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Shift Business Excellence into High Gear
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Shift Business Excellence into High Gear
SHIFT BUSINESS EXCELLENCE INTO HIGH GEAR: DRIVE STRATEGIC PERFORMANCE
THROUGH PROCESS EXCELLENCE
Shift Business Excellence into High Gear
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Shift Business Excellence into High Gear
CONTENTS
Foreword ................................................................................................................................................ 3
Executive Summary ................................................................................................................................ 4
About this Research ............................................................................................................................... 5
Mind the gap! Why is Linking Process improvement with strategy so difficult? ................................. 6
Aligning strategy with execution – Putting PEX in the C-Suite agenda: Interview with Appian’s Matt
Calkins ................................................................................................................................................... 12
What’s in a name? Defining the purpose of process excellence ........................................................ 13
Process alignment – The core competencies of process excellence: Interview with Bizagi’s Tomasz
Jasinkiewicz .......................................................................................................................................... 17
Embedding Process Excellence as a Strategic Capability .................................................................... 18
Aligning Strategy, Process Excellence and Technology in the Age of the Customer: Interview with
MatsSoft’s Martin Scovell .................................................................................................................... 21
Role of Technology ............................................................................................................................... 22
Bringing data and process together - the future for process improvement: Interview with K2’s Rob
Speck ..................................................................................................................................................... 25
Recommendations: .............................................................................................................................. 26
#1: Ask the tough questions ............................................................................................................. 26
#2: Use data to your advantage ....................................................................................................... 26
#3: Experiment with technology to support a culture of continuous improvement ..................... 27
#4: Stay disciplined ........................................................................................................................... 27
#5: Break down the silos between methodologies ......................................................................... 27
Conclusions: ...................................................................................................................................... 28
About the Report Sponsors .................................................................................................................. 29
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FOREWORD Throughout the centuries, strategy and execution have played a
key role, both in war and in producing some of the world’s
greatest wonders. From the Egyptian pyramids to rockets and
computers, we continue to push the limits of what we can
accomplish. However, these inventions were not built overnight.
Nor were they built without careful thought and planning.
Strategy and execution go hand in hand and cannot be
separated. A strategic plan that is poorly executed accomplishes little; likewise, the best plan in the world,
without someone to execute it, accomplishes nothing.
No one would expect a team of workers to build a bridge without having an engineer first create a blueprint,
just as no one would expect the blueprint, no matter how brilliant, to magically transform into a bridge
without careful execution. However, falling into one ditch or the other is a risk corporations in every industry
face as they work to find the balance between short-term pressures for immediate results and long-term
strategies that will improve organizational processes over time.
The good news is that there have never been more opportunities to create the kind of balance that companies
are hoping to achieve. While strategy will always take a certain amount of time and investment, supporting
technologies in this day and age are lowering the barriers between planning and results. This may mean
learning to adapt to new ways of thinking, but the upside is better relationships with employees, customers,
and partners as core processes and systems are better aligned to keep up with the pace of change.
Through a survey of over 400 individuals from a wide variety of backgrounds and industries, this research
report, produced by PEX Network, explores the gap between linking process improvement with strategy. It
examines the ways in which companies define process excellence, as well as barriers that prevent them from
achieving desired results. The report also looks at the role technology is playing in helping companies combine
strategy with tactics, and provides recommendations that will help companies create a blueprint for success.
I hope you enjoy the report, and here’s to the years of innovation and discovery we have ahead of us.
Jonathan King
Vice President, Technical Pre-Sales K2
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The strategy versus execution gap is a well-
documented phenomenon. In the best-selling
book Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things
Done, the authors, which include Larry Bossidy,
former AlliedSignal CEO, stated that “strategies
most often fail because they aren’t well executed.”
But the dilemma is that without strategy to set the
direction, execution is aimless. An organization
may work hard but will not be advancing towards
any coherent set of goals and objectives.
Operational improvements may result in achieving
things faster, cheaper and at lower cost, but for
what purpose? How will you know you’re winning?
On the other hand, without execution, strategy is
only a set of good intentions. It remains words or
ideas written in a PowerPoint document
somewhere without a clear set of plans to
translate them into reality.
Clearly, striking a balance between setting a well-
defined, coherent strategic vision and a focus on
translating that vision into reality is critical to
setting an organization up for success.
Process Excellence, by which we refer to a wide
variety of methodologies (e.g. Six Sigma and Lean)
and technology (mapping and modelling, process
automation, data analytics), could be defined as
the execution side of the equation. Through a
variety of methods and technologies, businesses
seek to continually improve and optimize business
processes (i.e. the way work is carried out) in
pursuit of better quality, efficiency, lower costs
and improved customer satisfaction. But linking
process improvement to business strategy has
consistently been cited as the top challenge facing
process practitioners for two years running in PEX
Network surveys.
There are well established approaches such as
Hoshin Kanri that focus on cascading the strategy
of a company down through the layers of an
organization and translating strategy into action.
So why does linking process improvement with
strategy consistently rank as one of the top
challenges for process professionals? Moreover,
what can be done to overcome the challenges?
This report, based on a survey of 404 process
professionals and telephone interviews with
selected individuals, looks in more detail at the
issue and proposes a series of 5 practical steps that
process professionals may consider to help better
align process improvement with strategy.
Key Findings: Linking process improvement with top level
business strategy ranks as the number one
priority for the second year running with 23.1%
of process professionals citing it as their biggest
challenge
Many companies (nearly 50%) have identified
process excellence one of the top priorities in
the year ahead but a significant proportion of
companies (32.2%) find it difficult to commit
adequate resources and investment for process
improvement
A low level of commitment to process
improvement (low priority) is associated with a
predominant focus on targeted quick wins,
while a high priority focus on process
improvement is most associated with improving
processes across the enterprise
Many names exist for process excellence
approaches and methodologies and this “brand
confusion” may contribute to a lack of general
awareness of process improvement as a core
capability within companies
Investment in all categories of technology is up year
on year, with “Big Data” and Analytics emerging as
the number one investment area for the year ahead
with 33.2% of professionals stating that it is a key
investment area
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ABOUT THIS RESEARCH Process practitioners frequently define the role of
process excellence as “to support and enable
business strategy,” according to PEX Network’s 2014
State of the Industry survey results. Yet, perhaps
ironically, linking process excellence initiatives with
top level business strategy is also frequently cited as
one of the biggest challenges by process excellence
practitioners. What explains this apparent gap and
how can process excellence more effectively support
business strategic strategy drive positive outcomes?
This report is based on a survey conducted in July
2014 process professionals focusing on process
excellence and strategic business alignment. Further
in-depth telephone interviews were conducted with
selected individuals. Where possible, the survey
results have been benchmarked with similar surveys
conducted by PEX Network in 2013.
Over 400 individuals responded to the 2014 survey,
from a wide variety of backgrounds, and industries
(see Chart 1, right, and Chart 3, below). Meanwhile,
the majority of respondents were from larger
companies with over 1000 employees (see Chart 2,
right).
