In-depth, one-on-one interviews of users of business process management (BPM) systems revealed their needs are often ignored, which can reduce BPM return on investment (ROI). The interviews were conducted from June-October 2008 by Global 360, a leading provider of process and document management solutions, and frog design, a global innovation firm. Global 360 has also identified three main types of BPM users: builders, doers and managers.
Builders, doers and managers are defined as follows:
Builders design and develop systems, and monitor and maintain them after deployment.
Doers complete work and monitor progress in the system. They also continually improve the system by creating their own additions or workarounds.
Managers make business decisions based on productivity enabled by the system.
The interviews revealed that while each type of user's individual needs must be met, interactions among builders, doers and managers are even more important to bottom-line improvements to a business through an initiative in process management.
The interviews also revealed that of the three types of users, the needs of doers, or end-users of systems, are most often ignored - which can diminish ROI implications for BPM system deployments. An earlier Global 360 analysis of its own BPM system deployments indicated that developing applications for end-users typically accounts for more than 40% of a BPM system's cost.
“These qualitative findings confirm that it takes a team to build a BPM system, manage a business process, solve problems and get the job done,” said Steve Russell, Senior Vice-President and CTO, Global 360. “It also points out the failure of most enterprises to take into account end-user needs and knowledge when designing systems, highlighting an opportunity to significantly reduce the costs of deploying BPM systems by working with end-users to create a user experience that is personable, configurable and extensible.”
“The bottom line is,” said Russell, “if you want to improve your processes, you must empower your people.”
The interviews were conducted with executive sponsors, supervisors, processors, researchers, business analysts and developers in companies across several industries. During the interviews, frog design listened to subjects' stories and observed their habits to discover their latent and unmet needs, instead of relying just on what respondents said.
According to Dave Hoffer, associate creative director at frog design: “Our goal was to create a user-centric, rather than a process-centric, solution. We did this by incorporating processors, managers and IT professionals into the implementation of a BPM system, talking with users at multiple points throughout the project to ensure that the end solution would meet their needs.”
Among the other key findings, builders, doers and managers have different frustrations with BPM systems.
Builders report they are often compelled to release incomplete systems because of deadline or cost pressures. In addition, system improvements after deployment are a low priority.
Doers complain that systems are designed with inadequate involvement from them, which can result in inefficiencies being built in to the system. As one doer put it: “Now, we make the same mistakes faster.” Doers also take it upon themselves to learn programming skills so they can add workarounds to the system to solve problems. While this helps individual users, it adds complexity to the system that makes it difficult or impossible for IT to support it.
Managers say that systems lack tools that would give them greater visibility into how the systems and the system users are performing, which would allow them to make better, faster decisions.
While these individual unmet needs can cause BPM initiatives to fail, the most critical success factor is that all three types of users function as a team, with the system facilitating collaboration and working toward a common goal.
Share