Unit V: Future of BPR- Reengineering knowledge work-participative reengineering

instead of top down approach-Rapid reengineering using tools that evolve-

Reengineering for value and growth-BPR to BPM evolution- BPM framework-process
Centric Organization-Case studies

REENGINEERING KNOWLEDGE WORK

Knowledge management has recently become a fashionable concept, although many

organisations are still unable to explain what knowledge is. More importantly, they are
unable todevelop and leverage knowledge to improve organisational performance. Is due to
organisations becoming increasingly more complex in structure, resulting in knowledge that
is fragmented, hard to locate, leverage, share and difficult to reuse.

Knowledge can be viewed in a number of other contexts, it is vital each is addressed if an

organisation is to improve performance. Successful knowledge strategies depend on whether
organisations can link their business strategy to their knowledge requirements. This
articulation is vital to allocating resources and capabilities for explicating and leveraging
knowledge. The competitive value of knowledge must be addressed to assess areas of
weakness. Strategic efforts should be made to close these knowledge gaps to ensure the
organisation remains competitive. The strategic value of knowledge should be addressed,
focusing on the uniqueness of knowledge.

_ Finally, an organisation should address the social aspects affecting knowledge

Initiatives, namely cultural, political and reward systems. Beyond the management roles
proposed in the paper, the environment should promote co-operation, innovation and learning
for those partaking in knowledge based roles.Reengineering knowledge work can done
through:

. High level of management involvement, and education of personnel. Perhaps, to increase

the probability ofsuccess, we need to add two other criteria for BPR
. A reengineering team consisting of the best individuals in the organization, and
. A reengineering champion that is external to the reengineering teal.

PARTICIPATIVE REENGINEERING INSTEAD OF TOP-DOWN

APPROACH

TOP-DOWN APPROACH

A Top-Down approach to change management implies imposed change as the initiative

comes from the top. Decision-making is centralized at higher levels of the organization,
excluding lower-level employees in the change process, even though they are directly
affected. Top-Down change is about making changes quickly and dealing with the problems
only if necessary. Leaders who make all the decisions and expect subordinates to follow
create resistance to change. Regardless of how well these top-level decisions are made,

1
successful change is stunted because they ignore so much of the organization. Naturally,
people who are forced to adapt to change have the initial reaction to resist.

Limitations of this Top-Down Approach

(1) Decision-making is limited to the top of the organization; therefore lacking information,
suggestions and ideas coming from below.

(2) People at the top are not willing to listen to lower-level employees‟ ideas, suggestions or
feedback, resulting in poor employee motivation and performance.

(3) There is very little task delegation involved in the change process, thus lower-level
employees can feel they are perceived as somehow incompetent and under-qualified for such
tasks.

(4) Keeping the change process at the upper level of the organization breeds discontent
among the lower-level people.

5) Misunderstandings are created because of both parties‟ communication problems and

inadequate information.

(6) Many differing assessments to a given situation exist in lower levels and different
functions; these employees have little chance to participate and do not know for sure the
exact circumstances revolving around the change, and thus resist it.

Finally, the limitations of Top-Down change are too often symptomatic of leaders clinging to
the belief that power, privilege, and successes lie alone in their core group.

Participative BPR
Participative BPR – which is different from a traditional top-down approach to BPR –
encourages all levels (including managers and workers) to get together to redesign business
processes. According to Sherwood-Smith “Aparticipative approach to BPR includes the
radical innovative vision by management, the innovative use of IT and then takes on board
the innovative insights of the staff to the system of organisation and operation.” Participative
BPR is similar to one main theme of TQM: employee involvement. This aims to involve
persons from all levels of an organisation in problem solving techniques. The difference is
the improvements of TQM are generated bottom-up (whereas BPR is commonly viewed as a
top-down solution imposed by management).participative BPR – which combines both top-
down and bottom up – provide a comprehensive and shared understanding of current
processes. This is a natural way to progress from the present situation to meet the demands of
the future.

2
 It is evident that no BPR will be successful without the support and active participation of
the people. Even after all persons agree to go with BPR, it is still a hard task for everyone to
carry on. As Peltu et describe:

“The BPR process is a „walk in the fog‟ because of the difficulty involved in reaching
agreement among many stakeholders about the current situation and future needs.”

