Session Information:

Business Transformation Through an Enterprise Management System

Across all industries and regions, the need for globalization and digital transformation is enormous and radically changing the way companies compete. This session discusses how companies can transform to stay competitive and how an Enterprise Management System can be a strategic asset for your business.

Walk away from this session with an understanding of how to be in full control of your changing organization while gaining greater visibility of operations and the transparency needed to make impactful business decisions.

Session Transcript:

Hello and welcome to today's presentation on business transformation key insights for success with business process excellence my name is Zach Bennett. I'm the CEO and chief architect of visual enterprise architecture and I appreciate you joining us today for the BTOES at home conference business transformation and operational excellence, visual enterprise architecture is a strategic consulting and solutions firm focused on business process excellence i.t portfolio management enterprise architecture and software product development.

Our team of consultants has strategic expertise in a variety of industries we've worked in more than 27 different countries across the globe and more than 175 of the fortune 1015 of the fortune 50 as well as hundreds of small and medium-sized businesses our team is spread throughout both north America as well as our research and development team located in Pune, India.

So to start our discussion off today about best practices for enterprise process management i wanted to start with some enterprise processes let's call them the centers of excellences the cues I'm sure all of you have them in your organization i brought a few examples today to talk about the first is the the project management office the good old pmo you know the pmo really uh some of the key objectives of the pmo is to help increase transparency for strategic investments to solve some of your business challenges and when you're looking at business processes in your organization the projects are how you get from one place to another.

You can kind of think of them as transportation so it's very important that uh you understand uh year to year quarter to quarter how these projects affect your ability to deliver and succeed with business process management the bpmcle will be the focus of much of our conversation.

Today but two of the core objectives of this coe is to manage your processes for business transformation or digital transformation and to help you drive ownership of the processes in your portfolio the enterprise architecture coe exists to improve transparency of all the applications in your portfolio reduce costs facilitate standards and i t governance but most importantly to help remove the complexity from the i t solutions in your organization the enterprise architecture coe usually works very closely with the bpm coe as well as the pmo.

All three of these form a triad that work together to help solve solutions within the organization but understanding the role that each of them plays is an important part of being successful with digital transformation more recently we've also seen the emergence of the business intelligence center of excellence.

I've also seen this called the process intelligence center what this is is the availability of a lot of real-time process information from things like automation process mining has put the teams in the position where they can respond in real time to real business challenges especially in today's you know current events and current environment you know making uh this information available to to business stakeholders and aligning with their business objectives so that they can more quickly turn around these decisions and respond to real life events so let's talk for a minute a little bit more about these stakeholders and the roles they play in your organization.

I thought I'd bring up a couple of different client solutions or we like to call them client solutions within your organization as you deal with different uh business stakeholders you have to really understand a little bit more about what their pain points are and how you can help them solve real business challenges these groups are usually looking at how to manage transformation programs how to facilitate projects with the pmo that fit into each of the program categories.

How to manage enterprise-wide process frameworks how to support different line of business requirements each individual line of business may require different types of documents different artifacts have different ways that they want to consume information is when you're running things at the program level in the transformation office hey call at the office of the cio call it the the transformation office whatever these names are it's very much about getting different parts of the organization to work together and to treat this as an enterprise level initiative the business process center of excellence is another name for this type of organization made up of the vp of process improvement.

The director of process improvement and the teams of senior business architects that help to provide services within the organization we see two different ways that these uh centers of excellence can be structured sometimes they're a very centralized organization they perform all the the for example the facilitation uh the modeling resources the library or asset management of the processes as well as the underlying systems and information and there's also the federated model where there is a core group that provides a lot of the governance functions around process management but they're more of enablers to lines of business to have their.

Own process management resources to conduct workshops facilitation to capture processes and and build this long-term process asset management they're doing a lot of the same things as the transformation office of course a managing programs managing projects and ensuring that the way that processes are captured within the organization is fairly consistent the quality and risk management teams uh often represented by vps or directors of quality or risk bring their own different flavor to the process management requires of the organization talking about uh the consistency and standardization to which processes are captured and communicated across the enterprise.

A lot of times these roles are facilitating more of the regulatory requirements of the organization very much around process standardization can a process be captured and represented in a consistent fashion time after time one of the success factors here for supporting these types of groups is uh to move away from the the long uh verbose type word documents.

That capture processes and more towards a model driven approach where you can not only represent the processes visually but also generate these process documents you know those sops and ensure that over time as they're updated you're updating not only the the representation of the process but the details of the processes themselves.

