Business Process Management Readiness Assessment

Developed for Andrew Hawthorn January 08, 2007 Title

Thank you for taking the BPM Readiness Assessment. If you were interested in this report, you have probably been frustrated by slow, unmanaged or broken business process in your organization. It's common to hear complaints that bureaucracy takes too long to respond to business needs, that projects "fall through the cracks", or that too many people are re-inventing the wheel. Business Process Management (BPM) provides a strategy for addressing these types of issues. BPM is a methodology for managing and improving the performance of the business through continuous optimization of processes. In its most advanced state, BPM is run through a closedloop cycle of process modeling, execution and measurement. Successful BPM can provide: Improved visibility and business insight, which helps you meet compliance requirements and set more effective business strategies. Improved productivity through streamlined, automated processes that regulate every-day functions and provide a means to track and expedite exceptions to the normal work stream. Improved customer satisfaction by optimizing the many inefficient business processes that touch your customer. Improved innovation through greater intelligence on your market and increased ability to launch initiatives.

Your Results Overview

This report was generated based on the answers you provided in the BPM Lifecycle Assessment questionnaire. Read on to get more information on the following: 1. BPM Maturity Level: Understand how your company stacks up in four distinct areas of BPM proficiency: analyzing, orchestrating, optimizing, and innovating. 2. Comparison points: See how your scores compare to industry best practices and the average of all questionnaire respondents. 3. Key Actions: Identify what key actions your organization should take to improve visibility, agility and innovation through BPM. 4. Business Impact: Review potential business impacts your company can realize if you undertake the recommended key actions. 5. Resources: Take the next steps towards researching or expanding your BPM initiatives using the industry resources listed at the end of this report.

Comparative Results
Your answers resulted in the following BPM maturity scores. Your relative score was calculated by normalizing the responses within each domain area. A score of 100 signifies full use of industry best practices across the four BPM domains.

Documenting and Analyzing

Ultimate Destination: Visible, Standardized, and Documented Processes. Company is very "process aware", with staffing in place and a single, standardized BPM tool coordinating processes within the business and those that touch customers, partners or suppliers. Almost all processes are reviewed, simulated and updated regularly. Real-time monitoring of Key Performance Indicators forms the basis for continual analysis and optimization. Your Current State: Limited Documentation and Analysis. Some processes may be defined, documented and modeled. The business has dedicated some process-related resources, likely to a BPM pilot project for a specific department or strategic process.

Actions to Consider: Consider improving one or more high-profile processes which could render significant benefits. Consider increasing the effort spent documenting and analyzing your existing processes, even beyond the key processes that may already have been addressed. Consider standardizing on a specific BPM suite for modeling processes. Consider the value of simulating existing processes and proposed changes as a way to measure effectiveness and identify process bottlenecks. Consider staffing a specific role to identify problematic processes. Consider staffing a team within IT to regularly resolve business process issues. Potential Business Impact: Well documented processes can reduce employee training costs. Visibility into processes enables better compliance with regulations such as with Sarbanes Oxley or the U.S. Patriot Act. Identifying the sources of errors and bottlenecks can significantly reduce the costs of executing business processes. Identifying best practice processes can reduce the effort and costs needed to complete common or important work. Reuse of common design patterns across multiple projects can enable faster time-to-delivery at lower cost. Establishing an appropriate staffing structure to quickly identify and prioritize process improvements can provide significant and immediate returns on investment. Eliminating redundant processes and applications can reduce costs in system maintenance and management.

Orchestrating and Automating

Ultimate Destination: Effective Process Coordination and Automation. Processes are modeled and measured using a company-standard BPM tool integrated with legacy and backend systems, likely using a SOA framework of reusable components. IT and business managers are able to collaborate on process improvement projects throughout the project lifecycle using a shared process model. All critical processes are properly documented, reviewed, simulated and updated regularly. Management defines and watches Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) driven by BPM execution and automation, and nearly all exceptions are measured and tracked. Your Current State: Minimal Process Coordination and Automation. Some business processes are defined and documented, but very few are automated. Non-standard systems and methodologies in a manual process environment likely means IT and business have difficulty collaborating and agreeing on critical improvements. Exception-handling is likely very reactive and dependant on "heroes" within the organization.

Actions to Consider: Consider systematically improving several processes within a single department or division. Investigating using a BPM suite for more effective process deployment and execution. Consider requiring business process owners and IT developers to use the same standard tools to collaborate and iterate on process improvement projects. Potential Business Impact: The value obtained through process improvement typically multiplies when process improvements span organizational and divisional boundaries. Automated processes can reduce redundant work, improve customer service and reduce costs providing a significant return on investment. Teams can usually build and deploy processes much faster when they effectively collaborate using a single, standardized BPMS for supporting both human-intensive and system-intensive processes. Easy-to-use BPM and business process reporting tools can empower the line of business to drive change and achieve new levels of agility. Process audits and process measurements can significantly improve overall accountability, thus improving customer service and meeting Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Improved exception handling can significantly improve time-to-resolution and identify any dropped hand-offs between departments or divisions.