Scarbrough emphasises that an important question in all programmes for change is “what is
required to bring about changes in how people relate to each other?” This suggests a reason
for the high rate of failure of BPR, as it is not possible to change relationships without
working within them. The IT tools and techniques chosen for BPR can only be the starting
point. But the change will not be successful without people‟s learning, participation and
adaptation – in order to understand the requirements and processes and then take
responsibilities for such change.

According to Sherwood-Smith, business processes are purposeful processes, in the sense that
they are people-controlled and subject to human behaviour. Each business process has some
inputs and outputs. They identify the outputs as a combination of people outcomes and task
outcomes, and the inputs as a combination of people preconditions and task preconditions.
Thus business processes rely on the interaction of their participants. BPR is people-centred
and driven by business needs, because it is the people who decide the value of the redesigned
process according to their understanding and objectives. Administrative systems involving
people should not be reengineered, they should be participative re-designed. Such a
participative approach respects the culture and social context of an organisation because one
important thing of BPR is to ensure the redesigned processes fit the organisational context
and are acceptable to their people. This demands a high degree of communication and
evaluation.Many existing applications are designed to be offered in a „take it or leave it‟
fashion (i.e. with no commitment to subsequently negotiating or adapting its functionality)
which is inappropriate to a rapidly changing business environment. Further, as each person in
an organisation has his knowledge and experience in every organisational activity, the
members of the organisation should have some representation and voice in the BPR process.
When initiating a „clean sheet‟ radical change, it is necessary from a human perspective to
complete the past before moving ahead. Participative BPR both as a means to fully
understanding what the people need, and of evaluating existing processes and the effects
upon the organisation.

RAPID REENGINEERING USING TOOLS THAT EVOLVE

Software re-engineering is concerned with re-implementing legacy systemsto make them
more maintainable. Re-engineering may involve re-documenting the system, organising and
restructuring the system, translating the system to a more modern programming language and
modifying and updating the structure and values of the system‟s data. The functionality of the
software is not changed and, normally, the system architecture also remains the same.

3
Re-engineering a software system has two key advantages over more radical approaches to
system evolution:

1. Reduced riskThere is a high risk in re-developing software that is essential for an

organisation. Errors may be made in the system specification, there may be development
problems, etc.

2. Reduced cost: The cost of re-engineering is significantly less than the costs of developing
new software.

Business process re-engineering is concerned with redesigning business processes to reduce

the number of redundant activities and improve process efficiency. It is usually reliant on the
introduction or theenhancement of computer-based support for the process. Process re-
engineering isoften a driver for software evolution as legacy systems may incorporate
implicit dependencies on the existing processes. These have to be discovered and removed
before process re-engineering is possible. Therefore, the need for software reengineering may
emerge in a company when it becomes clear that the scale of the changes required by the
business process re-engineering cannot be accommodated through normal program
maintenance.

At the same time as program re-engineering, the data for the system may also be re-
engineered. The activities in this re-engineering process are:

1. Source code translation: The program is converted from an old programming language to
a more modern version of the same language or to a different language.

2. Reverse engineering: Theprogram is analysed and information extracted from it which

helps to document its organisation and functionality.

3. Program structure improvement:The control structure of the program isanalysed and

modified to make it easier to read and understand.

4. Program modularisation: Related parts of the program are grouped together and, where
appropriate, redundancy is removed

5. Data re-engineering: The data processed by the program is changed to reflect program
changes.

1. Source code translation

The simplest form of software re-engineering is program translation where source code in
one programming language is automatically translated to source code in some other language.
The structure and organisation of the program itself is unchanged. The target language may
be an updated version of the original language
4
(E.g. COBOL-74 to COBOL-85) or may be a translation to a completely different language
(e.g. FORTRAN to C).

