1st Edition

Strategy and Business Process Management Techniques for Improving Execution, Adaptability, and Consistency

By Carl F. Lehmann Copyright 2012
    295 Pages 26 B/W Illustrations
    by Auerbach Publications

    This book prepares readers to master an IT and managerial discipline quickly gaining momentum in organizations of all sizes – Business Process Management (BPM). It describes how BPM treats processes as a portfolio of strategic assets that create and deliver customer and shareholder value and adapt, when necessary, enabling competitive advantage through consistent performance.

    Strategy and Business Process Management: Techniques for Improving Execution, Adaptability, and Consistency defines the planning framework and managerial mindset necessary to craft and drive highly effective business process improvement projects and continuous improvement programs. Readers will learn specific techniques used by industry leaders to formulate and execute business strategy that adapts organizational behavior, business processes, and information technology as a dynamic system designed to assure consistent performance and achievement, even when challenged with unexpected changes or opportunities.

    BEST PRACTICES USED IN STRATEGIC PLANNING

    Prologue: The Management Team Is Summoned
    The CEO Speaks
    Running a Business versus Running a Business Well
    Using Best Practices to Align Strategy and Resources
    Overview of the Best Practices of Industry Leaders
    Using Best Practices to Innovate and Compete

    How to Compete: Competitive Strategy
    Competitive Strategy: The Classic Approach
    Five Forces Model of Industry Competition
    New Entrants
    Intensity of Rivalry
    Pressure from Substitute Products
    Bargaining Power of Buyers (Customers)
    Bargaining Power of Suppliers
    Determining a Defensible Position
    Competitor Analysis
    Building on Porter’s Best Practices

    How to Focus Operations: The Discipline of Market Leaders
    New Rules of Competition
    Operating Models
    Operational Excellence Operating Model
    Product Leadership Operating Model
    Customer Intimacy Operating Model
    Defining Value
    Building on Treacy and Wiersema’s Best Practices

    How to Manage Performance: The Balanced Scorecard
    Performance Measures from a Financial Perspective
    Performance Measures from a Customer Perspective
    Performance Measures from an Internal Business Process Perspective
    Performance Measures from a Learning and Growth Perspective
    Strategy Maps
    Summarizing Kaplan and Norton’s Best Practices
    Building on Kaplan and Norton’s Best Practices

    How to Adapt: Adaptive Enterprise
    Sense-and-Respond Organization
    Adaptive Loop
    Modular Organization
    Commitment Management Protocol
    Building on Haeckel’s Best Practices
    Section I Conclusion: Strategic Planning—A Process, Not An Event

    EXECUTION—BEST PRACTICE USE OF STRATEGIC RESOURCES

    How to Structure Organizational Behavior for Strategic Execution
    Empower and Motivate
    Workforce Collaboration
    Collaborative Objectives
    Managing Responsibility and Accountability

    How to Structure Business Processes for Strategic Execution
    Defining Processes
    Operating, Support, and Management Processes
    Operating Processes
    Support Processes
    Management Processes
    Control Processes and Competitive Advantage
    Business Rules and Process Controls
    Core and Noncore Processes
    Preparing to Organize Processes as Assets
    Managing Processes as a Portfolio of Assets
    Business Process Portfolio Management
    Business Process Portfolio
    Business Process Inventory
    Introducing Business Process Reference Models
    Evaluation Dimensions
    Next Steps
    Analyzing Inventoried Processes
    Managing Process Execution
    Performance Measurement
    Selecting Key Performance Indicators
    General Rules about Selecting and Crafting KPIs
    Measuring Variance
    Using Trend Analysis
    Using Benchmarking
    Performance Control via Event Management
    Exception Management and Resolution Management
    Enabling Event Management
    Improving Execution through Process Modeling, Analysis, and Simulation
    Selecting Processes for Improvement
    Symptomatic versus Strategic Process Improvement
    Symptomatic Processes
    Strategic Processes
    Continuous Process Improvement Program
    Dealing with Complexity
    Simple versus Complex Processes
    Assessing Process Complexity

    How to Structure Technology for Strategic Execution
    Preparing for Process Improvement
    IT Trends That Influence IT Strategy
    Applications and APIs
    Workflow and EDI
    ERP
    ETL
    EAI
    Business Process Modeling and Analysis
    Business Rules Management
    Internet
    Open Source
    SOA
    SaaS and Cloud
    BPMS
    BAM and BI
    Assessing IT Readiness
    IT Capabilities Enabling Process Change
    Overall IT Readiness
    Crafting a Process-Centric IT Strategy
    Petitioning for Process-Centric IT Strategy
    Investing in Process-Centric IT Architecture
    IT Portfolio Management
    Objective Evaluation and Financial Analysis
    Objective Evaluation
    Financial Analysis
    Competing for IT Budget
    IT Portfolio Budget Structure
    Funding Availability
    Funding Sources and Accounting Methods
    IT Budget Management: Resource Perspective
    IT Budget Management: Domain Perspective
    IT Budget Management: Purpose Perspective
    IT Budget Management: Asset Class Perspective
    IT Investment Practices of Industry Leaders
    Making an IT Investment Request
    Section II Conclusion: Resources Structured for Execution.

