BPM, LSS go hand-in-hand

By Alex Kayle, Senior portals journalist

Johannesburg, 26 Aug 2009

There is no silver bullet in the business process management (BPM) journey. It requires complete buy-in from top management and Lean Six Sigma (LSS) methodologies can be used as the weapon to solve problems BPM uncovers.

So argued David Lyneham-Brown, BPT Group CEO and event chairman, at the ITWeb BPM Summit held at Montecasino yesterday. “LSS and BPM are about creating a new culture and a new way of working that doesn't rely on the fractured, political relationship of departments, but rather on the back of people who understand from a customer perspective what is needed for customer fulfilment.

“That will never happen if you lack a business vision. When we get that philosophy in place, the business will see greater value.”

Lyneham-Brown said operational management need to be the process owners and have the responsibility, authority, and accountability from the early stages to carry through into the future.

“Unless the senior management is there you will not get the 40%, 60%, and 80% process improvements which require significant organisational change to get there. BPM has to be embedded in the business strategy itself.”

BPM versus LSS

Richard Aldous, head of sales and marketing for Rethink, pointed out: “Everybody is responsible for making BPM work; it's everybody's accountability to make BPM successful and the business needs to show the BPM success early on in the journey. If you can get that low-hanging fruit on a monthly basis you can get that buy-in quickly from the entire organisation.”

According to Aldous, BPM and LSS do not compete with each other as approaches to business improvement, but rather work hand-in-hand. “LSS is an effective and proven methodology that can and should be used with BPM. BPM leads to the identification of problems and business opportunities while LSS is the methodology used for addressing the problems and opportunities.”

However, Lyneham-Brown argued, “BPM is a journey in so far as you never actually arrive at a finishing point. The use of LSS and other types of continuous improvement methodologies is that they work cyclically and within functions, and they could be reinforcing silos instead of destroying them.”

Business buy-in

Tony Cohn, business development director at EG Operations Management Solutions, added that technology alone cannot address business problems. “LSS adds a lot of value. Unfortunately, we tend to have panacea-type view of the world. The reality is that it's never cut and dry, the business leader needs to be on top of everything from an operations perspective, to drive the right behaviours from the team members.

“Even if you're going on a LSS/BPM journey, the mere implementation of a BPM platform is not going to change management. Team leaders and managers should schedule work and plan use of resources, allocate work according to skills, and train according to business need,“ he added.

“You need the data to understand what intervention is required to boost productivity. You need to understand the audit trail and track work from receipt to completion.”