So if we use the same transportation reference here if we talk about the office of transformation continuous improvement and being the the transportation network strategically setting up a framework by which everyone in the organization can standardize and process and take a process-centric or process-minded approach to the way that you perform your work the process center of excellence is the the operators of this transportation network ensuring that uh there's consistency in the way that the network is used in facilitating maintenance and operation of this network over time quality and risk management individuals are participants in this network.

They use this transportation network to achieve their business objectives now if we continue with the transportation reference and we look at some other examples here that I've provided of of options for getting from one place to the other the ERP implementation these are long-term multi-year opportunities for you to support all three of these elements to work at the program level to look at the project level and to provide that support across different types of customers over a long period of time and supporting a large business unit transformation.

The ERP implementations require enormous amounts of effort from a variety of different vendors and supporters and we're strong advocates that you as an organization to really maintain this knowledge internally, it's critical that over time if you want to be competitive in your business challenges that you maintain your own process information you have a lot of different delivery agents you have in system integrators you have system matter subject matter experts you have other participants that play an important role in your success or failure of your projects but understanding your business processes what sets you aside makes you unique in your ability to deliver on your business challenges.

When we talk about business process excellence in your organization it's not just about identifying all of these roles understanding their objectives working within all the different centers of excellence but talking about how you as an organization approach business process excellence or maturity most organizations go through a long journey of transformation and the way that they as a culture address a process in general starting at level one most organizations don't have organized process that's usually characteristics of organizations that are going out of business these days organizations have reached at least some level of organization level two of process management meaning they are capturing processes maybe not in a consistent fashion maybe they captured in different formats some of the business departments use excel some use long word documents maybe they're captured in power points maybe you have a whole collection of technology solutions for capturing different parts of processes depending upon.

Who's consuming that information crossing the gap and getting from lack of organized process into a majority of organized processes is one of the biggest challenges that organizations face we call this crossing the process gap it means you go from a disorganized structure to a well thought out and strategically laid out planned and managing process organizing your process means centralizing your information management and your knowledge management around a consistent framework an enterprise classification or process classification framework this enables everyone in the organization to view processes in a similar fashion until you cross this process gap.

It's pretty unrealistic to think about how are you going to achieve some of the more advanced enterprise process management capabilities that you're all striving for as an organization it's not just about modeling processes but real success and real value is driven from the other parts of process management that includes process governance process mining and process automation the most mature organizations that do have processes.

That are continuously improved have a managed portfolio of processes have a strong structure for processes in place have a reference framework in place for benchmarking measuring and monitoring processes have a consistent way of capturing and communicating processes across the organization all these pieces must work together in order to really achieve efficient process transformation as a discipline at visual enterprise architecture we like to refer to the four quadrants of business process excellence the first is process modeling process modeling is a way of representing business processes or business activities.

That you perform within the organization it's those day-to-day activities representing each of these processes means you're able to identify which activities you're performing and where they are throughout the business process framework of the organization this enables you to look at the different ways that certain processes are performed and identify the most efficient or common method for executing these processes representation of these processes is usually done in a standard form of notation business process modeling notation or bpmn is now the most common standard of representing processes across organizations across industries and across platforms.

It's only through this common representation of processes in a common notation are you able to understand all the interfaces between processes and look at your process as a portfolio how do i manage different parts of my process portfolio with different capabilities and different tools to address the unique challenges of each part of the quadrant of business process management process governance is the practice of managing all the processes.

That you've captured during your process modeling activities process governance serves a series of different requirements within the organization but effectively using process governance to drive process ownership and ensure that stakeholders participate in all of your activities these tasks ensure that the delivery of process governed in the organization meets with approval by all the different stakeholders defining the process governance itself means looking at the specific tasks roles screens and participants to make sure that all the communications about the workflow of process governance have been uniformly defined deployment of this configuration and workflow for process governance must enable release procedures.

So that you can support changes to these governance processes over time i can guarantee that there's a life cycle of process governance for your organization and you will iterate the complexity of governance as you build more process ownership and as you build the requirements and meet the needs of your additional stakeholders execution of a process governance solutions means that you can enable the business and also quality or regulatory stakeholders to communicate changes about process models in a consistent fashion ensuring notifications that are very clear in the nature request for changes training people on updates to each of these processes and ensuring that they follow the workflow process with all of their outstanding tasks that are required to be completed monitoring of the governance process ensures that you have visibility of all the in-progress workflow supporting project managers program managers with real-time visibility to the governance of processes and where they stand in the release management life cycle process governance and process modeling are two foundations of business process excellence.

