A process view of the world

Business process reengineering and all its derivatives have been on the corporate world`s agenda for some time. Of late, they have also reached the highest echelons of organisations. Increasingly, we understand that far from being something cooked up by the IT industry, business process reengineering is a central management approach for the 1990s and beyond.

Business process redesign is not a once-in-the-enterprise-lifetime event.

Businesses everywhere are grappling with a fundamental rethink and restructure around their customers and markets as companies are finding their processes cannot support their business realities.

The new reality facing them is accelerated and ongoing change. This demands looking at the organisation`s different processes, and radically changing, adapting, killing or redesigning them.

We cannot understand where we are going, or even assess or imagine what is possible if we don`t know where we are. We cannot tap into the wider knowledge and understanding of all the organisation`s internal and external participants if we don`t create a basis for sharing and disseminating that knowledge.

The first crucial benefit of a well run business process design exercise is that it creates a common understanding and language regarding the way things work now and into the future.

A major realisation is that business process redesign is not a once-in-the-enterprise-lifetime event. It has become closely linked to strategic business planning. More companies are viewing it as a means of continuous transformation to enable the organisation to achieve its goals. There is also a growing recognition that a firm`s ability to learn and change is an important sustainable competitive advantage and business process design is the core competency which supports that ability.

With this view of business process reengineering as more than a once-off, the need for continuity and broad participation is clear. Furthermore, the need for not only doing the design but driving its implementation through the organisation and its systems is crucial. This creates an increasing demand and recognition for technologies which support business process redesign efforts.

These tools are used to capture and model the processes through diagrams linking functions or steps (activities). The addition of attributes (properties) and metrics to the functions in the process diagram via an underlying database allows for the capture of costs, cycle times, resource requirements and more. It is also possible to capture the organisational structure, roles and responsibilities. With this type of information available in the models, the company can apply business assessment techniques like simulations, animation, activity-based costing and value chain analysis.

The focus is strongly on representation and techniques which are designed for business users, and which make the models real and understandable.

Organisations are rightly placing emphasis on the design and improvement of customer-facing processes. In theory, it sounds simple but in most companies the ability to work in this manner is severely hampered in many ways:

• Organisational structures which are functionally-based or compartmentalised in various databases, under the control of different departments, with different meanings associated to the data, and through the knowledge owned and interpreted in an inconsistent way by individuals.
• Application systems which are not integrated and force handoffs between departments; policies and procedures which are not consistent and subject to individual interpretation. This results in a fragmented and incomplete view of the client, his importance to the firm, the cross-marketing opportunities which present themselves and the ability to deal seamlessly with the random set of interactions which may be demanded each time the client makes contact.

So not only do we have to redesign the customer-facing processes, we also have to redesign the processes which tie them into the other business areas or at the very least integrate the organisation`s existing processes and systems.

Every business function has underlying processes, but these are generally viewed as a series of discrete tasks, with little attention paid to how the information or knowledge content is effected between those tasks.

For instance, if service is viewed as a process, the artificial distinction between front- and back-office is blurred. The number of handoffs can be immediately reduced, with a direct impact on customer service. We may produce consistent results, but the quality and continuity of those results may be dependent on the undocumented knowledge of individuals. In this case, the organisation has not sufficiently defined, mapped and embedded its process thinking.

This means taking a holistic view of the data, processes, functions and the organisation since the company and its systems have to be orchestrated from these perspectives.

Experts agree the major expenditures associated with reengineering for the design and redesign of company organisational structures can be justified only if the results can be directly implemented through IT as quickly as possible. The key element is the representation of thought processes in the applications. In other words, business process management and information management must grow together and become integrated.

If our processes are not well defined, mapped and embedded we can`t understand costs, benefits, bottlenecks or improvement opportunities. Aletha writes for ITWeb in her personal capacity.