Lean professional
17%
Six Sigma professional
19%
Business Process
Management professional
35%
IT professional
5%
Business professional (e.g. Line of
Business Manager)
17%
C-Level 7%
Chart 1: Job profile of survey respondents
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35%
1 to 100
101 to 1000
1,001 to 5,000
5,001 to 10,000
10,000+
Chart 2: Company size of survey respondents
0% 2% 4% 6% 8% 10% 12% 14%
Construction
Textile/Apparel
Retail
Aerospace/Defense
Mining/Minerals
Automotive
Transport, Logistics & Distribution
Chemicals
Education/Research
Government
Food and Beverage
Computers/Electronics
Insurance
Energy
Pharmaceutical/Biotechnology
Telecommunications
Business/Consulting Services
Healthcare
Other/Misc
Financial Services
Manufacturing
Chart 3: Industry of survey respondents
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MIND THE GAP! WHY IS LINKING PROCESS IMPROVEMENT WITH STRATEGY SO
DIFFICULT? Companies often fall into one of two
camps: a) functioning on auto-pilot,
carrying out tasks and processes –
perhaps even making those
processes more efficient or
moderately improved - without
questioning whether those habits
are what will set the organization up
for success or b) having lots of great
ideas on where the market is going
next, without the discipline to
operationalize that vision through
the appropriate processes, systems
and training.
It is a rare company indeed that is
able to consistently get the balance
right between having a clear vision
that is understood by everyone in
the organization and that is
supported by the right systems and
processes to achieve the results that
leadership is looking for.
Process professionals have, for the past two years,
consistently cited “linking process improvement
with top level business strategy” (see Chart 4,
above right) as their main process excellence
challenge in the year ahead in PEX Network PEX
Week surveys conducted in 2013 and 2014.
Indeed, the percentage of professionals citing the
challenge of strategic alignment rose moderately
from 18.5 percent in 2013 to nearly a quarter of
respondents this year.
“It’s essential to tie any work I do here to the
business goals otherwise I’m not going to get the
support. Executive support will fall by the wayside
as other priorities take over,” explains Jeremy
Tranmer, Operational Excellence Manager at
mining giant Rio Tinto Minerals.
So why do so many companies find linking process
improvement to strategy so difficult? One of the
reasons that several telephone interviewees cited,
was that often the corporate strategy wasn’t
clearly articulated in the first place.
“Strategic planning is hard work and that’s where
everything starts,” says David Behling, Director of
Process Improvement at Goodwill Industries. “But
so many people look to the fads to come up with
the silver bullet. They misapply these new tools
because they don’t really understand them and
aren’t prepared to do the hard work necessary to
get the fundamentals right.”
Mike Ensby, Operations Excellence Support Leader
at Bioclinica agrees citing the fact that in publicly
traded companies in particular senior leadership is
under so much pressure to deliver quarterly
earnings results that long term strategic focus
often takes a back seat to short term fire fighting.
0% 20% 40%
Lack of alignment between businessand IT departments
Skills shortage
Deploying new technologies
Other (please specify)
Maintaining executive buy in
Ensuring a customer focus throughoutthe business
Overcoming resistance
Sustaining change
Overcoming too much short-termfocus
Linking process improvement with toplevel business strategy
2013
2014
Chart 4: Comparison of 2013 and 2014 response to question what do
you see as your primary process excellence challenge for the year
ahead?
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“Senior leaders aren’t short sighted but
the pressures they’re under are short
sighted pressures,” he explains. “And
when you’re focused on the short term,
you don’t need strategy, you need
results.”
Nearly half of survey respondents
indicated that process excellence was
“one of the top priorities of the
company”; however, 32.2% of survey
respondents reported that “getting
anyone to commit much in terms of
resources or budget is difficult”.
Interestingly, the level of executive
commitment to process excellence seems
to correspond with the types of process
projects that an organization tackles (see
chart 6, below). A low level of
commitment to process improvement
(“company is not paying attention to or taking any
proactive steps to improve processes”) is
associated with a predominant focus on targeted
quick wins, while a high priority focus on process
improvement (“highest priority of the company")
is most associated with improving processes across
the enterprise.
Tamarah Usher, Business Analytics Process Leader
at agricultural company Monsanto explains that
it’s not that leadership doesn’t understand that
execution is important but that there are multiple
means through which corporate strategy can be
achieved and executives must prioritize where to
put their focus.
“I think leadership in most of these organizations
agree that processes are important and the
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%
Company is not paying attention toor taking any proactive steps to
improve processes
Highest priority of the company – it has full backing of company
leadership and resources/investment assigned to it
Company is paying attention toprocess excellence but getting
anyone to commit much in terms ofresources or budget is difficult
One of the top priorities of the company – top management is
committed and some resources and budget have been assigned
Chart 5: Overall, which statement best describes how important your
executive leadership team views process excellence at your company?
0% 20% 40% 60% 80%
Company is not paying attention to or takingany proactive steps to improve processes
Company is paying attention to processexcellence but getting anyone to commit much
in terms of resources or budget is difficult
One of the top priorities of the company – top management is committed and some
resources and budget have been assigned
Highest priority of the company – it has full backing of company leadership and resources/investment assigned to it
Targetted QuickWins
Functionally-based
Enterprise-wide
Chart 6: Types of projects predominantly undertaken versus priority level of process excellence at the
organization
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%
Company is not paying attention to or takingany proactive steps to improve processes
Company is paying attention to processexcellence but getting anyone to commitmuch in terms of resources or budget is…
One of the top priorities of the company – top management is committed and some
resources and budget have been assigned
Highest priority of the company – it has full backing of company leadership and resources/investment assigned to it
Targetted Quick Wins
Functionally-based
Enterprise-wide
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operational excellence work that we as process
professionals do is important,” she says.
“Everyone would agree with the principle of
improvement. But the amount of effort and
resources we want to put into it is another
question and that has bearing especially when
we’re looking for investment.”
Devin Rickard, Head of Change Management,
Office of the Corporate Controller, Adobe Systems,
adds that the real challenge comes down to
“getting the right level of executive understanding
of the importance of different improvement
efforts on helping to execute strategy.”
Survey results would appear to back that up. Only
6.2% of survey respondents indicated that their
companies are not interested in improving process
(see Chart 5, previous page. Meanwhile, nearly
half of all respondents indicated that they felt
process improvement was one of the top priorities
of the company while 11.7% of respondents said
they felt that process excellence was the highest
priority of the company with full leadership
backing and appropriate resources and investment
assigned to it.
However, a significant proportion of survey
respondents (32.2%) felt that leadership was only
paying “lip service” to process excellence and not
actually making real commitments to it.
A separate survey that PEX network conducted in
2013 of C-level executives sheds some light on why
that would be the case. Over 60% of business
executives cited “competing resources for time
and resources” as the main reason their
organization hasn’t adopted a process excellence
program (see Chart 7, below). It can be difficult in
a tough economy to justify investing in fixing
processes when there are so many other holes to
plug: investment in machines or computers, for
instance, or the training of staff in the skills critical
to growing your business.
