Change Management: Avoid Havoc In Very Uncertai...

ChangeManagement: Avoid Havoc In Very Uncertain Times
By Marcia Zidle

Escalating gas prices...tensions and turmoil in the Middle East...a struggling world economy. Leadership, in times ofuncertainty, is not that much different from that of normal times. What doesdiffer is the degree to which basic tactics of change management are applied.In times of uncertainty, leaders must pay even more attention to the peopleissues in change. Here are five ways to avoid leadership havoc.

Get off of autopilot.
Examine your organization s strategy. With your leadership team confirm orrevise your current strategy or mission. Should it change as a result of whatis going on in the environment? Should it change as a result of what is goingon with customers or competitors? Should you continue going in the samedirection swerve to the right or left or take a totally new path? Do notoverreact but do not sit still waiting for it to pass.

Manage and multiple the impact.
During uncertain times, employees are inundated with stories of downsizing, payreductions, etc. There's no one perfect way to communicate change. Someorganizations make an enormous mistake in using only low touch methods suchas newsletters or the company intranet site. But high touch face-to-faceencounters is vital. One manager puts it this way: It is important to geteyeball to eyeball to see and react to your people. Effective communicationis inclusive, candid, and decidedly two-way.

Identify your key players and re-recruit them.
Who are the most important people in your organization or team? Be aware theycan be at all levels, not just the top. Meet with this them on a regular basisto monitor what is going on. Seek their input, clarify specific performancegoals, give them the resources they need, let them go, and reward them inwhatever way you can for results. Do not lose them or their commitment.

Get out of your ivory tower pay attention to frontline action.
Related to the earlier point about refining existing strategies, it becomescritical to ensure that these strategies are turned into frontline actionplans. Changing goals and performance outcomes must be translated so thatpeople understand them, buy into them, and are motivated by them. This is thetime to power up your people engine.

Build and maintain stretch alliances.
During uncertain times it is more important than ever to maintain strongrelations with the senior leadership and with other key managers. It is also agood time to strengthen external relationships with others such as suppliers,vendors, selected customer groups, and perhaps even other organizations in asimilar business as you.

Change creates uncertainty for employees, customers, and suppliers. If youfollow these five change management techniques you will more likely maintainproductivity, retain key employees and stay sane in a world that does not stopchanging.

 

Don't be sexist - broads hate that

 

It's what we call Welsh Alzheimers- you remember everything but when Wales won the Rugby Grand Slam.

Survey:SOA muddles up business processes

From ZDNet Survey

 

SOA is all about streamlining and managing business processes, but if you really need to streamline and manage your business processes, stay away from SOA. 

That's one interpretation from a recent survey on SOA implementations. Does SOA make business process management (BPM) even more difficult than it already is? Line56's Tamina Vahidy dissected the latest research out of AMR Research, which found that a fifth of respondents (20%) had deployed SOA, with another third planning to implement in the coming 12 months.

AMR conducted a survey and found "Web services" deployments to perceived as the primary delivery vehicle of SOA  (71%), followed by portal frameworks (61%), application servers (46%), and integration frameworks (43%). About 14% regarded business process management solutions to be the ticket to SOA, and another 14% cite enterprise service bus.

There are a number of perceived benefits with SOA, including faster and more flexible reconfiguration of business processes (48%), decrease of operational costs of IT (28%), and another 15% citing secure and reliable service levels.

Vahidy notes that while BPM is the biggest benefit in SOA, the survey finds SOA companies are more likely to be having issues with business processes than non-SOA companies. Among companies that are already using SOA, 36% find themselves unable to reconfigure business processes as needed — versus 13% of non-SOA adopters.

Okay, what gives here?

According to AMR, the reason for this is likely to be the low level of BPM solutions adoption (14%), and the difficulty in service-enabling large, complex legacy systems. An SOA rollout needs to be joined by a BPM rollout. Vahidy concludes that "this illustrates the impossibility of tackling SOA as a discrete investment or strategy. It involves and benefits from adjacent technologies, like BPM, and does better in environments that have already been simplified and rationalized. In other words, if you're not willing to spend on SOA-supporting technology and have a sprawl of legacy systems, this might not be the right time to leap into SOA, especially if what you want out of the deployment is the more efficient reconfiguration of business processes."

Hey, I thought SOA was supposed to simplify things! 

The AMR finding may prove that age-old adage: "If you automate a mess, you get an automated mess." It also suggests that sometimes SOA means taking two steps forward and one step backward. Breaking down business processes into components can be a non-trivial task. In the long run, there are tantalizing long-term benefits in terms of agility and flexibility. But the short run can be messy. And politically risky if users perceive that the old application is humming along just fine.