Optimizing Business Processes

Ultimate Destination: Enterprise Commitment to Proactive Optimization. A Center of Excellence keeps the organization following an industry-accepted process improvement methodology, like Six Sigma or Lean, with cross-functional representation from executives, line of business managers, and IT. A standard BPM suite (BPMS) offers a repository of templates and reusable process objects for faster modeling of processes. Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) dashboards provide alert mechanisms and actionable information providing for a continual cycle of process improvement. Your Current State: Ad-hoc Process Optimization. Processes are only reviewed, analyzed and modified as problems arise. If process success metrics are available, they must be manually prepared in a program like Excel.

Actions to Consider: Consider creating a repository of process templates to let business users share best practices and pave a faster path to success. Consider deploying business activity monitoring dashboards in cases where real-time monitoring of business activity could increase management efficiency. Consider enabling business users to make real time changes to policies without IT resources. Consider deploying and standardizing on an industry-accepted process improvement methodology, such as Six Sigma, Total Quality Management (TQM) or Lean Manufacturing. Potential Business Impact: Reusable templates and process objects can significantly reduce the time it takes to improve processes or deploy new processes using BPM. Seamless synchronization and a real-time feedback loop between business users and IT ensures applications are built right the first time, saving time and money. Using an industry-accepted BPM methodology, your company can realize the BPM best practices others learned through experience, also saving time and money. Effective process metrics can proactively alert management to bottlenecks and break downs, thus improving responsiveness to business-critical issues, allowing for better customer service, product development or implementation of strategic initiatives.

Innovating Through BPM

Ultimate Destination: Intense Commitment to Innovation through BPM. Company relies on BPM to enable rapid innovation and "game changing" moves. Business, IT and senior management are committed to the use of Key Performance Indicators to measure processes. Process improvements are commonly a part of individual and team performance reviews. The organizational direction and strategy relies on innovating with business processes. Your Current State: Early State of Change. Innovation is cultivated in some departments, but broad support for innovation using BPM is limited. Business lacks the focus, funding, or ability to effectively create change using business process innovation.

Actions to Consider: Consider involving partners, suppliers and customers in business process improvement projects. Consider using Service Oriented Architecture to manage, reuse and govern process components. Consider making process improvements a common part of individual and team performance reviews. Identify ways in which BPM might increase your company's ability to improve employee productivity, improve customer service, react to change, or grow revenue. Potential Business Impact: Improve the chance of dominating your customers by using process improvements to change the game. Achieve greater business agility and ability to capitalize on new opportunities. Decrease chance of business failure or loss through better visibility into current operations. Grow current market through streamlined processes. Establish industry leadership gains that clearly separate your company from competitors. Decrease costs through automated, finely tuned process management. Secure greater customer satisfaction through better exception handling and visibility into Key Performance Indicators. Decrease operating costs and improve employee productivity through process improvements.

Resources
Industry Resources
BPM Institute: A peer-to-peer exchange for Business Process Management professionals. www.bpminstitute.org BPM Institute's Business Process Management Suite (BPMS) Report: An objective report of the ten leading BPM Suites. www.bpminstitute.org/bpmsreport.html BPM Group: A global business club for exchanging ideas and best practice in business process and change management. www.bpmg.org Object Management Group: An independent BPM standards body. www.omg.com Unified Modeling Language (UML): is an OMG standard for application integration modeling (AquaLogic BPM enables modeling in UML). www.uml.org Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN): is an OMG standard for business process modeling (AquaLogic BPM enables modeling BPMN ). www.bpmn.org

Analyst Reports
Gartner Research: This top technology analyst firm has many reports on BPM. http://www.gartner.com/ Forrester Research: This top Technology firm also has a host of BPM Reports- search on all BPM Reports www.forrester.com or read the BPM case study on BEA customer First Horizon available free to BEA prospects and customers at. www.bea.com/moreinfoBPM Aberdeen Research: BPM Benchmark Report: This survey-based report examines the BPM experiences of over 160 companies. http://www.aberdeen.com/summary/report/benchmark/RA_BPM_PK_3385.asp

BEA Resources
Getting Started - an Introduction to BPM: http://www.bea.com/framework.jsp?CNT=introduction.htm&FP=/content/products/albpm/ BEA BPM Resource Center: BEA customers and prospects can get complimentary access to a wide range of reports, white papers and web seminar recordings at www.bea.com/moreinfoBPM BPM Discovery Workshops: This one-day engagement is led by a senior BEA business consultant to bring together an organization's IT and business stakeholders to identify the best opportunities to realize value from BPM software. Contact ALBPMConsulting@bea.com

BPM Library
Andrew Spanyi.Business Process Management is a Team Sport: Play it to Win. ISBN 0-929652-02-9 Howard Smith, Peter Fingar.Business Process Management: The Third Wave. ISBN 0-929652-33-9 Keith Harrison-Broninski. Human Interactions: The Heart and Soul of Business Process Management. ISBN 0-929652-44-4 Roger Burlton. Business Process Management: Profiting From Process. ISBN 0-672-32063-0 Steve Towers. Thrive! How to Succeed in the Age of the Customer. ISBN 0-929652-41-X Steve Towers. In Search of BPM Excellence. ISBN 0-929652-40-1 John Jeston and Johan Nelis. "Practical Guidelines to Successful Implementations". ISBN 0-7506-6912-7 Sandeep Arora. "Business Process Management. Process is the Enterprise". ISBN 1-4116-3117-X Martyn Ould. "Business Process Management: A Rigorous Approach". ISBN 1-902505-60-3 James F. Chang."Business Process Management Systems". ISBN 0-8493-2310-X

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