Aligning people to BPM

Johannesburg, 11 Aug 2009

The success of business process management (BPM) centres of excellence relies on the creation of new roles which ensure the successful adoption of BPM enterprise-wide, says IBM.

According to Vickesh Dhookie, BPM specialist at IBM, this will help businesses integrate new BPM projects into the organisation's core business.

Dhookie, who will speak at the inaugural BPM Summit hosted by ITWeb, says businesses need to understand that a BPM centre of excellence is a body of knowledge that provides essential expertise.

The summit, which will be held from 25 to 27 August at Montecasino, in Johannesburg, will identify key considerations for organisations planning to create a BPM centre of excellence.

Dhookie emphasises that the successful adoption of BPM in an enterprise depends on the creation of roles which entrench organisation-wide polices, standards and governance based on BPM strategies.

“New roles that will be created for these initiatives will be, for instance, a business integrator.” This will consolidate the traditional process analyst and system developer roles into a single role, ensuring business and IT alignment.

According to Dhookie, the purpose of the BPM centre of excellence is to establish standards for implementing new BPM projects. “These are projects such as implementation methodologies, process methodologies and a development platform.

“Prioritising BPM projects and establishing processes for projection selection and prioritisation is another purpose of the centre,” he says. The centre also clearly defines the roles and responsibilities of new positions.

“This ensures the new roles and merger of roles that result from BPM engagements are catered for,” Dhookie explains. He adds that the centre assigns authority to the person charged with enforcing BPM governance rules that cross functional silos and capabilities.

Knowledge arsenal

A BPM centre of excellence has often been proposed as a central repository of knowledge and experience that can assist other organisational units in deploying their IT efforts effectively, providing best practices. “This enables the organisation to avoid suboptimal use of its technology due to the lack of an overall perspective,” says Dhookie.

He adds that roles which should be created include BPM industry specialists who have rich knowledge of a specific industry. “The person will align that industry knowledge to the industry frameworks that are being provided by the BPM suites. This will ensure accelerated delivery of BPM projects and higher success rates.”

It is ideal for a BPM centre of excellence to have multiple players contributing to each project, says Dhookie. “A BPM centre of excellence often consists of IT and business people and serves as a formal hub to coordinate goals, priorities and governance for process implementations.”

Linking processes

In addition to aligning roles during the BPM process, the centre of excellence streamlines internal and external business processes, providing visibility over entire processes. Dhookie explains that the centre also helps facilitate communication among process stakeholders, maintaining control and accountability, which eliminates redundancies and increases automation.

It is often easier to implement BPM successfully on a number of projects first and then set up a centre of excellence as time goes on, he advises. For organisations new to BPM, Dhookie recommends they look into change management strategies. Justifying the value of BPM isn't always easy, especially without demonstrated return on investment, he explains.

While it does take significant investment to establish a BPM centre of excellence, it does increase the success rate of BPM adoption within the organisation, Dhookie points out. He says the establishment of the centre ensures there is a focused drive to instil BPM throughout the organisation.

”The centre of excellence will also provide the link between strategy and the operationalisation of the strategy via the structures, policies and tools that it implements,” he concludes.