They work very closely together you build processes you release processes and you ensure that stakeholders take ownership of those processes these types of activities are still characteristic though of organizations that are still advancing in their journey up the maturity scale the next element of the four quadrants of process excellence is process mining process mining has been gaining in popularity tremendously especially in the last few years although process mining has been around for more than a decade the value.

That it brings to an organization has grown almost tenfold in a short amount of time you see process mining lets you look at your existing processes to analyze what you're doing each and every day in a majority of the systems that almost all of your teams use most most technology solutions they keep a record of these activities in transactions even sometimes across different systems looking at the way that you execute your processes and more importantly.

How you execute your processes in real time is where process mining really starts to drive significant value in the activities and capabilities of business process excellence when you look at process mining I thought I'd identify some of the most value driven use cases that we've seen in our engagements with customers here they are cash flow optimization procurement and supply chain optimization i.t service management optimization and execution governance process mining.

Solutions drive real cost savings real time savings real business challenges are being solved based upon real data taken from your existing transactions things like payment discount maximization reducing the amount of days outstanding for sales reducing working capital requirements optimizing your spend removing maverick buying ensuring that you have a proper management of escalation and reopen rates resolution times and addressing vendor sla violations real process intelligence means that you're able to manage process and policy conformance and serve regulatory compliance requirements process mining addresses each of these challenges by looking at the actual data performing.

The analysis of thousands tens of thousands hundreds of thousands or even millions of processes really gives you visibility into the true nature of how they're performed process mining differs greatly from process modeling and process governance all elements of the quadrant really work together to ensure business process excellence but process mining brings that capability of looking at this high volume of transactions.

You can identify what processes are you can describe them and capture them in visual representations through process modeling you can ensure that process owners review the sequence of events and tasks to ensure that you've represented the process correctly but when processes are executed in real time they take a variety of different pathways sometimes dozens hundreds or even thousands of variations exist process mining allows you to look across.

The entire spectrum of these activities the final quadrant of process excellence is process automation process automation brings together all the other elements in the quadrant to enable you to take action based upon the findings you've uncovered through process modeling process governance and process mining so how do each of these four elements of the quadrant work together if you identify processes in process modeling you represent them in a uniform way for the organization to understand better.

If you govern your processes you ensure the people that have responsibility for the successful operation of those tasks understand how the process works and have a shared vision for how it should be executed process mining allows you to analyze each of the processes as they're executed looking at what you've designed what you've approved to ensure that this is the way that these tasks are being performed but once you have all this information.

It's process automation that really drives value from delivering technology solutions that reduce bottlenecks simplify the execution of processes reduce waste require less resources all of these are done by identifying how process automation can ensure better operational visibility for your company artificial intelligence and machine learning are offering even more value-added capabilities by predicting and forecasting processes and how they'll be operated in the future and facilitating real-time monitoring throughout the entire life cycle.

So we've seen companies at all different levels of maturity throughout the life cycle and when you take all these four quadrants into context what are some of the early success drivers we see with companies that are still looking at this long journey ahead for business process excellence first it's important to focus on the delivery of the business excellence program what are some of the objectives you're trying to reach enterprise wide process visibility usually.

You're solving the challenge that business processes are not represented the same across different lines of business across regions across product lines business process ownership for me process ownership and governance is one of the most important success factors developing process models even mining process information requires that you have the appropriate stakeholders to to ensure that the analysis you're providing is accurate it's these business stakeholders that usually set the direction for progress and transformation in the organization one early success.

You may strive for in supporting these business stakeholders is facilitating an environment where they can capture processes both visually and also generate this process documentation directly from the solution it's something i touched upon earlier but it helps them move away from the long process of change management that exists today another driver for success in process excellence is the use of process frameworks this should fit directly into your core strategy for process management what are the types of benefits.

You gain from using existing process framework as much as your company may think that absolutely everything you do is unique I can guarantee you that's not true with very few exceptions somewhere between 90 94 96 98 percent of your processes are done by every other organization everybody recruits people hires people and has an employee life cycle everybody has accounts payable and accounts receivable everybody has technology solutions to support their business strategies.

All these elements are common amongst every single organization you need to focus on competitive advantage what is it that's unique about your processes that set you apart from your competitors use of an industry relevant framework enables you to compare yourself with other peers within your industry industry frameworks are the easiest way for you to refocus this energy on those areas of your business.

That require more time and resources some examples of industry relevant frameworks include the process classification framework or pcf of the supply chain operation reference model or score by the banking industry architecture network as well as accord and fiat there's quite a number of frameworks most of them are readily available.