Perhaps there is also a skew with the respondents of the survey, in which those involved in SOA are simply more aware of problems with their business processes, because they have already sat down and sorted through the issues. Perhaps they are adopting SOA because they couldn't deal with business processes under the old regime. (A causal relationship.) Or, the non-SOAers may be reporting fewer problems because the legacy system is chugging along just fine, and they have not yet begun to closely scrutinize their processes.  (Another adage kicks in here: "If it isn't broke, then break it!") 

PolarLake's Ronan Bradley also posted some commentary on this survey report, and puts the blame on the large vendors for this apparent disconnect between SOA and BPM. He notes that these results show "the first measurement I have seen of the gap between the SOA dream and the SOA reality. And that gap is BIG and likely to get bigger." Bradley says that's because there are no tangible products for SOA yet, and vendors are repackaging their old EAI products as ESB products.

So much for simplicity.

Correct Approach Required for HR Outsurcing Success

Correct Approach Required for HRO Success – Hackett Group

As per a new study by the Hackett Group, a majority of HR Outsourcing (HRO) deals singed by ‘typical’ companies result in increased cost even after relying on selective outsourcing of highly repetitive tasks as against ‘world class’ companies which manage to reduce costs by 25 percent.

The study points out to a correlation between increased spending on outsourcing and that of increase in HR cost incurred per employee. The many reasons cited for such an increase include lack of attention to streamlining the process and failure to retain staff responsible for the outsourced function. However, ‘world class’ companies, as per the report, are able to achieve a better execution of outsourcing deals by balancing factors like BPO mix and increased internal focus on strategic activities. The report also found world class companies to spend about 25 percent less and have about 16 percent less HR staff.

 

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The Usual Suspects

When it comes to driving improved performance there are 6 "Usual Suspects" which are wheeled out.  These are the ones that are going to be able to fix the performance or process issues.  In reality it is none of these, because you need to dig deeper into the root cause of the problems.

 

So the line up is:

 

Training  - if we just give the guys some more training then they will perform better

Inspection - we need to do more checking of the delivered product/service

Automation - there's some software which means that we can remove all humans

Add people - lets throw more people at it

Reorganize - once the team reports to Harry it will be fine

Outsource - let's make it someone else's problem

 

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Companies need to make managing change a COMPETENCE, not just have experienced a lot of change

 

 Many companies say that they "experience a great deal of change", or even "are experienced at change".

 

But to really drive continuous improvement in a fast moving world, comapneis need to make change management a Competence.  Something that they recognise as a skill that can be taught, honed and developed.

How to choose a Business Management System (BM...

How to choose a Business Management System

 

Your choice of approach really depends on what you intend to get from it.  If all you want to do is appease the ISO auditor every 6 months then a text based set of procedures controlled by a central Quality team will be the least cost route.

 

However, most Quality professionals are looking to move from being a COST to the business to being an ASSET.  They want to support the business so it can perform better. They are even changing their titles – “Head of Process Improvement”, “Head of Performance Management”, “Director of Operational Excellence”.

 

The problem with the old ways of capturing, documenting and making the information available is it has failed to get any buy-in and ownership from the business.  The information gathers dust on the shelf, or in a dusty corner of the company intranet.

 

One simple word will change that: ADOPTION.  If the focus of the BMS is to get adoption of the processes, working practices, procedures and work instructions, then a very different approach is needed for creating the BMS, for accessing it, and for maintaining it. 

 

The BMS needs to be described in terms of end to end processes.  Broken down hierarchically from the Board level to the shop floor.  In a format everyone can understand. Captured in live workshops to ensure adoption and consensus.    Links to supporting documents, forms, work instructions and applications (systems) attached to the relevant activity.  Maintenance of processes is delegated owners in the business. Finally performance metrics displayed with the activities that drive the numbers.

 

The benefits are compelling – Lockheed Martin UK: £21m of process improvement savings, £30m of new business won.

 

This approach, supported by case studies drawn from over 200 clients is in Ian's latest book – “Common Approach, Uncommon Results”, published by Ideas Warehouse (www.ideas-warehouse.com)

 

 

 

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CPM explained - Interview with Ian Gotts, author of Common approach, Uncommon Results

The companies, who want to adapt themselves to the changing competition conditions in a short time, support their improvement activities with various management types, information technologies and accumulation management activities. One of the management approaches is CPM. Could you please provide brief information about CPM?

CPM (Corporate Performance Management) draws together a number of existing, proven management approaches and combined they will allow the company to understand its current level of performance, and therefore take actions to improve.

The approaches or disciplines are Strategic Planning, Budgeting & Planning, Process Management, Scorecarding & Metrics, Compliance Management.  i.e. the metrics, processes, roles and responsibilities all presented in a consistent coherent picture which everyone in the business can understand, with an auditable history of all changes.

It is expected that the demand for CPM will be increasing in 2005. Do you think there is an inclination to CPM solutions in today's environment? Could you give some numbers as an example to this increase?