“In one’s role as a process excellence and strategy
leader – you need to be aware that some of your
senior leadership may not have a strong affinity
towards processes and therefore may not be
highly receptive of those ideas,” says one
telephone interviewee from a major car
manufacturer, who wish to remain anonymous.
“But you need to influence them. You need to turn
them around and that’s something that we as
process professionals need to focus on.”
0% 20% 40% 60% 80%
Don't know what process excellence is
Have unsuccessfully tried to set up a processexcellence program in the past
It's just another unnecessary overhead
Don't see any benefit in process excellence
Other (please specify)
Other competing priorities for time and resources takeprecedence
Chart 7: Why don’t you have a process excellence program? Responses from C-level executives, PEX Network
Executive Priorities Survey (June 2013)
32.2% of respondents felt that
getting investment and
resources dedicated to
process improvement was a
challenge
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In addition to influencing senior leadership, it is
clear that in the face of competing priorities, it is
focus and the discipline to follow a series of
actions through is what can separate a company
that consciously drives towards a goal rather than
simply reacting to external forces.
David Behling, Director of Process Improvement at
Goodwill Industries, says that at his organization,
the discipline to focus only on those things that
support the strategic direction will be the
challenge over the course of the next year: “This
year we made a big step with our strategic
planning and I said now comes the hard part.
You’ve said you only want to work on ‘X’ number
of things and now the hard part is just working on
‘X’ number of things.”
Getting executives to agree that process
excellence is the way to achieve corporate
strategy, though, is not an easy task. Monsanto’s
Usher explains that with process improvement
projects it can be a challenge to demonstrate the
“hard” benefits of process improvement. “You
start to look at different benefits related to quality
and growth and they’re very hard to quantify
because they’re spread across initiatives in so
many ways.”
That leaves process improvement pigeon-holed
into delivering cost savings or efficiency gains
rather than as an enabler of corporate strategy. As
Usher points out, “that creates problems in itself
because people in the Process improvement
department become feared by the organization.
The perception is that they’re all about eliminating
FTEs [Full Time Equivalents].”
Indeed, cost savings and efficiency consistently
come out the top of the list when process
professionals are asked about the three primary
objectives for their process improvement. Chart X,
below, shows how these key objectives have
remained remarkably consistent over the past 3
years. But is a drive to improve costs and efficiency
perhaps too narrow a focus?
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%
Adapt to a Merger or Acquisition
Align IT Activities with Processes
Adapt to New Regulations/Regulatory Compliance
Support Innovation
Increase Market Share and Revenue
Increase Business Agility*
Decrease Defects
Improve Customer Satisfaction
Reduce Costs
Improve Efficiency
2011
2013
2014
Chart 8: What are the top 3 drivers for your process excellence program? Comparison of 2014 results
with previous years.
“This year we made a big step
with our strategic planning and I
said now comes the hard part.
You’ve said you only want to
work on ‘X’ number of things
and now the hard part is just
working on ‘X’ number of
things.”
- David Behling, Director of Process
Improvement, Goodwill Industries
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Mike Ensby from Bioclinica observes that “the true
facilitation of a process excellence person is being
able to take the high level ‘here’s where we’re
going’ systems approach that senior leaders take –
and translate that into what somebody needs do
everyday when they come into work.”
Jeremy Tranmer from Rio Tinto Minerals takes it
one step further and says that process
practitioners need to take a wider, more strategic
and systematic view of how their work fits into
corporate strategy.
“Instead of coming from the perspective of ‘we
want to do process excellence’ and then trying to
link it to strategy, we need to look at the strategy
targets and goals first,” he says. “Then use
whatever tools and techniques to best achieve
these goals.”
This pragmatic view of the role of process
excellence is a shift from some of the ways that
companies have deployed approaches like Six
Sigma in the past where following the
methodology was seen as all important.
“I’ve worked with Six Sigma black belts whose
solution to every problem is to start with the
Define phase in the D of DMAIC and work your
way through the alphabet and do every last
deliverable that is outlined in the methodology,”
explains Devin Rickard, Head of Change
Management, Office of the Corporate Controller,
Adobe Systems. “The problem with that is that you
do a lot of very unnecessary work that your
sponsors don’t understand what kind of value it’s
delivering.”
Bob Abel, Senior Director of Global Continuous
Improvement at Walmart says that ultimately the
function fulfills a range of problem solving needs
for organizations and shouldn’t be thought of
merely as DMAIC projects or cost-cutting
exercises. “It is internal consulting. It’s
understanding your processes,” he says. “Then
what’s your prioritization of taking all your
projects coming in and managing that? How do
you execute? How do you change management
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that back in so that your changes stick?”
Devin Rickard from Adobe agrees: “The really
powerful skillset is being able to quickly
understand a business problem and understand
what the impact of that business problem is and
then devise a strategy for solving that problem
that uses select tools from the methodology. You
have the ability to look at a problem and see
exactly what the issues are and what the
constraints are that the business is faced with. In
order to solve the problem in an expedient way,
here’s the strategy we’re going to take and here
are the things we’re going to do.”
Better aligning process excellence with corporate
strategy also cuts to the heart of the question:
what is process excellence for? The next section
will look at the wide range of definitions and
names that practitioners have given to process
improvement activities.
“The really powerful skillset is being able to quickly understand a
business problem and understand what the impact of that business
problem is and then devise a strategy for solving that problem that
uses select tools from the methodology. You have the ability to
look at a problem and see exactly what the issues are and what the
constraints are that the business is faced with. In order to solve the
problem in an expedient way, here’s the strategy we’re going to
take and here are the things we’re going to do.”
- Devin Rickard, Head of Change Management, Office of the Corporate Controller,
Adobe Systems
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PEX Network: Do you think
that process excellence is
moving up the agenda of
the C-Suite? (Why or why
not?)
Matt Calkins:
Understanding of the
definition and role of
“Process” is changing. A
traditional mind-set makes it easy to relegate
process to the ivory tower of theoretical “to-be”
states, or the grunt work of marginal
improvements to discrete departmental tasks. The
truth is that “process” really means “how work
gets done,” and work has fundamentally changed
in the wake of mobile, social, cloud, and data
technology disruptions.
C-level executives who see opportunity in change
are embracing new ways of doing business.
Creating new revenue streams, driving mobile
engagement with customers, increasing
collaboration among employees, etc. all require
process transformation. New technologies offer
little business value if disconnected from actual
work. As the concept of “process” evolves to the
concept of “work,” it is getting serious attention
from the corner offices.
PEX Network: In theory process excellence is
about enabling corporate strategy. In practice,
many companies fail at this strategy-execution
alignment. Why do you think that so many
companies struggle with this?
Matt Calkins: There have always been two
problems. The first is the pain involved in
operationalizing new ways of working –
development/rollout time for new process
applications, change management needs, training
time and the possibility of user rejection. The
second problem has been that there is limited
value to be derived from departmentally-bound
process improvement initiatives across a relatively
small group of employees. Enforcing goal-seeking
behaviour requires a broader approach at every
level.
