Joining All BPM Methods Together – Is That Even Possible?

It is difficult for consultants to market and sell a comprehensive BPM solution because we are often dealing with organizations that seek to play one BPM approach against another. Customers are confused how is your BPM approach different from Lean or 6Sigma, and why should they use BPM at all. It is many times difficult to explain that BPM is a more comprehensive approach to process improvement than any single method and it is focused on integrating, aligning, managing and measuring all of an organization’s business processes and that Business Process Management includes the application of all the other available methods, where, when and how they are appropriate. BPM is an approach that is inclusive, not exclusive, of other approaches. So, it is not BPM against Six Sigma, Lean or any other but it is BPM with all the previously mentioned methods.

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Is ERP a Ready Made Meal in the Supermarket of Process?

There’s still a great appetite for ERP tools despite the fact that they’ve been around for quite some time. To me an ERP system is like a ready made meal - packaged, pre-processed and on the outside quite a nice idea. The idea behind ERP is that you have a bunch of processes that support key organisational capabilities built into an integrated software system. It’s a fix, but it doesn’t fix everything - there are always processes that need to be changed and gaps that need to be filled.

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Social BPM: The Watercooler Just Got Cooler

I never quite got social BPM. “It’s like facebook but for corporations” the BPMS marketing departments screamed! “It will change the way we do business” they cried!

The success of social media is primarily that it’s fun and easy. We get a laugh out of sharing our catbearding photos (well I do…) and having innane conversations with people on the other side of the world that we haven’t seen for years. It’s an escape from the day-to-day humrum. So what is social BPM given that it’s focus IS the day-to-day humrum?

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Traction: Launching & Sustaining A Strategic Skills Initiative

“In my life there are not that many questions I can’t properly deal with using my $40 adding machine and dog-eared compound interest table.” Charlie Munger, Berkshire Hathaway

In the last five years there has been a wave of interest in elevating Finance from its traditional support role. Rather than merely crunching numbers, CEOs and CFOs want finance to be a full business partner in developing, challenging, and executing strategy.

Is this the golden age for Corporate Finance? Not quite yet.

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Exceptional EPM / CPM Systems are an Exception

Many organizations over-rate the quality of their enterprise and corporate performance management (EPM / CPM) methods and supporting software systems as well as exaggerate how comprehensive and integrated they are. For example, when you ask executives how well they measure and report their costs and non-financial performance measures, most proudly boast that they are very good. However, this is inconsistent and conflicts with surveys where anonymous replies from mid-level managers candidly score their scaled answers as “needs much improvement.”

Every organization cannot be above average!

What makes exceptionally good EPM / CPM systems exceptional?

Rather than try to be a sociologist and psychiatrist to explain the contradictions of executives boasting superiority while anonymously answered surveys reveal inferiority, let’s simply describe the full vision of an effective EPM / CPM system that organizations should aspire to.

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How Does Non-Finance View Finance?

According to our study, Finance is more likely to believe they are “always” called upon to add high-level business support, while Non-Finance was more often to answer “Infrequently,” or “Almost Never.”

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