Firstly you should consider Performance Management rather than CPM, as this term is more general.  Various analysts and software vendors seem to each have their own version and acronym: BPM (Business P..  M..  ), CPM (Corporate P.. M..), EPM (Enterprise P.. M.. ) SEM (Strategic Enterprise Management) and so on.

We are seeing that there is significantly greater interest at the Executive Team to consider Performance Management overall, rather than as individual initiative or projects being delivered in isolation down in a business unit or department.

Another measure is the number of well-attended conferences.  I now speak at 2-3 events per month on the subject of Performance Management.  

There are niche analysts covering purely Performance Management, and all the major IT analysts, such as Gartner, Butler and AMR Research have dedicated analysts covering the area.

 

One final point, is that for some Business Intelligence software vendors CPM is seen as simply Planning and Budgeting for the Finance Department.  This is far too narrow a definition.

Do you think the companies started to apply CPM in an efficient way?

Every company has a different driver (or catalyst) for starting to get a better understanding of the metrics, processes, roles and responsibilities in their business.  Only once the basics are in place can a company consider CPM.

We are already seeing companies with fantastic benefits from applying CPM, and these projects have been delivered in less than 12 months.  For example Lockheed Martin, the defence contractor, in the UK has reduced costs by $8m this year and expect year on year savings of $6m, and have identified process improvement savings of $21m.  This has resulted in their contract win rate going from 30% to 100%.

The greater level of awareness, plus the improvement of the economy combined with strong competitive pressures is forcing every company to consider how it can improve its operational performance.  And that is what CPM is focused on.

Time, cost and efficiency-based directing and monitoring are essential to achieve success of the projects that have been started by the companies, who want to adapt themselves to the competitive environment. What could be the difficulties that a company faces with during the realization of the strategies? How can a company overcome these difficulties?

With any initiative / project the challenge is getting the changes in working practices or improvements, which were identified by the project team, adopted or accepted by the rest of the company.  

In the book we have a formula  R = I x A2 where R is the result for the company, I is the initiative / project and A is Adoption of the changes suggested by the Initiative.  Some people have said it should not be A2 (squared) but An where n=14.  It is FAR more important to get adoption for a few key initiatives than no adoption on a huge range of disconnected initiatives.

For the success of the organisations, the ability to realize the strategies is as important as determining them. The research shows that only 10% of the companies realise strategies successfully. What is the most important reason for this?

I think that there is a real problem with company's ability to translate the strategy into a series of activities which are clearly communicated and can be understood at the lowest levels in the organisation.  The strategies stay in senior management's heads, and the workers carry on as normal.  

When the CEO says "We will be more Customer Focused", what does that mean for the Call Centre operator?  Should they pick the phone up and smile, or give a bigger discount.  The critical part is – "How to you want me to act differently based on the corporate strategy, and how am I going to be mesured".

The approach of hierarchically breaking down the top level picture of the business (the strategy) which is described in terms of metrics (outcomes) and activities to deliver those outcomes (processes) is THE way to communicate the strategy and turn it into reality.

Two of the reasons of project failure are not to spread the project deliverables amongst employees and not to connect the strategy to the people's daily operations. What must the companies do for the possession of the strategies by the employees? What are the benefits of the adoption of the project outputs and the strategy?

I think that I've covered the first part in the answer to the previous question.  

 

The benefits of adoption are
- better staff morale (people know what is expected of them)
- more efficient/effective operation (people are doing the right things)
- the business is more agile (change to react to markets can be faster)
- can expand more easily (you have a blueprint of how the business works)
- alignment of strategy with day to day activities

If a company applies the CPM in an effective way would there be an increase on its profit?

Of course – that is what we are seeing from our clients in profit making industries.  In non-profit making industries (Government) we are seeing reduced cost, or additional capacity.

Do you have any advice for small and medium sized companies? What do they have to do in order to increase their profitability? How must they use CPM?

The principles of CPM is relevant to large as well as small companies.  It is is more difficult for an organisation with less than 75-100 employees, because they cannot necessarily afford to dedicate a full time project manager and part time project team to really make the project deliver.  However, when we were only 40 people Nimbus adopted the principles and it has enabled us to respond to a huge demand from the market.

My advice is to start to apply the principles, no matter what size of company you have.  It is is critical to appoint a Project Champion who is part of the Executive Team and who has the energy, vision and rive to ensure that the work is completed.

 

 

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Performance = Process & Metrics, but which comes first?

Performance in business these days (and for the foreseeable future, I would imagine) is usually defined in budget discussions, then measured and reported by your Finance Department and for publicly quoted companies reported to the City. The Finance Department will of course liaise with the business functions/divisions to put together the budget, and (where the data is not collected automatically in some system) gather reporting figures.

 

The blatant misreporting of figures by a number of companies over the last few years has shown that the numbers don't tell the whole story. They describe the results of actions however inconsistent, flawed or manipulated those actions may have been.

