EVOLUTION OF BPR

Re Why Some Business Innovations Can’t Get Off The Ground

Posted on the November 7th, 2008 under BPM, CRM, Change Management, Enterprise Software, Value of BPR by Gregory Yankelovich

Somebody once said that if you formulate clear and meaningful question, you have 80% of the answer. I don’t remember who said it and will not argue the accuracy of the estimate, but the critical importance of posing the right question is beyond any doubt for me.

Some years ago I came to appreciate W5 methodology for business applications analysis which was inspired by Kipling’s poem.

I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
I send them over land and sea,
I send them east and west;
But after they have worked for me,
I give them all a rest.

 

you can find the rest of the poem at this site.

Reading Andrew McAfee’s blog post aptly named “Why Some Business Innovations Can’t Get Off The Ground” reminded me about W5 and holistic approach to BPR.

It struck me at some point over the past month that I was witnessing an excellent example of why so many business improvement efforts fail: it’s not that they’re not good ideas, it’s that their not easy enough to enforce. American’s PriorityAAccess boarding procedure is a straightforward case of what used to be called ‘business process reengineering,’ and it’s also a microcosm of why reengineering so often failed. It’s one thing for a small group of smart people to study an existing process and figure out a way to execute it better. It’s quite another to then deploy that new-and-improved process broadly –  across many business units, geographies, and/or interdependent groups.

(Bold and underscore is mine).

The use of word “enforce” illustrates the failure of business process designers to ask the question which is at the root of holistic BPR methodology - “Why would people want to use/follow this process?”. Ignoring human aspects of business process imply enforcement that rarely works in post-modern enterprise. Examples of this wasteful approach are  abandon, particularly in the CRM arena. It is time to integrate creativity of application thought leadership and human (talent) incentive management into BPR methodology. 

Comment to “Fair Comment”

Posted on the February 26th, 2008 under Organizational Transformation by Gregory Yankelovich

“Measurement of the project’s value post-implementation is often sadly lacking unless the organisation has a PMO or other business structure that sees and measures the big picture.”

http://blogs.zdnet.com/projectfailures/index.php?blogthis=1&p=574

In my 30 years of experience there was only one project which had specific monetary targets to achieve, and metrics to assign accountability. Needless to say this is still my favorite one. IMO opinion that is the start of any business case for any BPR/IT project.

Economics of Business Process

Posted on the February 15th, 2008 under Value of BPR by Gregory Yankelovich

“Money is always there, but the pockets change.”

- Gertrude Stein (1874 - 1946)

We use different terms to describe initiatives to Optimize and Automate Business Processes which conceived to support Organizational Transformation. The following are just a few examples, and virtually every company invests into these initiatives on one scale or another:

• Business Applications software implementation
  
• Business Process Re-engineering;
  
• Enterprise Software implementation
  
• ERP, CRM, etc. deployment

I estimate that at least US$ 500B was shelled out last year alone (2007) globally to buy software licenses and implementation services from the suppliers of business application software and integration services. This estimate does not account for any hardware and Change Management costs incurred in the process. One may disagree with a methodology or assumptions I have used, and I welcome suggestion for improvement, but hardly anyone would dispute that there is a lot of money being spent on these initiatives.

There is a mind numbing number of books, articles, and white papers that can be found in the Internet searches that attempt to shed light on issues of Economics and Return on Investment for these initiatives, but they largely focus on efficiencies of software engineering projects, but I have failed so far to find any material explaining an economical rationale for such a massive investment. I would greatly appreciate if anyone points me to the right source. I understand of course that the quest for higher productivity and competitive pressures are closely associated with these initiatives, but I would like to learn how successful they are and how do we know when we succeed or fail.