused by inadequate forecasting methods and practices;
• new sales hires retention and rump up enabled by clearly stated process guidance, terminology, and definitions; 
• lead conversion ratio since streamlining of pipeline management eliminates “stale” leads;
• customer satisfaction, i.e. retention enabled by flowing customer (contact/person) information across departments/sales teams/customer support/marketing, etc. within a proper context.

That makes CRM initiatives such a high risk/but much higher return proposition - if done right the ROI is much higher and faster than most of other options.

To build or to buy, that is the question

Posted on the March 11th, 2008 under BPM, Business Risk, CRM, SaaS, Sales Force Automation by Gregory Yankelovich

When it comes to  CRM software, one would think that nowadays this question can only be asked by someone  as disturbed as Hamlet. Considering choices of products available for use on demand (SaaS) or for purchase to use in house, why would anybody even think about building something from scratch?

BPM with TIBCO Business Studio

Posted on the March 10th, 2008 under BPM, Organizational Transformation by Matthew Yankelovich

A recent post by Kaushal Mashruwala over at Financial Express titled "SOA Strategy and Execution is Failing in Many Companies" inspired this particular post that will look at BPM a little more closely with the use of a tool that I consider critical when discussing BPR.

"the SOA value proposition is fundamentally unimportant to business people. It’s just another way to implement an application. What’s more important to business managers is how they can change, through technology, the way their businesses are run. And that’s where BPM comes in."

TIBCO Business Studio is a Business Process Modelling application by TIBCO Software Inc. (NASDAQ:TIBX) out of Palo Alto, California.  Simplistically, the software provides two distinct views of a single process model that are relevant to both IT and Business, providing a means of collaboration between the two groups that would have otherwise required the use of multiple applications.  The software also incorporates robust simulation capabilities using either real data or provided algorithms, that integrate quite well with the overall interface.

The purpose of this specific post is to share my personal perspective learning how to use this application that I think many would argue is a relatively advanced piece of software.  It is this advanced functionality that frightens a lot of BPM practitioners and keeps them latching on to the more comfortable tools like VISIO, not allowing them to tap into some of the more useful benefits of a tool like Business Studio.