 

So endemic is the perceived problem of reporting that the  Sarbanes-Oxley Act has been passed that forces top management to sign that the numbers have been produced correctly. This means that they must have confidence in the way the numbers have been producedSo much confidence they are willing to bet their job on it.

You could say that the numbers are the one common language in business, but as a common operational language the numbers on their own are just not enough, you need to draw together both the activities and the numbers.

 

Linking processes and metrics

 

Think about this: top management defines company goals and strategy and takes the lead on a number of key major initiatives. They will have defined the 'Critical Success Factors' (CSF) and will have outlined a budget. I am sure they will have included the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) so that the finance department can measure and assess the result. The people in charge of operations translate the efforts to be made into operational processes and this runs down the hierarchical chains of the company.

 

Yet the problem is that in many companies the two activities of (a) the definition of Key Performance Indicators and (b) translating them into operational processes to make it all happen, are not linked.  Each goes their own way.

 

As a consequence, the people in the finance department (who are doing all the work to prepare the budgets, deliver management reports and so on) have few links to what is really happening, and, conversely, the people in the operational end of the company probably have no understanding as to how their actions help in actually realising those budgets.

 

Enter the common operational language, where strategy gets translated from the top down in an uncomplicated way by defining processes linked to performance metrics. Whenever there are questions about how to do things (the operational people), or how well things are getting done (the finance people), anyone can have a look at the tools that have been used to record and describe these processes and find the most up-to-date information.

 

Corporate Performance Management

 

What I have described is sometimes called Corporate Performance Management, Business Performance Management or Enterprise Performance Management, i.e. the principle of displaying metrics and associated processes so that the overall performance of the business can be monitored and improved.

 

However, some IT analysts (such as Gartner) started off with a data- or metrics-centric view of performance management. Their view of performance management consisted of fixing the planning and reporting cycle. Currently, in most businesses, this is a series of MSExcel spreadsheets which are distributed throughout the organisation. This is being replaced by Planning systems for the budgeting cycle, and Business Intelligence and Scorecarding systems for reportingThis is not surprising as the Business Intelligence vendors are using their marketing budgets to drive the definition of CPM

 

What analysts are now recognising, driven by clients voicing their needs, is that there is a process element required to get the full picture. The previous metrics-only view is not really Corporate Performance Management, but Corporate Performance Reporting. There is no ability to change, as there is no relationship to process – the things that people really do.

 

No surprise then, that many of the Business Intelligence software vendors (such as Cognos, Business Objects and Hyperion) are now looking at how they add process management to their Corporate Performance management suites of software. I believe that this is more likely to be by acquisition (of software or software businesses) or through strategic partnerships than internal development, as the Business Intelligence vendors' world and expertise is in the management and manipulation of vast quantities of data. They have no experience in managing processes in the form of inter-related diagrams and their linked documents and applications. Combine that with the management of multiple versions and compliance and you have a very different problem.

 

What comes first: Metrics or Process?

 

Based on the understanding that both process and metrics are needed, then which comes first? This is a pertinent question as there are many companies who already have scorecarding initiatives which are defining metrics.

 

So what exactly do I mean by metrics?

 

You have a company which develops, manufactures and sells electronic equipment. Part of the strategy says that you need new product development to produce five new products, each with a minimum of £30 million sales each year by the third year as a Critical Success Factor (CSF).

 

The metric here is the number of new products with a minimum of £30 million sales per year

 

Therefore the underpinning Key Performance Indicators (KPI) in the six-stage product development process include:

• 20 new ideas at stage two
• budget tolerance up to 5% at stage four
• product approval sign-off process to take less than 30 working days in stage six.

 

This gives you a hierarchy of interlinked measures, so that people at every level in the company understand their responsibilities and have clear accountability.

 

So, if you believe the Business Intelligence software vendors – just install their software and start measuring things for which you have data. This is because their software is good at aggregating all the corporate data and presenting it in a meaningful way – as reports or scorecards. However, this is not as valuable as working out what you should be measuring and going to find that data.

Once people start being measured they will start to change their behaviour. This is human nature. Over time areas of poor performance will be identified and, in analysing the processes that are broken, you need to make improvements in the processes. This requires people to change – for a second time. You will also begin to fully understand the measures, associated with the new processes, that you really want to hold people accountable for.

So this demonstrates that the metrics-first approach requires people to change twice – once as you start, and then once again as you implement improvements.

However, a process-led approach starts with an analysis of the operational processes. This reinforces the strategic direction from the top. At the highest level you define the core processes and the corresponding measures. Both the process and the metrics are broken down hierarchically, level by level, at the same time.

The act of discovering the processes helps you simplify them and improve them. At each level the metrics reinforce the new processes. Therefore change is only needed once and it is supported by shared access and adoption of the processes and metrics.

"If getting people to change is difficult, then changing twice in a relatively short space of time is more than TWICE as difficult."