If you're members of the organization uh they can also be made available in greater detail uh and also these frameworks come usually with existing benchmarks by organizations that can enable you to really look closely at the time it takes for you to execute your processes versus some of the other companies in your industry and when you think about your enterprise process management strategy what are the other things you're trying to accomplish with your business process excellence program are you facilitating strategic objectives uh deploying process frameworks creating new perspectives on the business to ensure.

That you can be successful identifying those governance structures for both the short and long term that will enable you to not only capture but have owner reviewed and owner approved content for the rest of the organization are you identifying a methodology. So that you can capture processes in a consistent fashion are you looking to accelerate the adoption management deployment and training of a solution around business process management how are you going to manage your projects manage content development content collection library management asset management perform assessments on business processes.

What is it that the stakeholders are looking for how are you supporting your business process owners organizing and managing a process management repository process management library means that you're consistent in the way they communicate process across the entire enterprise in order for your process management strategy to be successful you have to put together a business process excellent strategic roadmap.

I've put together an overview of three core stages of of successfully deploying a business process excellence capability within the organization first and most importantly is defining your bpm practice discover what it means for your program uh to be successful conduct an assessment or have an outside party conduct an assessment and help to define what your operating model will be for processes which elements of the four quadrant are you going to address initially are you going to begin modeling are you going to begin mining do you have a governance requirement um do you have parts of the of your competition.

That are automating processes and you need to rapidly uh develop competing processes phase one of uh of defining your practice means you're gathering data about your program and your current maturity looking at correctly portraying the the current state and all the different layers of your bpm architecture who are the participants in the group uh which organization does it belong to uh what executive sponsorship and stakeholder support do you have uh for continuous business and process improvement initiative initiatives to achieve process excellence a strong foundation in defining the practice helps to ensure.

That as you move into more of an operating methodology you've defined all these elements in advance phase two is establishing your bpm practice selecting uh what solution you're going to use to capture your process models identifying and implementing your operating model ensuring you have the correct principles in place we talked earlier about process notation how you're going to consistently represent processes what metrics do you have around processes are you mature enough to understand uh the the time and cost allocations or different systems.

That are used to execute your processes and start working on who the team members are within your bpm organization do they have a lot of experience in process excellence what are the capabilities you want to develop in now this year and in the next few years of your operating practice part of this phase 2 is also conducting workshops amongst your team and amongst a greater team of business users that you're going to be supporting identifying what are the critical areas for process development and looking to train those within the organization about capturing and portraying processes in a consistent manner.

I talked earlier about process intelligence and this is really important you can't have process intelligence unless you build this foundation and identify how all these different pieces are going to work together all four elements of of the the process excellent quadrant do bring a lot of capabilities at your fingertips but properly selecting which capabilities and in which order you're going to deploy those capabilities make all the difference.

The third phase of building your a process excellence roadmap is expanding your practice ensuring that you have the long-term structures in place that you've performed review that you've gained acceptance across the organization for your enterprise classification framework that you continue to refine the operating procedures for how you as an organization improve processes looking at what additional capabilities how are you going to bring automation to bear within the organization how are you going to expand your mining practice.

So I believe I could summarize some of the cross industry challenges that all of you have in achieving business process excellence business flexibility and agility how are you going to change to you know respond to the changing environment we have uh the velocity of change is much greater and you're going to have to capitalize on opportunities when they arise competitive advantage means more than just having a better product a better service.

A better solution but the timing and when you're able to deploy that solution responding to market conditions operational excellence is a term that's now used quite broadly of course uh within our industry meaning that uh the assessment of how you perform your processes how are you measuring uh the activities and enabling continuous improvement within the organization cost reduction and resource allocation this is one of the core objectives in process efficiencies reducing expenses and shortening end-to-end delivery times across.

The entire spectrum of delivery regulatory compliance is always an ongoing concern I can tell you it's one of the key drivers of process excellence because it is another form of transportation mandatory transportation. you have to meet requirements for responsibility traceability and accountability.

So again I appreciate everyone for uh joining us today and and in today's webinar regarding business process excellence I do like to revisit the four quadrants of business process excellence process modeling process governance process mining and process automation all four of these things have to work together in order to be effective.

They're very reliant upon your i.t portfolio your technology and the way that you look at each of the layers of your architecture but if you're talking about business process excellence addressing each of these core capabilities and how your center of excellence your business process program your business process project your continuous improvement initiatives.

How all these things are going to address each of these technologies and understanding in advance the value that they bring to bear is really important in being successful so i believe we'll be taking some questions uh if you have the opportunity please do feel free to visit us online visual enterprise architecture visual eabpm.com you can follow us on LinkedIn you can listen to our bright talk channel and once again thank you for your participation and hopefully.