Business process management (BPM), streamlined and improved with analytics that leverage social media, is on the fast track in the enterprise market. But be warned: The "new BPM" can not only streamline a company's value chain, it can also change the nature of its business model.
As the old saying goes, be careful what you wish for.
Business model innovation -- often enabled by new technology platforms -- isn't new.... But the pace has been heating up with emerging social (Facebook), mobile (smartphones and iPads), 'cloud,' and 'big data' technologies that are creating new ways to compete, and, along with them, new ways of working.
Power gives a few examples: A business process improvement -- going online -- led publisher Forbes to create an entirely new self-publishing platform for contributors, which boosts their brands in return for publicizing Forbes. Partners Healthcare in Boston has undertaken the building of a $600 million system, Epic, expected to take a decade to complete, which will (hopefully) dramatically advance the state of healthcare for patients in Massachusetts by giving hospitals better control over every facet of their care. Procter & Gamble uses analytics to parse comments about its products from social networks, maintaining control over its PR that was previously unimaginable.
Power ends his blog coyly, hinting that dramatic changes can accompany these kinds of process improvements: "Do you see competition with processes heating up?" he asks. "What changes have you seen in the C-Suite when process changes jump onto the strategic agenda?"
One message board respondent was quick to catch on:
I see the future of work as a mix of enterprise social workflow applications and process change thats [sic] been adapted and evolved to grow with this pace of change. Traditional hierarchical operating models need to make way for more fluid and networked organisation, not rigid functional silos...
In other words, BPM could conceivably improve any C-suite executive out of a job, if a silo is eliminated or an organization flattened as a result of process changes.
The prospect of cultural and management changes isn't scaring corporate leaders off BPM. A recent announcement from research firm Gartner notes that "Worldwide spending on BPMS [in 2012] is expected to reach US$2.6 billion, up 6.9 percent compared to 2011."
BPM is being driven, Gartner said, by the "transformational benefits" of social networking, cloud computing, and mobility. It may take five to 10 years to integrate these features fully into BPM wares and services, but the momentum is underway.
Transformation may be gradual, but the "new BPM" will at least be full of surprises.
Gotcha, Chuckgregory. And I do see your point. As I implied in response to Mitch's, the fact that BPM remains complex and even mysterious means it could conceivably be used now and again as a "cover" for something else.
A small lightbulb has gone on. If BPM is big and complicated and only a few IT folk really understand it, then the hierarchy is preserved, no matter what results are produced.
Change for the sake of truly improving the way things work is great. Change for the sake of the bottom line, at the expense of the employees, is not, in my opinion, productive in the long run. That's all I'm saying.
Analysis of the process never hurts, except when it consumes resources that are needed for more direct results. However, change for the sake of change simply causes confusion rather than improvement.
One of the crazier ideas I think about is wondering just how far decentralization can go. Anonymous, the early Tea Party, and various military insurgencies around the world demonstrate that you don't need a hierarchical command and control structure to do big jobs. Could multinational corporations face the same trends?
BPM could conceivably improve any C-suite executive out of a job, if a silo is eliminated or an organization flattened as a result of process changes.
Which is a significant obstacle to BPM. Nothing stifles innovation like powerful people whose job depends on a broken system staying broken.
Are you saying that there's no merit in studying complicated business processes with an eye to improving them with new tech, chuckgregory? Heresy! ;>
IMO there is merit in examining new ways to work despite the fact that it may prove painful. The reason I say that is that ultimately a company that plays fair and moves ahead with legitimate plans benefits its workers and stakeholders, no?
Often, old-fashioned hierarchical ways of doing things are prolonging dysfunction.
Let me preface my remarks with this: I haven't worked in a big company for a long time, and bpm certainly doesn't look useful to me as an independent consultant.
However--I'm not convinced that it is all that useful for anybody. Seems like another way for some statistics gurus to redesign companies, during which process they lay off workers and siphon off a nice chunk of money for themselves... A second cousin of mine used to make millions that way, back when that was a lot of money, but I have always leaned toward the intangibles rather than the dollars and cents.
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