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Characteristics of Business Processes
By Howard Smith and Peter Fingar4 |
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Large and complex, involving the
end-to-end flow of materials, information and business commitments.
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Dynamic, responding to demands
from customers and to changing market conditions.
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Widely distributed and customized across
boundaries within and between businesses, often spanning
multiple applications on disparate technology platforms.
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Long-running a single instance
of a process such as "order to cash" or "develop product" may run
for months or even years.
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Automated at least in part.
Routine or mundane activities are performed by computers wherever
possible, for the sake of speed and reliability.
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Both "business" and "technical" in nature
IT processes are a subset of business processes and provide
support to larger processes involving both people and machines.
End-to-end business processes depend on distributed computing
systems that are both transactional and collaborative. Process
models may therefore comprise network models, object models, control
flows, message flows, business rules, metrics, exceptions,
transformations and assignments.
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Dependent on and supportive of the
intelligence and judgment of humans. People perform tasks
that are too unstructured to delegate to a computer or that require
personal interaction with customers. People also make sense of the
rich information flowing through the
value chain,
solving problems before they irritate customers and devising
strategies to
take advantage of new market opportunities.
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Difficult to make visible. In many
companies business processes have been neither conscious nor
explicit. They are undocumented, embedded, ingrained and implicit
within the communal history of the organization, or if they are
documented or definition is maintained independently of the systems
that support them.
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Business Process Thinking Check List
13 Questions
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Management Function vs Process Focus |
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Effective Innovation
Process
7 Lessons from Silicon Valley Firms |
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Seed new knowledge about innovation, including reinventing the innovation process
itself...
More
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Process
Defined
Process is "an organized group of related activities that
together create a result of
value to customers."1
Each word in this definition is important:
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A process is a group
of activities, not just one. Value is created not by single activities,
but by the entire process in which all these tasks merge in a systematic
way for a clear purpose.
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Activities are related
and organized. They present a stream
of relevant, interconnected activities that must be performed in
sequence the right things in the right way to produce the desired
outcome.
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All the activities in the process work
together toward a common goal.
"People performing different steps of a process must all be aligned
around a single purpose, instead of focusing on their individual tasks
in isolation."1
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Process are not ends in themselves. They have a purpose,
they create and deliver results
that customers care about.
"A business process is the complete and
dynamically coordinated set of collaborative and transactional activities that
deliver
value to customers."4
6Ws of Corporate
Growth
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Know HOW:
know how
compete,
innovate, organize
business processes,
win and retain customers...
More
Business Process (BP):
Functional View
"A process is a specific ordering of work activities across
time and place, with a beginning, and end, and clearly identified inputs and
outputs: a structure for action."3
This definition is easy to apply in the context of the work
activities and tasks within a single department or functional group.2
If the employees of different functional groups lack a common purpose and
direction, each one will inevitably work at cross-purpose with the others.
29 Obstacles To Innovation
The Tao of
Business Process Innovation
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Yin: Adapt your processes
to the needs of your customers; Make it easy for your customers to do
business with you.
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Yang: Innovate to exceed
expectations of your customers; Help your customers and suppliers to
benefit from your innovation.
The Tao of
Business Success
Kaizen Continuous Improvement
Strategy
Kaizen means "improvement". Kaizen
strategy calls for
never-ending efforts for improvement involving everyone
in the organization managers and workers alike...
More
Implementing Kaizen: 7 Conditions
Kaizen
Mindset
Emphasis on process
establish a way of
thinking oriented at improving processes, and a management
system that supports and acknowledges people's process-oriented
efforts for improvement...
More
Enterprise Business
Process (EBP): Systems View
Enterprise business process (EBP) is "the end-to-end
(cross-departmental, and often, cross-company) coordination of work
activities that create and deliver ultimate
value to customers."2
Enterprise-wide
Business Process Management (EBPM)
EBPM, representing the third-wave of Business Process
Management, is "a deliberate and collaborative approach to
systematically and systemically managing all of a company's business
processes," says
Andrew Spanyi.
EBPM addresses the pressing need of the
new knowledge-driven economy to integrate business process
thinking with
strategy,
organizational structure and people issues.
It requires that your executive team lead and manage differently and
think more systemically about your business...
More
8 Essential Principles of EBPM
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Look at your business from the outside-in,
from the customer's perspective, as well as from the inside-out...
More
Integrating E-business
Business processes must not only
incorporate timely company information for improved
customer relationship management,
supply chain management, and beyond,
they must also be kept up-to-date with fast-changing business needs.
E-business facilitating these processes is the way most business soon
will be transacted. Whether or not you ever plan to sell products or
services over the Web, your most important customer or supplier may one day
insist upon using Web for all transaction...
More
4 Phases of IT/Business Alignment
1. Plan:
Translating
business objectives into measurable IT services. The plan
phase helps close the gap between what
business managers need and expect and what IT delivers...
More
Case in
Point
The
Trotter Scorecard
Many
GE
business units employ a tool called the Trotter Matrix to check on their
use of best practices. The scorecard was developed by Lloyd Trotter, who ran
the Electrical Distribution and Controls side at GE. He listed six desirable
attributes for each of his plants and then scored each attribute...
More
TPS-Lean Six Sigma
TPS-Lean Six Sigma is like a turbo-charged Lean Six Sigma program.
TPS-Lean Six Sigma is a revolutionary, holistic
concept. It actively has human capital embedded in Lean Six Sigma in a
manner that not only stimulates commitment, integrity,
life-business synergy,
passion,
enjoyment at work and
employee empowerment but also stimulates individual and team learning in
order to develop a motivated workforce and sustainable
performance improvement and
quality enhancement for the organization...
More
Cross-functional Management
Cross-functional management (CFM)
manages business processes across the traditional boundaries of the
functional areas. CFM relates to coordinating and
synergizing the activities of
different units for realizing the superordinate cross-functional goals and
policy deployment. It is concerned with
building a better system for achieving such cross-functional goals as
innovation,
quality,
cost, and delivery...
More
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