2. Reverse engineering

Reverse engineering is the process of analysing software with the objective of recovering its
design and specification. The program itself is unchanged by the reverse engineering process.
The software source code is usually available as the input to the reverse engineering process.
Sometimes, however, even this has beenlost and the reverse engineering must start with the
executable code.
Reverse engineering is not the same thing as re-engineering. The objective of reverse
engineering is to derive the design or specification of a system from its source code. The
objective of re-engineering is to produce a new, more maintainable system. Reverse
engineering to develop a better understanding of a system is often part of the re-engineering
process.
Reverse engineering is used during the software re-engineering process to recover the
program design which engineers use to help them understand a program before re-organising
its structure.

3. Program structure improvement

The need to optimise memory use and the lack of understanding of software engineering by
many programmers has meant that many legacy systems are not well-structured. Their
control structure is tangled with many unconditional branches and unintuitive control logic.
This structure may also have been degraded by regular maintenance. Changes to the program
may have made some code unreachable but this can only be discovered after extensive
analysis. Maintenance programmers often dare not remove code in case it may be accessed
indirectly.

4. Program modularisation

Program modularisation is the process of re-organising a program so that related program

parts are collected together and considered as a single module. Once this has been done, it
becomes easier to remove redundancies in these related components, to optimise their
interactions and to simplify their interface with the rest of the program. For example, in a
program that processes seismographic data, all operations associated with graphical
presentation of the data may be collected together into a single module. If the system is to be
distributed, the modules created can be encapsulated as objects and accessed through a
common interface.

5
 5. Data re-engineering

The storage, organisation and format of the data processed by legacy programs may have to
evolve to reflect changes to the software. The process of analysing and re-organising the data
structures and, sometimes, the data values in a system to make it more understandable is
called datare-engineering.

REENGINEERING FOR VALUE AND GROWTH

The three basic principles for the post-B.P.R. organizational and operational approaches:
1) Enhance the Value for Cost yield,
2) Realign the Processes and Business Systems for Growth,
3) Refocus on the Soft Side of Capabilities Development. The Soft Side, the people equation,
emerges as critical for mobilizing organizations toward the new paradigm of growth.
1) Enhance the Value for Cost yield. The value-for-cost equation is based on the customer‟s
perceptions, which reflect the value of a company‟s products and services relative to
competitive offerings. The goal is to improve value to the customer while simultaneously
reducing the total delivered cost.

2) Realign the Processes and Business Systems for Growth. The re-engineering for growth
approach requires changes in perspective, process selection and tools. Many of the classic
tools, automation, outsourcing, etc., will still remain useful but new tools are required to
realign processes and business systems for growth.

3) Refocus on the Soft Side of Capabilities Development. Mobilizing the entire organization
toward the new paradigm of growth will entail a significant increase in training and
development, while measurement and rewards will also have to change.

RE-ENGINEERING FOR GROWTH

PRINCIPLE 1: Enhance the Value for Cost Yield
As companies look to capture growth opportunities, they will need to rethink the focus of
ongoing transformation efforts. Capturing growth will take both low costs for sustainable
competitiveness and the ability to profitably seize revenue opportunities for growth--in
essence, a rebalanced agenda that resets the company's value proposition. The challenge is to
develop a transformation agenda that seamlessly integrates the changes required. At the heart
of the challenge is the need to change the value proposition, or "value for cost" equation, for
customers. If successful, this new approach of re-engineering for growth will mobilize the
entire organization toward a new paradigm of revenue, earnings and productivity
improvement.
The value-for-cost equation is based on the customer's perceptions, which reflect the value of
a company's products and services relative to competitive offerings. These perceptions should
define how a company profitably serves its targeted customer segments. Improving the value-

6
for-cost yield requires rebalancing the fundamental components that contribute to value and
cost, as illustrated in Exhibit I. The goal is to improve value to the customer (product
performance, service quality, brand value) while simultaneously reducing the total delivered
cost. For example, in restructuring its customer appliance maintenance process, a Hong Kong
service company was able to improve repair rates for first visits by more than 50 percent and
reduce total labour hours by 22 percent--a critical requirement in a rapidly growing and
competitive market with labour shortages.

