Who Thinks About BPM? Not Me. Do You?

It’s inevitable that a discussion regarding business process management (BPM) has to stumble over definitions. When I sit down to think about it, it’s clear as glass that everybody, in some way, accomplishes BPM every day. Whether it’s a formalized, codified set of practices, or just a random “that’s how we’ve always done it” kind of thing, BPM is ingrained in every business process you can think of. Otherwise, chaos would reign, life as we know it would cease, cats would be sleeping with dogs... it would be a righteous mess.

But do people think of their jobs in terms such as “business process management.” Does anyone get up in the morning and say, “Better get to the office!” “I’ve lots of business process managin’ to do.”

That one got a laugh from Karin Ondricek. Karin (pronounced KAH-rin) is senior marketing manager for content management and archiving at EMC Corporation. We talked for a while last week. I had planned for us to talk about the market for BPM, but we ended up talking more about the process of BPM. Which was fine with me.

“In most business departments, you DO have people who wake up in the morning caring about the processes they’re involved in,” insisted Karin. “But if they’re not using a system to automate those processes, they haven’t even begun to think about them in terms of business process management yet.”

Does anyone think of BPM in the generic sense? I asked. “There are some,” replied Karin. “Particularly in IT, there are people who take a higher level view of how technology can solve this problem or that problem. But their plates are pretty full addressing departmental requests. So even if you do have more strategic members of your staff in executive IT who are able to think about BPM and how it could impact the business, many of the initiatives are still driven by requests from the business. They don’t have the luxury to think strategically, because they are too busy putting out fires.”

But even as the IT department is unrolling the firehoses, they still have, at least in the back of their minds, according to Karin, some glimmer of the overall strategy. “We see that all the time,” she said. “As we start discussing a single application that they came to solve, we get engaged in the conversation, and we start talking about future capabilities and opportunities.” That’s when the lightbulb goes off. “They start thinking—I can use this to solve this other problem, and this third problem and suddenly we’re on a strategic path.”

But these are not mere IT head-banging sessions, or boring departmental Monday morning meetings. This is where the work often gets done in organizations. “These conversations will include people from many different parts of the company coming together. Hearing about BPM was not necessarily why they came to talk, but once they start hearing about BPM, the light goes on, and they realize how many of their own problems can be addressed,” said Karin.

Is It For Real?
As I’m trying to get a mental picture of one of these “strategic conversations” involving “stakeholders” and “big-picture thinkers,” I couldn’t resist the skeptical part of me from darkening the room. So I asked Karin if, during any of these experiences, there are any “eye-rollers”—people who’ve been through dozens of management fads and who now take any suggestion of an overall strategic “vision” with a shaker full of salt?

“No, not at all,” she insisted. “More often, people are eager for the improvements to their productivity.” When pressed a little more, she agreed that relatively new developments in the BPM space probably have a lot to do with that level of scorn-free adoption. “For example, a lot of BPM modeling and reporting capabilities enable the business to collaborate in a way that helps the whole project become more successful.”

Has there been a deliberate attempt to “go over the wall” and make a conscious decision to collaborate beyond the normal constricts of the organizational chart? Or has it happened more or less naturally and organically? “A little of both,” Karin said. “There have been a lot of models that have been experimented with while people try to find what works best. Because the systems are so complex, business cannot go it alone. BPM offers a way  for IT to be the hero by bringing new levels of productivity.”

Wow. Being a hero is a big deal. But it’s one thing to propose a new automated whiz-bang system; it’s quite another to acquire the domain expertise to truly participate in mission-critical business operations... is it not? And if so, how is this cross-pollination between IT and the business side supposed to occur? “We’re seeing this more and more,” Karin explained. “Members of IT are being placed right in the business, where their full-time job is to serve as a liaison between that division of the business and the IT department.” That’s a serious statement: “full-time job” means they are entirely devoted to propelling the business objectives of the department... not putting out fires and plugging in wires. That’s a big change; IT used to be in charge of servers and networks and software... but that, according to Karin, has changed dramatically.

So I asked her to repeat it... Are you saying there’s a role on the org chart, for a person who’s in between IT and the business side? “Yes. That’s their job. They work for IT; and they work IN the business.” To underscore that, she went on: “They sit in the business. They meet with the business. That’s their primary life. They may report into IT, but their primary job is to represent the business. Innovation requires the support of IT. So many good ideas, and so much of the desire to serve customers better, require support from IT. You need that close collaboration, and you need to go well beyond merely keeping the computers on and the networks running,” declared Karin.

Isn’t there risk in that? I wondered. Asking IT to become multi-disciplinary can distract them from their prime directive, can’t it? “Go back to the liaison example,” Karin answered. “Each department has its own liaison; someone in IT lobbying on their behalf, promoting their needs...” But in this day and age, when IT budgets are as tight as anyone else’s, can they afford to place these resources into a domain-expertise role? “I wouldn’t say all organizations do it this way, but it’s a way to help the IT organizations meet their goal of serving the business. And the closer they are to the business, the better they are able to speak intelligently about it.”