Focusing on technology, rather than business goals, is often the cause of BPM failures in SA, says John Hayden, head of Absa's Change Centre of Excellence.
Hayden, who will address delegates at the upcoming ITWeb BPM summit, says there are two key strategic mistakes made by local companies when it comes to BPM.
“Number one - companies hire IT firms to assist them. These companies may lack business-process analysis and design skills, and these IT firms tend to focus on automating the poorly-designed, inefficient 'as is' processes, rather than first redesigning or reengineering them,” says Hayden.
“Number two - companies can get seduced by glossy IT brochure-ware and see the 'business goal' as 'go paperless/automate', rather than really exploring and defining what their current business challenges and shortcomings are, and what business benefits will result from business process reengineering (BPR).
“They do not think enough about how and whether BPR will really enhance their competitive positioning, improve their financial performance, reduce costs (by reducing headcount) or increase sales and market share.”
Hayden says that merely automating poor, inefficient 'as is' processes rather than first redesigning them results in companies being locked into these inefficiencies for the long-term.
Thirdly, the financials need to be well-researched, robust and complete, says Hayden. He explains that BPM generally ends up being a more expensive journey than originally anticipated, and the financial benefits are generally quite elusive.
As a fourth point, notes Hayden, BPM projects are first and foremost business projects, not IT projects, and they need to be managed as such. “There should be a lot of focus up-front on analysing and redesigning the processes, before automating with IT.”
Finally, BPM projects require the right skills and experience on the BPM team (both business-process and IT skills). If using external vendors or consultants, companies should rigorously review the CVs of the proposed team members, and check out and visit previous installations at other companies, he says.
Hayden will be a speaker at the ITWeb BPM Summit, being held at Vodaworld on 14 and 15 September. For more information, or to book your seat, click here.
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