 

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BPM markets continue to evolve...

BPM Market Continues to Evolve www.upsideresearch.com  :

By Heather Ashton

 

BPM adoption continues to spread across all industries, as we hit the

halfway mark of 2005. No longer limited to obvious verticals like financial

services and manufacturing, BPM's broad appeal is spreading to any company

with processes that require a workflow involving information, people, and

systems. Today, BPM solutions can be found in such diverse markets as

pharmaceutical, government, transportation, and healthcare. In our most

recent informal market survey, Upside Research saw the continuation of

previous patterns for adoption and implementation of BPM solutions, as well

as some interesting trends that highlight BPM's impact on the greater

enterprise software solutions market. The following results indicate that

BPM is becoming an effective solution for many enterprises.

 

* Sales growth continues but pace is more moderate. After several years of off-the-charts growth for many BPM pure-plays as they quickly ramped up their efforts and started signing marquees customers, the most recent check of revenues for BPM vendors indicates the growth has become more moderate.The average growth from the survey respondents between Q4 2004 and Q1 2005 was 20%, with many vendors adding between 10-20 new enterprise customers. A few vendors actually had no growth in the first quarter because of extended sales cycles, but have seen that business close in the second quarter.

 

* EMEA seeing greatest increase. The majority of BPM sales continue to occur in North America, but there has been a significant increase in sales to Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). This can be attributed to the efforts on the part of the vendor community and industry-driven organizations to educate global enterprises about BPM's role in business strategy. Similarly, as many early adopters roll out enterprise-scale process automation, BPM is showing up in all corners of the world, sparking the global interest.

 

* Adoption rates hampered by market confusion. While general awareness of BPM as a technology by the end user population has risen over the past several quarters, there still exists a significant level of market confusion. Because a variety of technologies are calling themselves "BPM, including Enterprise Application Integration, ERP, and Content Management, end users are confused by what constitutes a business process management solution and what components are necessary to solve specific business problems. Vendors are seeing more awareness of BPM, but are challenged by the market confusion, which is leading to longer sales cycles in some cases.

 

* Technology synergies are emerging. As with any technology market, as the market progresses, complimentary technologies emerge as important areas of overlap. BPM is no exception, and the market has seen a growing interest over the past six months in several synergistic technologies. The greatest interest has been in business rules engines, either providing the ability to integrate with an organization's existing rules engine or providing an OEMed rules engine to customers. Two other technologies, process modeling and simulation capabilities, have found themselves increasingly a part of the core BPM offering from vendors.

 

The Upside Uptake

The most recent survey results continue the trend that Upside Research has been following for more than two years: Business Process Management is a noteworthy solution for many enterprises. As the most recent survey results indicate, BPM continues to gain ground and grow from a trendy technology into a viable, enterprise-strength solution. The slower pace of growth indicates some of the bumps that BPM is hitting as it moves along the road toward mainstream technology solution. Enterprises are kicking the tires of BPM, but once they determine it can help solve some of their process issues, they are buying in a big way.

 

The continuation of development in emerging markets for BPM is also encouraging for BPM's longevity. As the global market for BPM expands, so will the best practices and understanding of how to best leverage the technology. Upside Research expects this to continue, and for organizations to continue to find unique ways to apply BPM to their business problems. Because of the market confusion, Upside Research believes it is important for the BPM market to consolidate around several important pillars of functionality in order to firmly establish itself as an easily recognized class of technology solution. This consolidation should take place over the next 12 to 18 months and continue to sharpen the core focus of Business Process Management.

 

You can also download Upside Research's latest paper BPM Survival Guide

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eSCM-SP: Threat or Opportunity for Outsourcing?

Who wants to help destroy value in their industry? A recent HBR article sets out a future where almost all processes are outsourced - but also largely commoditized as well. One of the key enablers of commoditization will be the growth of industry standards, which will allow buyers to mix and match more easily.

So you’d be forgiven for groaning at the emergence of eSCM-SP, the global standard designed to help buyers evaluate their service providers.

But as our latest White Paper shows, there are good reasons to think that eSCM-SP is likely to become mainstream quite quickly – it’s not difficult to see that eSCM-SP certification will become a standard RFP question within a year.

The upside is that any service provider at eSCM-SP Levels 4 and 5 is likely to be achieving what every business is striving for: reliable service delivery, relentless pressure on costs, continuing innovation and process improvement, and sound governance.

So, perversely, while taking eSCM-SP seriously may accelerate commoditization, it’s also in the interests of every service provider. Those organizations that achieve Level 5 certification are likely to be the winners in the long term.

Service providers are now working on eSCM-SP, and are using Nimbus control-ES software to achieve certification – as a by-product of a world-class process and performance management environment.

 

 

AQPC Reports after 12 months research on "Why Process Management?"