Vitally, the goal of process excellence must be to
rapidly, and continuously maximize the unique
qualities that an organization brings to its market.
How you do what you do is not a commodity – it is
the heart of your competitive advantage. For
decades, organizations have developed, deployed
and maintained expensive, rigid, cumbersome
custom applications to support and enforce their
uniqueness. Ask any IT manager for their least
favorite application, and they’ll point to a piece of
custom software. It is likely to be functionally
archaic, difficult to use, poorly integrated and
difficult to repair or upgrade. What’s worse, the
cost of building and maintaining these applications
scales linearly, because each one is a separate silo
from top to bottom.
PEX Network: What do companies need to do in
order to make their processes better support and
enable business strategy?
Matt Calkins: To tune the way work gets done to
the overall business strategy, organizations need a
new approach to quickly capturing and automating
their unique competitive advantage. A new breed
of business process management (BPM)-driven
enterprise application platforms is revolutionizing
this sort of custom software development.
Through a model-based approach, companies are
no longer dragged down by the limitations of
traditional coding. Process applications built on
such a platform are modern, affordable, and
synergistic with each other. (Traditional custom
software was none of these things.) When such a
platform is hosted in the cloud (as an Application
Platform-as-a-Service) the benefits are
compounded with automatic, hands-free upgrades
as device platforms evolve. By working on mobile
devices as easily working on a desktop and with no
extra cost, application platforms will transform the
way custom software is delivered and used. Easy-
to-use mobile-available custom software will now
unite the organization rather than drive it apart.
Matt Calkins,
President and CEO,
Appian
ALIGNING STRATEGY WITH EXECUTION – PUTTING PEX IN THE C-SUITE
AGENDA: INTERVIEW WITH APPIAN’S MATT CALKINS
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WHAT’S IN A NAME? DEFINING THE PURPOSE OF PROCESS EXCELLENCE
There are many different variations in how process
practitioners define their mission at different
organizations. One of the questions respondents
were asked in PEX Network’s July 2014 survey was
how would they define the purpose of the process
excellence at their company.
Below is a small sampling of some of the variety of
definitions that came back from respondents:
“To continually improve the current
processes & develop new and innovative
ways to exceed our customer's
expectations.”
“Build a more agile framework that
breaks down departmental silos and
allows us to adapt to new
products/services and customer
experience changes quicker and with less
manual work-arounds”
“Continuous improvement and ensuring
that all teams globally are consistent in
their processes and that we learn from
one another and capture those learnings
in our processes”
“To meet the constant
review/improvement requirements for
ISO registration”
“Reduce cost and increase efficiency”
“Reduce variability of process output to
the uncontrolled limit”
“To retain employees.”
“Enable the operation to improve faster: -
facilitate the target setting and
improvement planning process - coach
improvement projects to deliver results -
establish and support lean at the
workface”
“Software quality”
“Constant and never ending continuous
improvement in in line with client needs
and our strategic goals aiming at being
best in class”
“Reduce defects by improving the overall
knowledge base and efficiency”
“Drive inefficiency out, support
continuous improvement ethos”
“Streamline and standardize the
enterprise-wide processes across business
divisions”
“Improve compliance, efficiency and
quality of outcomes”
The range of names that companies call process
excellence also varies hugely. Some have been
specific to the methodologies used to support
process improvement such as Six Sigma, Total
Quality Management, Lean, Business Process
Reengineering, Statistical Process Control, etc.
Other common terms that companies use include
“operational excellence”, “continuous
improvement” and “process improvement” in
addition to company-specific terms for their
process excellence program (e.g. “The Toyota
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25%
Six Sigma
Business Transformation
Performance Excellence
Lean
Lean Six Sigma
Process Excellence
Business Process Management…
Process Improvement
Continuous Improvement
Operational Excellence
Chart 9: Which term most closely approximates what your
organization calls process excellence?
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Way”). Chart 9, above right, shows the most
common naming conventions used by
organizations to describe their process excellence
program.
The problem is that there is no one single term
that the industry has consolidated around that
encapsulates the meaning or purpose of process
excellence.
“The branding is a challenge because what we call
it can create confusion,” observes Paul Sandell,
Senior Master Black Belt at Intel. “Within
accounting and finance, for instance, the function
is always called accounting and finance. There
really is no other brand. But you go to other
companies and process improvement can be called
any number of things. This causes a great deal of
confusion with not only the lay person within the
organization but also with the business
leadership.”
Bob Abel, Senior Director Global Continuous
Improvement at Walmart agrees: “When I was at
USAA we called it Operational Excellence. At Kelly
we called it Process Support. At Armstrong we
called it Process Improvement. Here [at Walmart]
we call it Continuous Improvement. That lack of
consolidation or consistent terminology means
that process excellence has not been elevated
from an industry standard perspective and makes
it difficult for CEOs and other executives to
recognize that processes and their improvement
are a critical function.”
It is ironic that something that supports what all
organizations must do in order to compete for
business – i.e. carry out work, solve problems,
manage projects, execute on strategy,
continuously improve operations, keep customers
happy – is not formally acknowledged as a
function nor does it have any universally
acknowledged name.
This could be partly because process excellence
practitioners often aim to make process excellence
a part of the culture of the organization rather
than think of it as separate from the day to day
operations. The theory is that the real gains from
improving processes comes when the skills of
problem solving and continuous improvement are
practiced by everyone, rather than seen as a
separate function that only a few specific people
do.
Ulf Pettersson, WCM Manager at flooring
manufacturer Tarkett Ronneby, observes that
naming the function can even lead to problems
with the way the rest of the business
conceptualizes process excellence: “when I started
here, they had been running their World Class
Manufacturing (WCM) operations [what Tarkett
Ronneby calls process excellence] for 2 ½ years
and people were making a distinction between
“normal work” and “WCM” work. That led to the
sentiment that WCM would blow over rather than
becoming part of the way we work. Since then, the
organization has integrated and accepted that
normal work is doing according to WCM.”
“When I was at USAA we called it Operational Excellence. At Kelly
we called it Process Support. At Armstrong we called it Process
Improvement. Here [at Walmart] we call it Continuous
Improvement. That lack of consolidation or consistent
terminology means that process excellence has not been elevated
from an industry standard perspective and makes it difficult for
CEOs and other executives to recognize that processes and their
improvement are a critical function.”
- Bob Abel, Senior Director Global Continuous Improvement, Walmart
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Adobe’s Devin Rickard says that people rename
process excellence when previous efforts have not
been successful. The underlying tools and
methodologies will be the same, but practitioners
try to wallpaper over the cracks by calling it
something different.
“The majority of executives here in the Silicon
Valley have developed antibodies to a lot of the
terminology of a business process professional –
Six Sigma, Lean, Lean Six Sigma,” he explains. “The
executive community here is fairly tightly knit so if
there’s one company that has tried a large,
executive level driven business process
improvement effort and was not successful with it,
the word is going to spread. You have to brand
yourself in a way that doesn’t trigger any
antibodies.”