EXHIBIT I - REDEFINING THE VALUE PROPOSITION

 Better products

PRINCIPLE 2: Realign the Processes and Business Systems for Growth

The classic B.P.R. approach incorporates a view of the future business process and systems
requirements. That view, however, is usually focused on near-term optimization for survival.
While this may not be inherent in B.P.R. principles, the performance change levers that are
pulled to alter the processes are usually geared to achieving serious cost reduction. The key
improvement tools are concentrated on trimming unnecessary steps and people from the
process, often cutting the deadwood away to allow the forest to survive. Certainly, quality
and speed are embraced as important goals--but usually are secondary to cost. When tradeoffs
come, the usual balance is to err on the side of optimization for the biggest near-term benefit.
As noted, cost improvement can often be tracked easily and results can be seen quickly. The
benefits of quality and speed usually need to be translated through other performance
frameworks to demonstrate ultimate benefits. The combination of translation and the near-
term focus often make for a solution that ignores the required flexibility for growth. The re-
engineering for growth approach requires changes in perspective, process selection and tools.
7
The perspective is on profitable growth, considering both short-term and long-term ground to
hold. With a leaner, more nimble company, achieving a change in competitive position
should be easier. However, competitors will most likely also be leaner and more nimble. In
addition, some critical capabilities for growth may be missing--atrophied or cut away in a
previous B.P.R. effort. The growth perspective must be underpinned with a focus on
capabilities required for success. One client, for example, found that its personnel
department, which had been cut and refocused on outplacement of redundant employees, was
unable to gear up for hiring employees with newly required capabilities. This necessitated
using an executive recruiter--incurring more expenses than were saved during the previous
cost-cutting process. With re-engineering for growth, the step of selecting priorities for
improvement will be much different from classic B.P.R. programs. The priority-setting step
in B.P.R. has typically ranked processes by considering both impact on performance and
improvement potential. This is an adequate framework for a survival program but inherently
discounts the value of preparing for future growth:

 The approach-based constraint of using current product/market strategy forces a focus on

improvements in a limited operating world, eliminating from consideration some of the
new avenues required for growth.
 Performance-impact analysis considers the impact of adjusting the processes that deliver
the planned products and services rather than incorporating the value of flexibility for
adapting to future growth opportunities.
 The improvement-potential analysis suffers from the same perspective--usually an
optimization within the current product/service delivery paradigm
Instead, the focus for process selection must be driven by new criteria:
 Building the capabilities to deliver the new elements of future customer value--products,
services, brand and cost, such as adding processes designed to put innovation into decision
options.
 Removing the bottlenecks in processes and business systems that constrain the path for
growth. For example, one client's limited ability to identify and acquire new venture
partners was highlighted as a constraint to capitalizing on rapid market deregulation.
 Enhancing or creating processes to build capabilities required in the future, such as career
development structures to provide international rotation opportunities for highfliers in a
rapidly globalizing company.
These criteria will necessarily focus future re-engineering efforts on processes and
enablers for growth, as shown in Exhibit II.

8
PRINCIPLE 3: Refocus on the Soft Side of Capabilities Development
Classic B.P.R. programs are known for their substantial impact on people--both positive and
negative. On the upside, the move toward empowered teams, broader spans of control and
fewer layers of management has increased the challenge and job content of managers and
workers alike. On the downside, morale and risk taking are at all-time lows. Employees at all
levels have an attitude of hanging on for survival rather than adopting the entrepreneurial
spirit required for growth. Chief executives, having beat the cost-reduction drum for the last
several years, are themselves in need of a renewed attitude. At a minimum, there is the need
for an infusion of a winning spirit and some flexibility in the game plan to achieve success.
At the heart of winning in the future is creating the right mix of new capabilities. Re-
engineering for growth to build and deploy these capabilities will take a refocus on the soft
side and mobilization of the entire organization toward the new paradigm of growth:

Management vision and strategy will take a sharp turn from cost reduction toward growth. It
is difficult enough to translate strategy into understanding and subsequent action at lower
levels when direction changes are minor, as shown in Exhibit III. Most executives are more
frustrated with the deterioration of strategy understanding through levels of the organization
than with poor strategy itself. With the sharp turn anticipated in embracing a new growth
agenda, there is a greater need for processes to effectively translate "fuzzy strategy concepts"
into a mandate for specific action at all levels. The "why are we doing this" questions will
have to be answered as clearly as the "what should we do and how will we accomplish this"
questions to make strategy become internalized and actionable by everyone. This implies new
processes for involvement in planning and more effective communication with employees at
all levels.