All work is a process--a series of interrelated activities that convert inputs into outcomes (results)--and those processes must be managed. Business process management (BPM) is a management approach that governs work (and flow) in an organization and considers suppliers, the connectivity among the organization's functional roles, and customers. BPM enables organizations to become process-focused, understanding and managing their inner workings from a horizontal, process viewpoint, rather than a vertical, functional viewpoint; this more comprehensive view yields greater operational efficiency, control, and customer satisfaction. This report examines how organizations use BPM to better understand and improve their work, design and implement a successful BPM initiative, and translate BPM into high-impact business outcomes.

 

In addition to qualitative and quantitative data concerning key findings, this report has in-depth case studies of best practices at: Air Products and Chemicals Inc., Coors Brewing Co., Deere & Co., Northrop Grumman Space Technology, and Operations Management International Inc.

 

Click here to view the executive summary for this report.

 

Implementing SAP the smarter, faster way

For many organisations the tool used to capture the end-users view of the operation and best practice is ARIS, from IDS-Scheer.  Years and hundreds of thousands of pounds of investment in process models stored in ARIS which have not been communicated with end users, have not been used for end-user training, are not being used for compliance.

 

The success of an SAP implementation is governed not by the quality of the technology, the level of functionality or the robustness of the interfaces.  Instead, extensive research has shown the best implementations – those that deliver the best ROI – are those where the end user organisation have been engaged, a strong formal change program is in place, and where there is good adoption across the organisation of the new working practices which exploit SAP.

 

Question: Can you leverage the investment in ARIS to achieve great end user adoption?

 

Answer:  Not until the launch of control-ES for SAP & ARIS .

 

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You know there's a better way... by Winnie the Pooh

BPM _ what is more important - process modelling or process automation

Simplify, Automate, Monitor.... gives you

• Strategic alignment
• Streamlined operation
• Consistent approach
• Measuring what matters
• Sustainable change

….and then you are ready for Automation The alternative is approach is Simply Automate and Monitor....
This is what the BPM (workflow / automation) vendors whould have you believe. Simply get going and you will quickly see where the problems are.

Our view, which is shared by many of the analysts (such as Gartner) is that this approach gives

Your mess for less

So it is not "which is most important", but "what is the correct sequence".

Success = optimised processes

''Those of us that were successful in the last 10 years were
successful because they optimised their processes."

Thomas Baldry, DPWN* at the Mail & Express Conference on 13 May 2005
in Brussels.

*DPWN (Deutsche Post World Net) has 380,000 employees in more than 220
countries and territories worldwide, and generated revenue of EUR43
bn ($58 billion) in 2004.

Why the Quality Manager is an unnecessary overhead

So your business card says Quality Manager or Head of Quality. But if you (or your team ) are the owners of the Quality Manual and ensures that you get your ISO9000 certificate on the wall each year, then you are an “unnecessary overhead”. It’s not that you are not working hard. I’m sure you are, but you are not contributing to the long term success of the company.

To really achieve long term, sustainable success, companies now recognise that they need get alignment of every employees’ activities with corporate strategy. That means that everyone, no matter what level or department, understands what their job is, how it fits into the big picture, how well they are performing, and therefore how they contribute to the success of the company.

This is operational excellence with compliance (ISO) as a by-product… not the primary aim.

So how do you change from being a liability (cost) to being an asset (value)? It is certainly not just by changing your title to “Chief of Process Improvement”. A different approach is required, where the QM changes from being the "owner of the Quality Manual" to being the "facilitator of process improvement", with a focus on getting adoption of business practices by the employees rather than worrying about the next audit.

The first, and major challenge, is getting top level support for an end-to-end process focused approach. Whilst this was tough 2-3 years ago, the high-profile Sarbanes-Oxley court cases are now making “process” and “compliance” terms which the Board are open to hearing. They still don’t know what to do about it.. which is your opportunity.

Present a convincing and proven way of achieve their goals and you have transformed yourself from the unknown person in a small dusty office to being a key to the delivery of the corporate strategy.

So is this a nice theoretical idea or proven in practice? Absolutely proven.

By proven I don’t mean once or twice, but in 100’s of well-known corporations such as Lockheed Martin, Telewest, DaimlerChrysler and Total. Interestingly the most heavily regulated industries are those which are embracing the changes most quickly – banking & pharmaceutical. But we’re seeing companies in every industry embracing this new way of delivering the company’s Operational Manual over the intranet. Their drive may not be regulation, but may be outsourcing or implementing a new software application.

So in 4 jargon-filled sentences, what is the approach?

• Map the end-to-end processes of the business in live workshops - top-down and hierarchically.
• Link process steps to supporting documents, applications and related performance metrics.
• Brand it and deliver this information through the intranet to the entire company, allow collaboration to suggest change and provide a transparent and auditable sign-off workflow process.
• Provide a personalized view of information for a role or employee which encourages them to access this as the “Single Source of Truth”.