Does lack of coherent terminology across
companies matter? The answer is that infuriating
consultant’s response: it depends.
Within companies that have long practiced and
supported process excellence, for instance, it is
likely that the wider organization will have a
reasonable understanding of what process
excellence is and means. As David Behling,
Director of Process Improvement at Goodwill
Industries says, it doesn’t really matter what you
call process excellence as long as the name holds
meaning for people within your organization: “it
matters what everyone understands it to mean.”
However, the larger question is whether the lack
of a coherent “brand” across companies for
process excellence means it will always be a
struggle to get process improvement capabilities
understood and accepted by business executives
as a strategic function. For non-process experts,
the vast array of terminology can be baffling and
can lead to the lack of understanding that the
various terms are all describing the same general
set of capabilities and approaches.
As a result, each time the capabilities are
introduced into an organization, the process of
education and “selling” the approach begins as
many business users will have had no prior
exposure to the concept of process improvement
(or may not be aware they have if it is called
something different in previous organizations in
which they have worked).
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THE MANY SHADES OF PROCESS EXCELLENCE:
Process excellence goes under the moniker of different names in different industries. Here are the
most popular ones by selected industry.
0% 10% 20% 30% 40%
Business Transformation
Performance Excellence
Lean Six Sigma
Process Improvement
Lean
Continuous Improvement
Process Excellence
Operational Excellence
BPM
Financial Services
0% 10% 20% 30% 40%
BPM
Performance Excellence
Business Transformation
Process Improvement
Lean
Operational Excellence
Process Excellence
Continuous Improvement
Pharmaceutical/Biotechnology
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%
Performance Excellence
Lean Six Sigma
Process Excellence
BPM
Lean
Process Improvement
Business Transformation
Continuous Improvement
Operational Excellence
Insurance
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25%
Business Transformation
Process Excellence
BPM
Performance Excellence
Lean
Process Improvement
Operational Excellence
Lean Six Sigma
Continuous Improvement
Manufacturing
0% 10% 20% 30% 40%
Business Transformation
Process Excellence
Performance Excellence
BPM
Lean
Lean Six Sigma
Process Improvement
Operational Excellence
Continuous Improvement
Healthcare
0% 10% 20% 30% 40%
Business Transformation
BPM
Lean
Process Excellence
Performance Excellence
Lean Six Sigma
Continuous Improvement
Process Improvement
Operational Excellence
Energy
Chart 10: How energy companies term process
excellence
Chart 11: How healthcare organizations term
process excellence
Chart 12: How manufacturing companies term
process excellence Chart 13: How insurance companies term
process excellence
Chart 15: How pharma/biotechnology
companies term process excellence
Chart 14: How financial services companies term
process excellence
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PEX Network: Would you consider process excellence a key strategic capability? Why or why not? Tomasz Jasinkiewicz: It is a very strategic one! I believe we’ll see pretty soon a lot of formally nominated CPOs – Chief Process Officers. Process Excellence is strategic
because it helps with your bottom line as well as your top line. Good processes are traditionally associated only with the bottom-line, with operational efficiency, and with lower costs. But good processes can also give you better customer service, wider market reach and faster time-to-market. And that’s your top line. I also see an important reason why process excellence is more important today than a decade ago. The markets move too fast and generate too much data so our human minds just can’t absorb it all. You can’t survive today without automated processes. And you can’t automate them if they are not optimized – well you can, but that’s a rather bad idea – so you need process excellence for both – to optimize and to automate. PEX Network: What does it mean from your perspective to align process excellence effectively with business strategy? Tomasz Jasinkiewicz: You could write a PhD thesis in response to this question, but let me try to tackle it briefly. In a nutshell it has to work in two directions:
1. Top-down you need to define what you’re trying to achieve and how you’re going to measure it. There’s no excellence without measures. You need to clearly communicate it to all levels of your organization and then you have to listen to the feedback you get from the ground. And re-adjust your strategy if it doesn’t work.
2. Bottom-up you need to constantly measure the SLAs/KPIs for every running process as well as the impact of every change in the processes you make. Then you check if what you measured is in line with what the strategy asked for and if not, then you adjust your processes again.
The key thing to stay ahead of your competition is that you can’t wait for a monthly SLA report. You need to see your KPIs in real time and react fast both directions: top-down and bottom-up. PEX Network: What core competencies should process professionals consider as critical to successful alignment? Tomasz Jasinkiewicz: There are many but I would focus on three of them: Collaboration, IT and… Imperfection. Let me explain. You need collaboration top-down, for the managers to cascade their vision; bottom-up, for the employees to give them a reality check; and peer-to-peer, for co-workers to trust each other and work towards the same goal. You need IT because there’s no process automation, or even basic process control, without IT. And your IT has to be in perfect sync with your business. Think of collaboration again, think of cross-functional teams, think of IT-savvy Business Analysts. Finally, you need the Imperfection. Process improvement is a process itself. You can’t deploy a perfect process in a big bang. It just takes too much time and money, and by the time you’re finished your process is obsolete. Don’t be perfect! Start with an imperfect version of your process and use it. Then improve this, and improve that. Progress in small steps or – as I like to say – eat with a small spoon. Also, make sure you use tools that allow you to make those small but frequent changes. Just grab the right spoon. PEX Network: What’s your approach to make process excellence work in practice? Tomasz Jasinkiewicz: We just follow the philosophy of “Start Small, Think Big and Scale Fast”.
Start small by picking a small process project to quickly demonstrate ROI and ease-of-use.
Think big by aligns this first process to at least one strategic goal and at least one big problem to solve
And then we scale fast – to keep the momentum – by adding more processes, ramping up the skills and growing the BPM culture within the organisation.
Tomasz
Jasinkiewicz,
Account Director,
Bizagi
PROCESS ALIGNMENT – THE CORE COMPETENCIES OF PROCESS EXCELLENCE:
INTERVIEW WITH BIZAGI’S TOMASZ JASINKIEWICZ
Sponsor Interview
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EMBEDDING PROCESS EXCELLENCE AS A STRATEGIC CAPABILITY
While linking process improvement with top
level business strategy never gets easy no
matter how long an organization has been
formally practicing process improvement,
companies that have long had a formal
process excellence program (6+ years) are
more likely to agree – or strongly agree – with
the statement that process improvements are
aligned with the company’s strategic
objectives than those who are just starting
their journey (see Chart 16, opposite).
Interestingly, though, the priority level that an
organization assigns to process excellence
does not appear to have any correlation at all
to how long an organization has been
practicing process excellence. (See Chart 17
below). At 0-2 years, for instance, 68.49% of
survey respondents report that process
excellence is either one of the top priorities or
the top priority, a number which remains
relatively consistent across all maturity levels.
Indeed, a slightly smaller percentage (65.96%)
of companies that have been doing process
excellence for 10+ years report that process
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%
0-2 Years
3-5 Years
6-9 Years
10+ years
Highest priority of the company – it has full backing of company leadership and resources/investment assigned to it
One of the top priorities of the company – top management is committed and some resources and budget have been assigned
Company is paying attention toprocess excellence but gettinganyone to commit much in terms ofresources or budget is difficult
Company is not paying attention toor taking any proactive steps toimprove processes
Chart 17: Number of years with a formal process excellence program versus the priority level of the
program.