9
 EXHIBIT III
DEGREE TO WHICH MANAGEMENT LAYERS UNDERSTAND/
COMPLY WITH STRATEGIES

Measurement and rewards will also have to change as the focus turns toward growth. This
will take a redevelopment of key performance indicators and the incentives required to move
employees from the "head down" or "head in the sand" posture of today. Performance metrics
will have to incorporate a broader set of measurements--including capability building in a
balanced approach, as shown in Exhibit IV. With an effective performance management
system, managers should clearly understand that growth will not allow a reversion to the old
ratios of output per employee or old management styles, which would imply a new wave of
rehiring and a casting off of the new operating cost and speed position so painfully attained
through B.P.R. Instead, the challenge is to attain measure and reward profitable growth in
line with the new success criteria. This includes a strong focus on capability development for
the future.
EXHIBIT IV
PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT FRAMEWORK

 Training and management development requirements will also increase. Employees at

all levels are being asked to operate in the lean, stretched models of post-B.P.R.
companies, yet there has rarely been enough training to help them excel in the new
environment. Coupling latent training needs with a new growth vision could well
paralyze employees unless a significant training and development effort is launched,
fully aligned with the new growth agenda. If globalization is on the agenda, which
may be required to capture the new growth opportunities, the training will have to
incorporate cross-cultural exposure, changes in attitudes regarding relocation and an
understanding of the value of global teaming.
 Similarly, many of the human resource processes will need significant change. Many
companies have focused on outplacement rather than recruitment over the past few
years. Recruitment will be reinvigorated as growth will require some additional
10
 employees--but only those with capabilities to deal in the new product, service and
market arenas. If the growth is outside familiar geographic areas, the recruitment
complexity will increase substantially. Subsequent steps in the human resource
process chain will undergo similar change, including personnel evaluation and career
development in a global growth environment. Many companies assume that they can
bring their home country management models to new places--and they usually fail to
achieve productivity and performance targets as a result.

BPR TO BPM EVOLUTION

The road to Business Process Management (BPM) has been a difficult one that has gained
from the successes and failures of various other attempts at achieving process-based
organizational efficiency. Perhaps it is worthwhile taking a few moments to understand a
very brief recent history of management‟s focus on business processes. In the 1980s there
was a considerable focus on Total Quality Management (TQM). This was followed in the
early 1990s by Business Process Reengineering (BPR) as promoted by Hammer and Champy
(1990). BPR had a chequered history, with some excellent successes as well as failures.
Following BPR in the mid- and late 1990s, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems
gained organizational focus and became the next big thing.

These were supposed to deliver improved ways for organizations to operate, and were sold by
many vendors as the „solution to all your problems‟. The ERP systems certainly did not solve
an organization‟s process issues, nor make the processes as efficient and effective as they
could have been. Towards the end of the 1990s and in the early 2000s, many Customer
Relation Management (CRM) systems were rolled out with extensive focus on the customer
view and customer experience. While this provided focus on the front office, it did not
improve the back-office processes. More recently, Six Sigma has started to come into its
own. According to Hammer (1993), „Coming up with the ideas is the easy part, but getting
things done is the tough part. The place where these reforms die is _ _ _ down in the
trenches‟ and who „owns‟ the trenches? You and I and all the other people. Change imposed
on the „trench people „will not succeed without being part of the evolutionary or
revolutionary process:

Forceful leadership can accomplish only so much. The shift from machine age bureaucracy to
flexible, self-managed teams requires that lots of ordinary managers and workers be
psychologically prepared.
The idea that work can be viewed as a process, and then improved, is hardly new. It dates at
least to Frederick Taylor at the turn of the last century, and probably before. Taylor and his
colleagues developed modern industrial engineering and process improvement, though the
techniques were restricted to manual labor and production processes. The Taylorist
approaches were widely practiced in the early 1900s, but were largely forgotten by mid-
century. The next great addition to process management was created by the combination of
Taylorist process improvement and statistical process control, by Shewart, Deming, Juran and
others. Their version of process management involved measuring and limiting process
variation, continuous rather than episodic improvement, and the empowerment of workers to
improve their own processes. It turned out that Japanese firms had both the business need –

11
recovering from war and building global markets – and the discipline to put continuous
improvement programs in place. Other firms in other societies have adopted continuous
improvement and „total quality management‟ based on statistical principles, but it requires
more discipline than most can muster.