Brand it. Sell it internally. Make sure people use it.

For Avaya they know it as “HowTo”, for Total it is “know how”, for TaylorWoodrow it is “TheWayThat We Work – TWTWW), for Barclays Global Investors “The Manager’s Toolkit” for Philips “Excellence On Line – EOL”

Eager to know more? Want to understand what the new world could be like?. I’ve just written a book based on over 5 years experience working with 500 companies in UK, called Common Approach, Uncommon Results published by Ideas-Warehouse (www.ideas-warehouse.com).

You can download a summary, or the whole book as a PDF from the website, or purchase a copy of the book.

Is culture change really required to get business transformation?

It depends on the scale of the change you need to get. Small
evolutionary change requires that people understand the reasons and
benefits of the change.

For larger change, which is likely to be uncomfortable (i.e. All
change ...) the you need to identify (or create) a catalyst or crisis.

For "genuine" catalysts you have M&A, software package
implementations, outsourcing, compliance.

When "creating" a need for change you need to be careful tha it is not
seen as an empty threat. Examples are competition, compliance, a
potential outsourcing, and putting in place transparent metrics.

The number 7.....

The number 7 is a recurrent theme in our universe. It represents the
number of; days in the week; wonders of the world; sides of a 20p and
50p coin; million cubic feet of water let into the ocean by the Amazon
River every second; items most people can process and remember (called
the digit span); spikes on the statue of Liberty crown; days after a
Japanese baby's birth when celebrations take place (they also mourn
the seventh day and seventh week following a death). From cradle to
grave the number abounds in our daily lives.

Just a thought....

Voice of experience on Process - AXA

From a new (long) interview on the McKinsey Quarterly site with Claude Brunet, Board Member responsible for operations at AXA:

“The biggest challenge is getting service employees to understand that they use processes. After 30 years of Total Quality Management and other improvement programs, people in manufacturing already have this perspective. They know what a process is, how to analyze it, and how to improve it. This is all new for people in service companies.

If you want to innovate, you must always do so in a cost-effective, predictable way, and for that you must master your processes. Excellent manufacturers know how to do this. We will too.”

Fwd: Culture change vs process change

Is culture change really required to get business transformation?

It depends on the scale of the change you need to get. Small
evolutionary change requires that people understand the reasons and
benefits of the change.

For larger change, which is likely to be uncomfortable (i.e. All
change ...) the you need to identify (or create) a catalyst or crisis.

For "genuine" catalysts you have M&A, software package
implementations, outsourcing, compliance.

When "creating" a need for change you need to be careful tha it is not
seen as an empty threat. Examples are competition, compliance, a
potential outsourcing, and putting in place transparent metrics.

WIIFM - the alternative version

Normally WIIFM stands for "What's In It For Me" but at a recent
meeting the sales team of a Siebel implementation renamed it to "Why
Is It Forced on Me"

How BPA tools are changing

The Business Process Analysis (BPA) market is evolving. There are strong market forces are work. And this change is being recognised by Gartner who comment on and rate software vendors.

Over the last 5 years BPA tools have been used by Business Analyst (BAs). BAs are all about building systems or configuring systems and they used to be the final word on how the business should run. They were the experts on analysing the business. So the BPA tools have been developed to support the requirements of BAs; data modelling, entity relationship diagrams, flowcharting, metadata, object modelling, and strong analytical tools.

But the BPA market is changing for a number of reasons. End-users are developing far more power, and they want to take ownership of the process design and analysis as they will have the on-going task of maintenance and continuous improvement.

These ar real people out in the trenches dealing with customers, producing products, paying the bills etc. Their requirements are all about associated with widescale adoption of changes in working practices; change management.

As there is currently no recognised market for change management applications, the BPA market is the closest to satisfying the requirements, and is where we should look to try and predict the future winners. But just as IBM PC was wrong footed by the more nimble Dell who has gone one to dominate the market, this “discontinuous change” in requirements could bring other vendors to the forefront which are better suited to meeting the requirements.

So why “discontinuous change”? Because it requires a different type of thinking, as illustrated by the table below, and many of the requirements for the BAs cannot co-exist with the end-user requirements. It is a functionality compromise.

Functionality BA perspective End-user
Process mapping Capable of being “executed” by a workflow engine Capable of being understood by my mother
Data modelling Support for BPN / BPEL / etc notation Export capability at lowest levels
Access Key BA’s with powerful PCs Dynamic to anybody with a browser-enabled device
Ease of use Once trained, easily used Intuitive, just like their favourite website
Appealing to use Not necessary as power users Critical to encourage adoption
Personalisation Not required Critical to eliminate information overload
Performance Fast PC 24X7 100% availability
Multi-language English is business language Personalised multi-lingual support
Authorisation Version control Full ISO/FDA/FSA compliance and audit trail

The analysts that cover the markets (Butler, Gartner, Forrester and Ventana Research) often have very different views. However, they have managed to agree on one thing. That is, that www.control-CE.com has upset the happy established BPA status quo and is currently setting the standard for the change management marketplace.