Chart 16: To what extent would you agree with the following
statement at your company “Process improvements are aligned with
the company's strategic objectives” compared with number of years
the organization has had a formal process excellence program
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%
Strongly Disagree
Disagree
Neutral
Agree
Strongly Agree
10+ Years
6-9 Years
3-5 years
0-2 years
To what extent would you agree that process improvements are aligned
with your company’s strategic objectives?
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excellence is either one of the top priorities or the
top priority (although moderately more report that
it is a “top priority” than any of the other maturity
levels).
These results indicate that support for process
excellence remains relatively constant over the
course of a deployment. In fact, at the beginning
of a process excellence deployment it could be
that support is moderately stronger, if the
organization has a “burning platform”, which it
believes employing process excellence
methodologies will help resolve.
There is a risk, though, that if process
improvement only is associated with solving a
specific problem at a specific point in time, that it
becomes something that burns brightly initially but
quickly burns itself out.
“If you start everything with a big bang then
people either expect a lot or they expect it to blow
over,” says Ulf Pettersson, WCM Manager at
Tarkett Ronneby. “If you start on a small scale and
pilot in a small area you’re creating a pool for the
need for other departments to follow. If you are
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“The best models are what I call
the mixed models where you have
the full time process improvement
professionals – Black Belts, Master
Black Belts – working on projects
as part of their day to day work
but where every level of the
organization and every person in
the organization does some
project work within either the
business group they work in or
expanding beyond in cross
business groups.”
- Paul Sandell, Senior Master Black Belt,
Intel
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able to show results, people want to know how it
was achieved and they become interested.”
One of the ways to get incremental buy in
throughout the organization is by focusing on
getting business leaders involved in actually
leading process improvement projects.
According to survey respondents, process
Improvement projects are typically led by Process
Improvement experts (44.5% of respondents
indicated that projects were led by these experts
versus 28.6% said it was typically Line of Business
Managers who were responsible for leadership of
these projects (see Chart 18, opposite). Many of
the telephone interviewee felt, though, that this
was not the best model to encourage linking
process improvement with strategic objectives.
“The best models are what I call the mixed models
where you have the full time process improvement
professionals – Black Belts, Master Black Belts –
working on projects as part of their day to day
work but where every level of the organization and
every person in the organization does some
project work within either the business group they
work in or expanding beyond in cross business
groups,” says Paul Sandell from Intel.
“You want to put process improvement knowledge
in the hands of everyone,” comments Goodwill
Industries’ David Behling. “If it’s always the
process improvement experts who are leading
process improvement, then it’s not building
culture.”
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%
Human Resources
IT
External Consultants
Other (please specify)
Line of Business Managers
Process Improvement experts(e.g. Lean Six Sigma Black Belts)
Chart 18: Who typically leads process improvement projects at
your company?
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PEX Network: Why do you think more companies are looking to invest in all categories of technologies this year as opposed to last? Martin Scovell: Given that the economy is recovering from the biggest recession since the 1930’s; no one will be surprised to see
technology investment rising at present. That much is obvious, but what is more interesting is that what firms are choosing to invest in isn’t the same today as it was before the recession. Gartner’s 2014 CEO Survey makes this clear; CEOs are keen to invest in customer-facing areas such as digital marketing, e-commerce and customer experience management. By comparison, focus on back office IT investment has declined. Forrester’s “Age of the Customer” research predicts that investment in what they call “systems of engagement” will overtake back-office IT investment by 2018. Correspondingly, responsibility for such projects is increasingly devolved to business departments, rather than centrally controlled by IT. This is a tremendous opportunity for firms like MatsSoft that have a pedigree not just in process automation, but in customer experience improvement as well. For projects such as this, platforms that can deliver improvements in days rather than months, have much more appeal compared to the heavy weight technology vendors that were once favoured by IT. The ability to provide instant and intuitive platforms for business improvement via the Cloud, and the ability to take a share-of-risk / share-of-reward approach with clients, is enabling a new and innovative class of technology vendors to liberate clients from the constraints previously imposed by centralised IT and monolithic procurement arrangements. PEX Network: Do you think technology is becoming more of a strategic issue for process excellence? Martin Scovell: It has always been strategic; it just has not always been very popular. For years the regrettable experience of many process excellence professionals has been that however fast they propose process improvements that streamline operations and raise customer service levels, IT has struggled to keep up. Constrained resources, long work queues and then the complexity and time required for development, have been a real barrier to implementing quick business improvements.
The advent of “low-code” development platforms that are available instantly via the Cloud, means process excellence initiatives can be unshackled from many of the restraints previously associated with technology projects. It’s really exciting to work in a domain where technology can be instantly available, immediately intuitive and incredibly quick to deliver results, without the need for hard-core programming. PEX Network: How can technology help better align process improvement with corporate strategic objectives? Martin Scovell: Linking process improvement to top-level strategy is the most significant and growing concern expressed in this year’s PEX member survey. Perhaps it’s more difficult to improve such alignment in a rising economy, because business leaders have more appetite for risk and radical innovation, which can easily sideswipe the best-made plans for process improvement. Various industry surveys tell us that customer experience improvement, powered by digital innovation is a top priority for businesses today. Improving customer experience across multiple channels is a top priority for many businesses. In this respect IT specialists, business people and process excellence specialists all need to collaborate better. Digital innovation that better serves customers really has to be a team effort. Low-code development platforms, that enable business and process excellence stakeholders to retain a simple common language that they both understand, are well suited to this challenge. By reducing the need for resource-constrained programming, solutions can be built so quickly, that an agile and iterative approach can be taken. It’s an approach termed “Test and Learn” by Forrester amongst others. The agility and speed which stem from this approach, can significantly assist in the quest to improve alignment between strategy, process design and technology delivery. That’s because you get results before the need has changed. You retain the involvement of business stakeholders – who don’t have time to lose interest. All stakeholders can see and understand what is being built, instead of development only being intelligible to highly trained technologists. In summary, speed and superior collaboration enable better alignment.
Martin Scovell, CEO,
MatsSoft
ALIGNING STRATEGY, PROCESS EXCELLENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN THE AGE
OF THE CUSTOMER: INTERVIEW WITH MATSSOFT’S MARTIN SCOVELL
Sponsor Interview
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ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY
Technology is playing an ever greater role in all
aspects of business operations. Whether it’s
supporting and automating processes or enabling
new business models, Information Technology has
transformed the art of the possible within
companies. Technology enablement, when
correctly utilized, has the potential to make
process improvements higher impact and with
greater reach within an organization.
Currently, the vast majority of process excellence
practitioners (64.5%), according to our 2014
survey, use process modelling or mapping tools to
support their projects/initiatives (see Chart 19,
below). Workflow automation technologies come
second with 39.4% of respondents indicating some
form of automation tool or technology is helping
to support process, while Document Management
solutions for supporting the flow of documents
through processes rank third with 35.1% of
respondents indicating that they already use a
document management solution.
