Starting back up after a leisurely summer holiday is hard. There is no point in imagining that it is not hard. Those three weeks (apologies to my US based readers, in Europe 3 weeks of summer holiday is the norm) of tuning out of notifications, the harsh reality of email overload and countless meetings is simply lovely, as a famous Dutch F1 driver would put it. The older I get the more I enjoy them.
Anyway, I am also very excited to be back at it. For one because of my new role (and thank you all for the congratulations, I do appreciate that very much), and for two also because the fact that I will start up my usual sharing of BPM related articles and of course, last but certainly not least, because of the fact that we start recording episode for the BPM360 podcast again as well, with my trusted co-host and friend
Dr. Russell Gomersall
Now, what do I mean with going back to the roots?
For those of you who have come across
Simon Sinek
, it is plain obvious. I love listening to his podcast A bit of Optimism and this is all about the WHY. Why are you engaging in #BPM, or process management, or process intelligence? What is driving you to go on this rewarding, but sometimes challenging journey? What is it that you expect to get out of it for your organisation?
On first sight, harmless questions, but once you get into them, they force you to question the very existence of certain processes, department or procedures. Before we go much deeper into this, let’s first paint the big picture and for those who follow me a bit longer already, they will recognise this picture below.
Every organisation has a strategy (at least I hope) and this strategy is often translated into an operating model (that basically defines how you are organising yourself as an organisation in order to be able to reach your strategic goals). Part of any operating model is a section on the current way of working, or sometimes called business processes. The next step is usually the specification of the work instructions or standard operating procedures (SOPs) before we arrive at the execution level (where the real magic happens). One of the biggest bottlenecks for organisations is a lack of alignment from top to bottom. One of the most obvious examples is that of the Operating Working Capital (OWC). During economic downturns, the pressure on the OWC always grows and it needs to be optimised (read: reduced). Since the OWC consists of three different parts (Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable and Inventory) it is not difficult to imagine that you need to focus on all three, not just on one or two. So, if your strategic goal is to optimize OWC, but you forget to translate this to the supply chain department who handles the inventory levels, chances are you’re not getting anywhere close to the target you envisioned.
When we look back to BPM in the 1990’s or early 2000’s, a lot of BPM projects were executed and most of them treated the process models as the main deliverable of the project. Very often, the WHY of those projects consisted out of:
A compliance driven effort to document process
Increasing productivity for individual employees
Most of these projects ended up with elaborate collections of PPT decks, Visio files or in some cases in a BPM platform (these were the early days of ARIS). If you would visit these projects 6 months, 12 months or 24 months later, these collections would sit in the same place, mostly untouched, collecting physical or digital dust. You then ask yourself, why did we put in all that effort?
Now, fast forward to 2025. The same question is asked time and time again. Why are we engaging in a process centric way of managing our business?
The big difference with 2 or 3 decades ago is that now we understand that the process maps are not the main deliverable of a BPM project, but they are a basic hygiene factor. Just you like need construction drawing if you want to build a house, but once you live in it, you mostly refer to the manuals of your appliances (which are the equivalent of the SOPs in BPM language). So, what are then the reasons for BPM nowadays, if it is not to create process maps:
Insights in the dependencies between the various parts of your organisation. Think in terms of roles (the human element), applications (the system element), risks & controls, inputs and outputs. All of these things are related to each other and they are connected via the business process. To me, this is the biggest reason why you do a BPM project in the first place.
The ability to connect processes execution to process documentation. Process mining gave us the ability to find out on an industrial scale how processes are actually executed and this is incredibly valuable knowledge and even more valuable once you compare them to the way these processes should have been executed. In other words, process adherence checking is another major reason to do a BPM project.
Let me be clear, the two points I just listed do not represent the value you can take from a BPM project, but the two main reasons why you should consider to embark on this journey. The value translates more into:
A significant reduction in throughput times for changes and the increase in first time right implemented changes (because you are aware of the interdependencies between the various parts of your organisation). Doing a change quicker will give you more time of reaping the benefits or more time of avoiding the additional costs of not doing the change.
Reduce the costs related to the execution of processes due to an increased adherence to the standard. Certainly or especially in shared service environments, process standardisation is king.
I did not list all the advantages and benefits of BPM, but I wanted to raise the awareness that most organisations simply miss the underlying real reasons why you should want to do this.
Speak to you soon…
Ciao!
