How PepsiCo and Alstom are leveraging BPM to maximize process excellence

For over twenty years, organizations have relied on business process management (BPM) to help them understand and continuously improve processes. In uncertain economic times such as these, BMP is especially vital as organizations look to eliminate waste and increase operational resilience.

With this in mind, we sat down with three speakers from All Access BPM (taking place September 19-21) to discuss how their companies are leveraging BPM to boost productivity, agility and growth. Read on to find out how Hollimarie Montijo, Head of Process & Tools Americas at Alstom, Orhan Toprak, BPM Expert at a Leading oil and gas enterprise and Sangeeta Priyesh, Associate Director, Transformation at PepsiCo, are using BPM to drive balance efficiency with innovation. 

PEX Network: What motivated your organization to invest in BPM?

Hollimarie Montijo: My company is a global company with a presence in 63 countries and a talent base of over 80,000 people.  We focus on design, innovation and project management in the mobility and sustainable transportation industry.  

With such a large footprint covering many complex technologies and diverse customers, the way in which we organize our people, processes and tools is key for us to meet our business commitments on a local and global scale.

Orhan Toprak: We had many motivations to implement BPM strategies but most can be divided into two different categories: internal and external needs.

Internal needs include demands from management, process owners, information technology, management systems, human resources and internal controls. Some examples of external needs are regulative forces, standards and audits. To align with regulations, processes must be clearly defined and up to date at all times.

Process owners continuously need to make changes to their processes. Processes are interconnected, however, and BPM is the solution to visualize this correlation. In turn, these visualizations increase the ease by which managers can perform impact analysis of related processes.

Our systems are made up of many processes and IT experts would like to understand processes before helping their clients. Understanding a problem is half the work of solving it. By implementing BPM strategies, we have become much more agile.

BPM has also made internal and external audits more efficient. The very first thing asked during an audit is the current state of processes. This is how auditors can understand what is going on within a certain department. Without processes, auditing takes a longer time as defects are harder to find.

Sangeeta Priyesh: The motivation for our organization to invest in BPM stems from multiple factors but two major ones are:

We want empower our employees with continuous improvement initiatives to boost morale, transform operations, adopt new technologies and remain competitive in the digital age

BPM provides the tools and technologies to quickly adapt to changing market conditions, enhance stakeholder satisfaction which leads to loyalty and business growth

PEX Network: How has your organization benefited from leveraging BPM?

Hollimarie Montijo: My organization is responsible for the Americas region and our goal is to right-size global processes to fit our local needs. With the use of process modeling, data visualization and other improvement techniques related to BPM, we have been able to continuously seek improvements in processes, tools and performance. It has also helped us enable collaboration around best practices and drive simplification to maintain consistency and control of our project execution.

Orhan Toprak: Out of everything we have gained by leveraging BPM two of the most important to mention are BPM culture and agility.

Using BPM, we modeled managerial, support and operational processes. Processes became visible to and better understood by everyone in the company.

Process owners learned how to approach and eliminate bottlenecks in their processes. At our company, when we talk about processes we all mean the same thing now, we understand each other better and fix the problems together.

Sangeeta Priyesh: As we grow the business, our process complexity also grows. The BPM framework provides the scalability to accommodate growth as it involves data analysis and reporting which can help with valuable insights for making informed data- driven decisions. 

In addition, BPM can streamline and optimize processes, reducing waste, inefficiencies and operational costs. It is key to enhancing efficiency, productivity, employee engagement and customer satisfaction. 

PEX Network: What are some of the biggest obstacles you faced when implementing BPM and how did you overcome them?

Hollimarie Montijo: Out of everything I do, change management is the biggest obstacle I face. I have learned over the years that the first step in driving change is to communicate its value to all levels of the organization, not just the leaders. To do this, I build my solutions based on data so I know the impact of the change and can measure effectiveness later. Secondly but most importantly, I secure simplicity every step of the way.

When it comes to BPM, the challenge of managing change is the same. So, if I want to bring value to my organization, I need to understand the processes that drive the business and the ones that drag down our results.

Orhan Toprak: BPM is not mandatory by any laws or regulations. It does not have a global standard to follow so every organization can implement it in its own way. This is where BPM strategy or methodology comes into play.

Implementing BPM is a long journey. Instead of trying to do everything at once, it is better to go by phases. These phases could be modeling, deployment, change management and process analysis. Every company has its own dynamics and these phases can vary based on those needs.

First things first, a concrete and approved BPM methodology must be written down and agreed upon by the BPM Team and management.

In the world of BPM, the most important aspect is process ownership. Because Process owners run the processes, without their support no BPM methodology can succeed. However, BPM is not always a priority for process owners who are usually focused on their day-to-day responsibilities.

In order to get support from the process owner, you must first train them to use BPM methodologies and make them part of the BPM team. It is also important to procure a time saving system for modeling and analyzing processes to reduce the time spent on modeling and increase the time spent on implementation.

Sangeeta Priyesh:  Being a vast organization that operates across multiple sectors, markets and products, integrating data from diverse systems is an intricate task. Additionally, challenges such as process documentation and the potential emergence of organizational silos can arise. 

Successfully addressing these demands a strategic approach coupled with adept change management. To conquer these hurdles, we introduced a blend of strategies that encompass the technical, organizational and people-oriented aspects of BPM. Initiating cross-functional collaboration, employing business process modeling techniques and embracing the concept of managing what is measurable were pivotal in our BPM endeavors.

PEX Network: What is next for you on your BPM journey?

Hollimarie Montijo: The focus this year is on profitability and doing more with less. This means we must drive productivity and increase delivery performance while leveraging our existing methods and tools.  We will do this by right sizing our processes, enriching our people with simplified training and optimizing our organizations to be more lean.

Orhan Toprak: Some of the next steps in our BPM journey are sustainability in the BPM methodology, adopting new IT systems and integrating these systems with our current BPM tool.

Periodically and systematically, we analyze processes manually as well as within the systems. We would like to make analyses more efficiently and faster. To do this, we might need new modules of our current BPM tool. We appreciate and always welcome new IT systems, because without them we could only go as far as our manual speed allows.

Sangeeta Priyesh: We are committed to fostering a culture of continuous improvement. This involves not only optimizing existing processes but also seeking out innovative ways to enhance efficiency and effectiveness. For example, we will delve deeper into data analytics to gain insights that drive informed decision-making. By harnessing data, we can identify patterns, trends and areas for optimization. 

BPM journey will remain centered around delivering value to our  stakeholders. We will continue to align processes to enhance customer experience, which is paramount to our success.