    HOW TO ALIGN STRATEGY AND RESOURCES TO IMPROVE EXECUTION, ADAPTABILITY, AND CONSISTENCY

    Derivative Analysis Technique for Business Strategy and Resource Alignment
    Derivative Analysis Defined
    Using Derivative Analysis to Align Strategy and Resources: A Self-Assessment
    A Generic Derivative Analysis
    Section I: Best Practices Used in Strategic Planning
    Progress Report—Section I: Best Practices Used in Strategic Planning
    Section II: Execution—Best Practice Use of Strategic Resources
    Progress Report: Execution—Best Practice Use of Strategic Resources
    Final Report: Derivative Analysis
    Section III Conclusion: Strategy and Resources Aligned

    Epilogue: The Management Team Reconvenes
    The Chairman Speaks
    Some Practical Success Factors for Improving Execution, Adaptability, and Consistency
    Start Where Common Sense Tells You
    Avoid Complexity at First
    Assign Ownership
    Address Misconceptions
    Communicate
    Check Reversion
    Proceed Diligently

    SUMMARY CONCLUSION

    Summary of Key Guidance
    Prologue: Management Team Is Summoned
    Section I: Best Practices Used in Strategic Planning
    Section II: Execution—Best Practice Use of Strategic Resources
    Section III: How to Align Strategy and Resources to Improve Execution, Adaptability, and Consistency
    Epilogue: Management Team Reconvenes
    Appendix A: Important Terminology
    Appendix B: How to Evaluate Business Process Analysis Software
    Works Cited

    Index

    Biography

    Carl F. Lehmann is Founder & Principal Analyst at BPMethods, LLC, Duxbury, Massachusetts, USA.

    In our latest BPTrends survey, readers indicated that one of their major concerns was with how to tie corporate strategy together with BPM. Carl's book provides a detailed look at the ways one can do just that. It also provides managers with a great overview of how to solve the problems involved in creating and fielding new processes in this time of unprecedented change. Pack this book in your backpack as you set out on your process journey.
    —Paul Harmon, Executive Editor, www.bptrends.com

    Strategy and innovation meets real-world execution. Carl lays out a concise blueprint of techniques from the best practices in business process management and presents them in a way that is immediately relevant and useful to help solve the global challenges facing every business.
    —Jim Hendrickson, General Manager, Global B2B Cloud Services Product Line (IBM)

    Gartner defines BPM as a management discipline that treats processes as assets that directly contribute to enterprise performance by driving operational excellence and agility. Yet most practitioners struggle to advance their BPM efforts from narrowly defined projects into an enterprise program. Although incremental process performance improvements are delivered at a functional unit level, in fact, enterprise performance is actually sub-optimized. To achieve enterprise success, BPM leaders should pursue BPM as a discipline of disciplines, as Mr. Lehmann describes in this book. An over arching framework that integrates various management disciplines (i.e. Balanced Scorecard, change management), process improvement methods, BPM-enabling technologies, and governance over the rate of change is key to advancing BPM maturity and delivering enterprise performance gains. Mr. Lehmann’s book, Strategy and Business Process Management provides pragmatic guidance for creating such a framework.
    —Janelle Hill, Vice President & Distinguished Analyst, Business Process Management Research, Gartner

    This book helps the reader by simplifying an otherwise complex BPM learning curve. It accomplishes this by dissecting a logical sequence of proven techniques and best practices across different disciplines and industries, and applying them to rapidly evolving business strategies and performance metrics. There are numerous examples and checklists that drive home salient messages. The book further synthesizes its findings into a decision framework and tools that can help practitioners to plan better and consistently execute business strategy. It should thus be valuable not only in proselytizing the BPM concept, but as a reference guide for those embarking on the BPM journey.
    —Dale Kutnick, Senior Vice President, Gartner Executive Programs

    The best path toward sustainable competitive advantage can be elusive. Organizations must seek a direction that structures their resources to embrace customer centricity, fuel growth amidst change and turbulent markets, and instill discipline in managing the bottom line. Carl’s book offers key insights for assembling an organization’s people, business processes and information technology into an adaptive system. His common sense line-of-reasoning offers sharp contrast to typical ivory tower process methodologies and frameworks. This book reveals the path for all management teams tasked with creating and sustaining the foundation and practices for strategic business transformation.
    —Binu Thomas, Director, Strategic Process Transformation, MetLife

    Carl has captured the essence of what it takes to achieve game-changing performance improvements and sustainable business acceleration in today's increasingly competitive business environment. Continuous process innovation is imperative for corporate survival and Carl's approach to Business Process Management is unparalleled. From strategic business analysis to consistent on-target execution, this book is a must read for the entire management team of any organization.
    —Scott Thorogood, Chairman, Aegean Group

    Business Process Management – its principles, disciplines and enabling technologies – will be one of the defining agility and efficiency levers of future business success. Carl has delivered a solid and pragmatic prescription for connecting strategy with the reality of BPM mechanics and execution.
    —Herb VanHook, VP of Strategy, Office of the CTO, BMC Software 

    This is a very useful resource for people interested in continuous process improvement and ensuring that your processes support your business strategy. It is probably most applicable to medium and large organizations. … a very useful book that summarizes and links together a number of different areas and approaches to strategy and process management.
    —Alex McLachlan MBCS, in Book Reviews, www.bcs.org