Supporting activities

Sample supporting activities for creating, driving and maintaining a BPM initiative funding model:

Inventory of processes along the enterprise value chain

This section describes the following information:

The value of doing a process inventory
Framework for doing process inventory and analysis
Analysis guidelines
Supporting activities

The value of doing a process inventory

The initial use of BPM to address business problems with process-oriented solutions is typically of primary value in the immediate business areas. Some early projects might also be valuable for the operational experience with BPM and a BPMS.

However, after an enterprise value chain is defined as part of the vision, goal, and strategy mandate, an important step is to identify key supporting processes that drive the enterprise value chain. These key processes exist within a context and framework that immediately has enterprise-wide strategic importance and should not require you to build a new business case when it comes time for implementation.

The exercise of discovery, identification, and documentation is commonly known as an inventory. The goal is to identify a pipeline of special processes that inherently have enterprise-level value and directly affect the vision, goals, and strategy that are defined by the strategy element of the BPM CoE. These processes should be treated differently from other processes that are not directly related to the enterprise value chain.

What differentiates these key processes from other processes is their implied higher ROI, which justifies accelerating the funding to implement them. Also, addressing key processes through BPM can affect the KPIs that are used to measure the success of BPM in a much more direct way than other processes that are not related directly to the enterprise value chain.

The greater mandate of overseeing and aligning all BPM projects within the enterprise is what sustains the initiative, the real goal of the BPM CoE is to complete the inventory and process improvement implementation of key processes on the enterprise value chain.

Framework for doing process inventory and analysis

A process inventory exercise spanning the entire value chain usually yields a large number of processes and can potentially take a long time, depending on the depth of analysis and time that are devoted to each process

To effectively manage the time and effort required to complete a process inventory we provide a few basic guidelines and best practices that should allow the strategy element of your BPM CoE to produce actionable results in a bounded effort.

Inventory guidelines

The inventory framework is based on the following basic guidelines:

Distribute the process inventory data-gathering activities
Various process improvement tactics can exist, which vary in degree of effort and automation.
Not all processes in the inventory can benefit from a full BPM automation project.

Identifying and documenting these processes is still valuable because they will likely benefit from one of the process improvement tactics (outlined in this section). Therefore, it is also valuable to go through a categorization exercise that attempts to align each process identified in the inventory against the appropriate process improvement tactic from which it can benefit the most (as determined by the Process Inventory Analysis Framework).

Processes categorized along the Process Improvement Tactics matrix will likely be weighed more heavily toward standard operating procedure (SOP) optimization than toward full BPM automation

Few processes warrant the high cost of fine-grain automation against the expected ROI. However, an important point to note is that we have an entire spectrum of process improvement tactics to choose from, and that a full automation project is not the only option.

Table 3.2.5/1

Process improvement tactic	Explanation	Typical symptoms
Leave Alone	No incentive to improve. ROI from process improvement effort is too low.	Ad-hoc processes happen infrequently or are processes already and will not benefit from further improvements.
Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) Optimization	Significant room for improvement by analyzing and optimizing the SOP without BPM automation.	Processes are performed with a script (over the phone or in person).
Blueworks Live (BWL) Automation	Significant room for improvement by the automation capability in Blueworks Live without BPM automation.	Processes are conducted today in email or recurring meetings.
Business Process Manager (BPM) Swivel-Chair Automation for Consistency	Significant value from consistency improvement by a orchestration and automation within BPM. All individual activity-level-automation is kept at the check-list level (Swivel over to X system and do Y. Swivel back and click Finished when done with this checklist). This step might also be called coarse grained automation.	Primary opportunity for value is increased consistency (everyone does the same thing the same way) in the process. Processes often exhibit symptoms of rework. Processes can also benefit from enhanced visibility using BPM reporting and analysis tools, with the intent of gaining operational efficiency (workload balancing, and threshold fine-tuning).

Table 3.2.5/2

Process improvement tactic	Explanation	Typical symptoms
BPM Swivel-Chair Automation for Visibility	Not enough is known about this process to place it in one of the other “Process Improvement Measure” categories. A swivel-chair approach (described in the previous row) is called for, but primarily for the purpose of increasing visibility and diagnostics about the process. The intent here is a short period of swivel-chair automation, with predesigned, targeted reports that yield a fresh categorization in this matrix after the pilot period.	Processes where the primary opportunity is unclear and more visibility or analysis is needed. Processes can benefit from further analysis with BPM tools (custom reports, optimizer, and so on) and a recategorization in the matrix following the analysis.
BPM Hybrid Automation	Significant room for improvement in both consistency and some (but not all) individual activity automation. This process is orchestrated through BPM and some individual activities are also automated with a direct integration to the back-end system where the work is supposed to be done. Some other activities may remain in the swivel-chair realm as defined above as. In this hybrid mixture of swivel-chair and automated activities, the automated activities have a high expected ROI and the swivel-chair activities do not. Individual activity automation can also be called fine grained automation.	Processes where there is a clear benefit from automation, visibility and control, across the board at a Coarse Grain level, and in a limited fashion at the Fine Grain level. However, this benefit comes at a high integration effort cost. Some of the integrations involved with individual activities in these processes are non-value-added and thus should be done through the Swivel-Chair approach.
BPM Full Automation	Significant room for improvement in both consistency and all individual activity automation. This process is orchestrated through BPM and all individual activities are also automated with a direct integration to the back-end system where the work is supposed to be done. All individual activities have a high expected ROI.	These processes have a clear benefit from automation, visibility and control, both at a coarse-grain and at a fine-grain level, throughout. The cost of integrations is manageable and commensurate with the benefit that is gained by process improvement.

uploads/dw_bpm_maz10.jpg — *Fig. 3.2.5/1 Inventory process*