In the year ahead, all categories of technology
investment look set to experience growth over last
year (see Chart 20, next page), perhaps an
indication that an improving outlook for the global
economy means that companies are starting to
loosen the purse-strings on investment.
Interestingly, the technology that has emerged as
a frontrunner for investment is big data and
analytics technology. Over 30% of process
professionals (33.8%) indicated the data analytics
and big data technologies were an area of
investment in the next 12-18 months.
While big data is somewhat of a woolly term – the
software industry uses it to describe data that is of
greater variety, volume and velocity than
computers were able to effectively process until
recently – clearly companies are starting to look
more seriously at how data can be integrated and
Chart 19: Which technologies are you currently using to support your process excellence
projects/initiatives?
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%
Social BPM solution
Mobile BPM solution
Process simulation
BPM Suites
Master data management
Process mining
Data analytics (Big Data)
Document management solutions
Workflow automation
Process modelling/mapping tools
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utilized more effectively to aid business
operations.
“Today, we can monitor almost anything with
embedded sensors that simply send data at
unprecedented frequencies,” says Rob Speck, Vice
President of Global Services at K2. “When we look
at that exponential growth you can store in the
enterprise, we can see that there's value to having
tools that can understand what's going on,
perhaps trends, correlations, patterns, that can
actually help aid in future decisions.”
Adobe’s Devin Rickard says that within his
company, data is becoming a much greater part of
process excellence projects.
“Business people are increasingly savvy about data
and their need to be able to make sense of it,” he
explains. “With every project that we have going
on, a huge piece is how are we going to measure
things? Where are we going to get our data from?
Are you going to be able to produce for me the
reports and information that I need in order to be
able to make decisions?”
Tamarah Usher at Monsanto says that analysis of
big data is playing a greater role in improving the
Research and Development pipeline as her
company mines the vast amount of genetic
information they have stored: “We’ve put our
process professionals side by side with our data
scientists. We want to make sure we’re looking at
our processes holistically can apply analytics
where it will make the most impact on decision
making.”
But many still remain skeptical about the value of
big data citing problems with the term (at what
point does data become ‘big’?), issues with data
quality (“garbage in, garbage out”) as well as the
fact that many businesses struggle to make sense
of and use efficiently the data that they already
have.
Chart 20: What process management technologies are you planning to invest in within the next 12-18
months?
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40%
Social BPM solution
Mobile BPM solution
Process mining
Process simulation
Master data management
BPM Suites
Process modelling/mapping tools
Document management solutions
Workflow automation
Data analytics (Big Data)
2013
2014
33.8% of survey respondents
said that Big Data and
Analytics are a key
investment area in the year
ahead
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David Behling from Goodwill Industries points out
that “if you don’t have a plan on how you will use
the data all you’re doing is collecting a lot of
something that won’t help you do anything.”
The traditional process improvement toolset of
identifying relevant metrics and data will become
more, rather than less, important. The key is to
identify the critical few metrics that matter to
business performance.
Devin Rickard from Adobe explains: “I’ve seen
many efforts that get carried away with their
metrics. Ultimately you want to keep things as
simple as possible and you need to know what the
fundamental things you need to know are, in order
to make intelligent business decisions that help
you drive your piece of the business. The whole big
data piece of it means, can you get me the
information I need to make effective decisions?”
“Business people are increasingly savvy about data and their need to
be able to make sense of it. With every project that we have going on,
a huge piece is how are we going to measure things? Where are we
going to get our data from? Are you going to be able to produce for
me the reports and information that I need in order to be able to
make decisions?”
– Devin Rickard, Head of Change Management, Office of the Corporate Controller, Adobe
Systems
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PEX Network: Why do you think companies are starting to look to invest in big data and analytics in the year ahead? Why now? Rob Speck: I think it's a combination of factors, including pervasive connectivity devices that send data wirelessly about
everything: you've got machine states, customer locations, atmospheric conditions and on and on. You basically have all of these devices sending massive amounts of data. Today, we can monitor almost anything with embedded sensors that simply send data at unprecedented frequencies. If you couple those trends with ever-cheaper costs of storing data, we have a world full of data orders. When we look at that exponential growth you can store in the enterprise, we can see that there's value to having tools that can understand what's going on, perhaps trends, correlations, patterns, that can actually help aid in future decisions. PEX Network: How do you see big data and business process management sitting together? Rob Speck: It's still a very early growth stage. There are a variety of organizations that have technologies that can handle data flowing in using event-enabled processing, using services-oriented architectures. You've got things like in-memory processing. And you have other organizations that are storing everything that is coming in. Regardless of your architecture, regardless of the way you're handling the big data challenge, at a certain point you basically want to take action. If you’re a bank, for instance, you might see an inordinate amount of password changes with your online account. A certain level might pass a specific acceptable threshold, which then triggers an alert to investigate as maybe there's potential fraud activity hitting accounts. Next, you want some kind of action. It may be completely automated, like freezing the password change function across your system so no further changes could happen. But you may have other more complex set of activities that are manual as well. You may have roles in the organization that are alerted to specific human tasks that may be taking place, perhaps exploring the root cause of this specific suspicious condition.
In short, when we talk about value of big data and various technologies, at the end of the analysis you want to trigger a process. And this is where we've seen our technology become an important part of harnessing the power and value of big data. PEX Network: Now, there's always a risk with new technology like big data that companies just jump on the bandwagon and then become disillusioned when the reality doesn't live up to the original expectation. Do you have any advice for how process improvement professionals can help ensure that their companies don't fall into this “trough of disillusionment” with big data or any other technology investment? Rob Speck: I've seen that curve that Gartner draws out, and it does happen with nearly every technology wave. In my view, it's all about the business drivers: what are you trying to achieve? Where you've identified opportunities in the business, how can insight into things like customer behavior, operations management quality, demand generation, help these things be improved? I've seen companies like Federal Express use environmental monitoring to ensure biological samples stay within a necessary temperature range during transport from clinics to labs for testing. For this instance, they knew that they had a need to monitor conditions more accurately and with a constant flow of data monitoring because that would reduce the incidents of fault, which could ruin a shipment, which in turn can cost the company millions, of not just lost revenue, but also lost customer satisfaction and loyalty. So once you understand the business case and that business case is there, as with any technology, it's about taking a pragmatic approach. Another example is Microsoft. They started in one specific business area and after proving these technologies, the architecture, the approach, they moved to another business unit and so on. One of the impressive things I've seen working with Microsoft is they approach every new technology in a sensible way and I've never seen them take a boil-the-ocean approach. They realize the value quickly, expand, take a step back, look at how to leverage that across business units, and then centralize if, and only if, it makes any sense. So in short, I'd say use technologies that allow you to gain value in just a few months. Stay away from massive platforms that promise the moon. Do that, and you should avoid that trough of disillusionment.
