How BPM reduces risks in transformation projects
Discover how selecting BPM technologies allows companies to reduce risk when designing the target stage of processes
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PEX Network caught up with Katy-Pierre-Line Murarotto, head of business process management (BPM), transformation at Asahi Europe and International, the European arm of Japanese drinks giant Asahi Breweries, on the importance and relevance of BPM in today’s transformation programs.
Ahead of her presentation at PEX Live: BPM 2021, taking place online on 27-30 September 2021, she shares her recommendations for BPM success, the technologies that can help and the importance of managing change with people.
PEX Network: The BPM methodology has been around for 30 years. What can you tell us about its relevance in the digital world?
Katy-Pierre-Line Murarotto: In the past, a room full of people would design what a company’s target state and to-be processes should look like based on a lot of unknown variables.
Now, where possible we want to make it happens the other way around. We want to leverage a technology we know is going to deliver about 80 per cent of our needs and use the already available standards and best practices around this technology to be more efficient and accelerate our design around commonalities rather than differences
With this approach, we ensure that we can deliver what we say we would deliver and not fall short of expectations because the technology cannot answer the majority of the requirements. We will not get it perfectly standardized but we will be close enough to ensure that firstly, we follow the company vision and secondly, we can deliver on our promise with the best practices, standards and technology.
PEX Network: Keeping this approach shift in mind, should BPM be the starting point of large-scale transformation projects?
KPLM: It has to be. It is fundamental to understand and agree on the vision and what our target processes should be before starting to design and implement them. Even if we use the technology as an accelerator to design a process, we cannot go very far if we lack a strong vision and a strong business process framework.
We need to look at our business capabilities (the why and the what) , then our business processes (the how) in order to understand how we work as an organization before we start looking at system processes.
PEX Network: What would be your recommendations for organizations starting BPM projects?
KPLM: More often than not, processes are looked at from a continuous improvement perspective and operational excellence aspect, meaning there is a business-as-usual workflow in place that we are trying to optimize by making smaller or bigger changes to a process. This is not, however, the whole story.
First, organizations need to start by assessing whether they have the right business process organization in place, which includes two elements: content and quality. For content you need to lean on people who fully know the content and how the business works and for quality you need to examine the effectiveness of the process. Processes are complex when you start putting layers and models into them. It is important to understand if a process is working, where it starts and ends, who plays a role, what types of workflow, rules, data, integration layers and many more attributes you are dealing with, as well as the data available.
Big changes and big transformation projects start with having the right people in place. The business driving business processes is a new concept right? This is a joke obviously, business should always drive the processes.
In large organizations you would usually find a business process organization with business process owners who sit at the top of the pyramid as strategic thinkers for the end-to-end (E2E) vision and are accountable for approving the final E2E business processes as well as act a change catalyst within the organization.
Working alongside them are the business process leads (BPLs) who are responsible for a set of processes within a specific E2E area, for example accounts payable in record-to-report across all markets, whereas the subject matter expert (SME) is responsible for the accounts payable detailed processes within their market for specific market or country.
Once you have this business process organization structure you also need to have a business transformation team who is the link between the business and technology and this is where BPM usually sits.
When it comes to BPM tools in particular, they are definitely needed for a transformation project.
A BPM tool enables a structured approach to analysis, design and optimization of business processes and customer journey maps. The solution will be the repository of the target state processes for the organization and will allow for easy visualization of processes by multiple stakeholders in order to identify inefficiencies and improvements.
In the future, the solution will unlock future capabilities, for example process mining or process monitoring that are instrumental for process automation initiatives.
PEX Network: What technology do you see as necessary for BPM success?
KPLM: Process and data mining are very important as long as we have integration layers to all technologies, which is becoming increasingly important.
The idea is to have a tool that can manage all systems and applications within an organization. When you look at the process layers, you look first at the capabilities, then the processes, and then the solution and data. If you can map it all together, that is where your answer is. If not, then you cannot understand which process is serving which capability with which technology under what project.
PEX Network: What can attendees expect from your presentation at PEX Live: BPM 2021?
KPLM: Attendees will get an inside look on how we leverage best practices and standards to harmonize our ways of working, standardize our processes and ensure full alignment between business, technology and transformation.
Don’t miss Murarotto’s presentation at PEX Live: BPM 2021 – register here to attend PEX Network’s biggest free online event, taking place on 27-30 September 2021 here.