And best of all it is FREE.

Why people don't perform....

No-one (well virtually no-one) comes into work to deliberately do a BAD job.

They are either (only 1 of 3 options)
- badly directed
- badly motivated
- badly trained

How do we fix this?

- badly directed
  * do we really know what we want people to do? (clearly enough, in enough detail)
  * how have we communicate it? (clearly enough, in enough detail)

- badly motivated
  * are we measuring the right thing? (you get what you measure)
  * is the person right for the job? (skills & capability vs what we want them to do)

- badly trained
  * are we training the people on their job or just on the systems they have to use.

Again - this is a simple process & performance issue.....and all of it lies at the feet of the manager.

A manager's roles is very simple.... to make it as easy as possible for his team to do the correct job to the upmost of their ability.

The new website

The new website has been launched. This is only Phase 1, so plenty more ideas to implement in Phase 2.

Phase 1 has
- more information about control-CE, and a comparison with the full controlES (Enterprise Suite),
- a set of Community tools
-- an easy way to tell others about control-CE
-- a Forum so you can discuss with other control-CE consultants, find projects or find consultants
-- links to this weblog
- suggestions on how to use control-CE to MAKE MONEY

Phase 2 will have
- details of the Partners Programme
- banners and buttons so that you can add links for your website
- control-CE maps with FREE content e.g. HR best practice, software development processes

..... and anything else you think is important

Why you shouldn't use MS Visio....

Why don't people use MSExcel for running their accounting systems? Seems a silly, slightly ridiculous question. It's quite obvious

• MSExcel is a single user, desktop based solution.
• There is little or no control of versions of the spreadsheets, access rights or any audit trail.
• Thre is no structure or integrity of the numbers in different cells
• It is difficult to share a single instance of the numbers in real-time with multiple people in disparate locations
• It is impossible to see the relationships between the numbers and supporting transactions or documents

Your processes and their related documents are the DNA of your business - a valuable business asset, but not on the balance sheet. So why would you use MSVisio to manage data which is considered by many to be of equal value to your accounting data.

There are strong parallels.

Just as you should not be using MSExcel and should be using a proven robust Accounting package for your accounts, you should be using an application designed for for managing process and process related documentation, rather than MSVisio.

It's not your fault. You just didn't know control-ES existed. But don't worry. control-ES can import MSVisio.

Rebranding and a new website

The working name for the product during the test phase was control-ES Consultants Edition. This was a bit of a mouthful, so it has been rebranded

Along with the new name is a new logo.


The branding will be incorporated into the next release of control-CE, which is is R6.3.

But what is more important is that work has started on the website to develop it so that it is a resource for consultants using control-CE. Look out for the announcement here

It works - so lets get started promoting it

An invite to download the consultants edition was sent out to a random selection of 2000 people who had "consultant" in their title. So far after 8 weeks we've 500 downloads, which has identified a number of new partners and some new clients.

More importantly, there are consultants out there getting value from control-CE.

There has been no negative effect of making it available, only positive - so we are going to widen the net and stat making it available to anyone who is a consultant.

Start recommending to your friends.

We are also going to start developing the website so that it is valuable resource to consultants, and ideally turns into a self-help community around business transformation, control-ES and adoption.

The start of something exciting... the Nimbus control-ES Consultants Edition

There IS such a thing as a free lunch

It is clear that the standard tool used for process modelling by consultants is either MSPowerpoint or MSVisio. Neither of which were designed for the job. Clearly control-ES does the job (700 clients and 150,000 users can’t be all wrong). But unless you experience control-ES, you will never know.

Therefore we have decided to make the process mapping component of control-ES available for FREE to consultants.

It is NOT demoware – it is fully functioning software – a single-user version of the control-ES product. We know you will find it very valuable. Seems too good to be true?

What & Why?

We want consultants to experience how simple and quick control-ES is to use. And get value from it. If and when you want to work on a team project or share the maps with a wider audience across their client’s intranet…. you will need to talk to us about buying the full control-ES (Enterprise Suite).

We also realise, that for many of you, you won’t see the need for control-ES and that is OK. Use the Consultants Edition with our blessing and make life easier for you and your clients.

How do you get a copy?

Simple. There is a Consultants Edition website (www.consultants-edition.com), where you can download the installation program ( 18 MB).

Once you have installed it, there is a QuickStart Guide, interactive Tutorial and On-line Manual.

After 14 days (or before if you want to) you’ll need to register to continue to use control-ES. That is simple phone call. Then we can keep you informed of upgrades.

Get going…now

Download Consultants Edition now… and be prepared to surprise your clients….. www.consultants-edition.com