Rob Speck, Vice
President, Global
Services, K2
BRINGING DATA AND PROCESS TOGETHER - THE FUTURE FOR PROCESS
IMPROVEMENT: INTERVIEW WITH K2’S ROB SPECK
Read the full interview here: http://goo.gl/ZAt93d
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RECOMMENDATIONS:
There is no “one size fits all” approach to linking
process improvement to strategy. Different
organizations will be at different levels of maturity
and be facing different challenges. Is the problem
lack of executive understanding of or support for
process improvement? Is it that the organization
hasn’t set a defined strategy? Do the business
leadership teams believe that process
improvement is something that someone else
does for them?
Despite the range of maturities where different
companies may be, here are 5 suggestions on ways
that process professionals can look at better
aligning process improvement with strategy:
#1: ASK THE TOUGH QUESTIONS
As discussed in one of the earlier sections of this
report, sometimes the strategic focus of the
company is unclear or lacking. While it can be easy
to blame upper management for the lack of clarity
or for lurching from one tactic to another,
ultimately, process practitioners can help draw out
and articulate the strategic direction of the
company by asking the right questions.
“Challenging and asking lots of questions – that’s
how you can get your leadership team to focus on
setting those objectives and goals,” says Jeremy
Tranmer from Rio Tinto Minerals.
Tranmer recounts how a new financial controller
came in and kept asking the group the same
question over and over again: “how do we know
we’re winning?”
“He created a lot frustration but also discussion
and eventually it lead to more clarity,” Tranmer
says.
#2: USE DATA TO YOUR ADVANTAGE
Clearly, the new emerging data analytics
technologies are in an early stage of adoption by
companies and many practitioners remain
skeptical about companies who look to the much
touted “Big Data” as the silver bullet for business
woes. Much work still must be done to lay the
foundation for incorporating the new data
technologies successfully as companies still
struggle with issues of data quality and even with
identifying the metrics that matter for
performance. However, the effective use of data
can be a powerful aid in both ensuring that
process improvement is linked with strategy as
well as keeping executives on side and supportive.
“After we found that offering up opportunities
based on opinion fell on deaf ears, we started
digging for facts. Presenting an opportunity,
backed up with, say, a value-stream map or an OEE
chart, has a much warmer reception,” offers Rio
Tinto Minerals’ Jeremy Tranmer.
This does not require major investment in new
“If you really have strategic planning done, everything should be
related to your strategic planning. That’s the discipline part. With
so much low hanging fruit you could do everything but you really
need to prioritize based on your strategy. We have to start running
our events through a committee to make sure they align with our
strategy.”
- David Behling, Director of Process Improvement at Goodwill Industries
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technologies. Instead it requires a thoughtful
approach to the kind of metrics and data that will
help drive decision making forward and also keep
everyone focused in the same direction.
Additionally it requires thought on how to present
that information so that it can be readily
understandable by all relevant stakeholders. Once
a solid foundation has been established the new
data and analytics technologies that are emerging
can help embed, deepen and support the
capability into the business.
#3: EXPERIMENT WITH TECHNOLOGY TO
SUPPORT A CULTURE OF CONTINUOUS
IMPROVEMENT
Technology investment for process excellence
need not be expensive. Lightweight social media
platforms and technologies like wikis, etc. can help
all employees share best practice and identify
opportunities for improvement.
“As practitioners, we can’t always drive the culture
of the organization or make process important as
part of a larger strategy – PI is expensive in some
cases – but we should start to use some of the
social and collaborative platforms to help create
an asset of process so that it starts to catch on
with minimal investment and everyone can drive
process improvement,” comments Tamarah Usher
from Monsanto. “There are process-minded
people all over the place. You might not be putting
them into full time process projects that use those
skills but you can still leverage their ideas if you
give them tools that are easy to use so they can
spread a process improvement culture throughout
the organization.”
#4: STAY DISCIPLINED
Maintain a firm focus on what will truly help move
the organization forward and which opportunities
are those that will help support and enable the
business strategy.
“If you really have strategic planning done,
everything should be related to your strategic
planning. That’s the discipline part,” says Goodwill
Industries’ David Behling. “With so much low
hanging fruit you could do everything but you
really need to prioritize based on your strategy.
We have to start running our events through a
committee to make sure they align with our
strategy.”
Ulf Pettersson, WCM manager at Tarkett Ronneby
explains that his company uses matrices to identify
and prioritize opportunities based on the
company’s strategic objectives. More importantly,
though, is the fact that the company regularly
reviews those matrices to ensure progress is being
made.
“We used to review the matrices twice a year to
see whether we had progressed against our
objectives,” he says. “Now, though, we do a
monthly update where each production line does a
monthly matrix to make sure that the
improvements they have made are progressing
and sustained over time.”
“The matrices also serve as a prioritization tool
which means the key focus for the plant is what is
highlighted in the matrices,” he adds. “What
matters to the business is managed through the
focus on Process Excellence.”
#5: BREAK DOWN THE SILOS BETWEEN
METHODOLOGIES
Ultimately, at the end of the day, process
excellence is about enabling business strategy and
solving business problems. Too often, companies
employ just one process improvement
methodology such as Lean or Six Sigma and expect
that it will be able to deal with all the challenges
that the business throws at it. Clearly, a more
holistic and pragmatic approach is needed when it
comes to enabling business strategy. Six Sigma
techniques, for instance, may be an important part
of the overall approach, but there may be other
methodologies or technologies that can help to
drive results.
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“One of the things I’ve been exploring is the
connection between the work that a process
analyst does and the work that the Enterprise and
Business Architects are doing,” says Tamarah
Usher from Monsanto. “Much of the work of a
process analyst should be aligned with the
Business Architecture or at least have a huge
amount of overlap. That would help tie process
improvement and process automation to
something more strategic.”
Jeremy Tranmer from Rio Tinto Minerals agrees:
“It’s more about coming together to work out the
best business solution and breaking down barriers
of ownership. We each have a view of the world
and each of those views is valid. We need to
understand how each of these different
perspectives combine and contribute to achieving
the necessary results.”
CONCLUSIONS:
Linking process improvement to top level business
strategy ultimately needs to start at the top of the
organization with senior management. Then, those
strategic visions must be cascaded down into
specific tasks and activities and processes looked
at as part of an overall way of supporting that
vision.
Senior leadership and process practitioners have a
shared a responsibility to link process
improvement to strategy. Executives must set the
vision, objectives, and goals but also recognized
the discipline required to translate those
objectives into meaningful actions. Process
professionals, on the other hand, must influence
and educate senior leadership to invest in process
excellence by focusing on those improvements
that drive the business outcomes that senior
leadership cares about.
Terminology, project leadership and technology
may all contribute to how aligned process
improvement is to corporate strategy and need to
be considered as part of an overall mix of
approaches and tools.
“It’s about starting from the business objectives
and then determining the right tools, techniques,
and programs that will deliver those objectives
without being wedded to process excellence,” says
Rio Tinto Minerals’ Jeremy Tranmer. “We need
process excellence but without being evangelical
about it. It’s about adopting that level of
pragmatism and looking at the big picture.”
The Drive To Performance Excellence
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