Toyota, in particular, took these approaches and turned them into a distinctive advance in
process management. The Toyota Production System (TPS) combined statistical process
control with continuous learning by decentralized work teams, a „pull‟ approach to
manufacturing that minimized waste and inventory, and treating every small improvement in
processes as an experiment to be designed, measured and learned from. But few firms have
been able to successfully implement the TPS, and even Toyota has had more success with the
approach in Japan than at its foreign plants. A somewhat less stringent approach to the TPS is
present in the „lean‟ techniques that many American firms have recently adopted. The next
major variation on BPM took place in the 1990s, when many Western firms were facing an
economic recession and strong competition from global competitors, particularly Japanese
firms. Business process reengineering added, to the generic set of process management ideas,
several new approaches:

• the radical (rather than incremental) redesign and improvement of work

• attacking broad, cross-functional business processes
• „stretch‟ goals of order-of-magnitude improvement
• use of information technology as an enabler of new ways of working.

Reengineering was also the first process management movement to focus primarily on non-
production, white-collar processes such as order management and customer service. It did not
emphasize statistical process control or continuous improvement. Many firms in the United
States and Europe undertook reengineering projects, but most proved to be overly ambitious
and difficult to implement. Reengineering first degenerated into a more respectable word for
headcount reductions, and then largely disappeared (though there are some signs of its
return).

The most recent process management enthusiasm has revolved around „Six Sigma‟, an
approach created at Motorola in the 1980s and popularized by General Electric in the 1990s.
In some ways Six Sigma represents a return to statistical process control; the term „Six
Sigma‟ means one output defect in six standard deviations of a probability distribution for a
particular process output. Six Sigma also typically involves a return to focusing on relatively
small work processes, and presumes incremental rather than radical improvement. Most
frequently, however, Six Sigma improvement techniques have been employed on an episodic
basis, rather than continuously, and while employees are somewhat empowered to improve
their own work, they are generally assisted by experts called „Black Belts‟. Some firms are
beginning to combine Six Sigma with more radical reengineering-like approaches to
processes, or with the „lean‟ techniques derived from the Toyota Production System. It is
simply too early to tell whether Six Sigma will continue to prosper; I see some signs of its
weakening, but it is certainly still popular in many US firms.

12
BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT (BPM)
Business process management (BPM) is the discipline of improving a business process from
end to end by analyzing it, modelling how it works in different scenarios, executing
improvements, monitoring the improved process and continually optimizing it. The goal for
organizations engaged in BPM is to take control of their myriad processes and constantly
strive to optimize them to create a more efficient organization better capable of delivering its
end products and/or services.BPM consists of multiple steps. Some BPM experts list five
steps (designing, modeling, executing, monitoring, optimization), while other experts list six
or more steps and/or use different names for these steps (i.e., analyze, model, implement,
monitor, manage, automate).
BPM allows organizational leaders to understand the various processes that happen within
their organizations, analyze them from end to end and improve them on an ongoing basis.
This activity allows organizational leaders to optimize end-to-end business processes and not
simply improve individual tasks, thereby, giving organizational leaders the ability to have a
greater impact on outcomes. Well-executed BPM can reduce waste, cut down on errors, save
time and generate better services and products. Moreover, well-executed BPM continually
delivers improvements. Because BPM is not a one-time task, organizational leaders are
managing the end-to-end business processes on a continuing basis and are, thus, focused on
finding new ways to optimize end-to-end business processes as industry and market trends
introduce new pressures and new opportunities, and as emerging technologies better support
or automate tasks within the overall process.

13
 BPM FRAMEWORK
A BPM Framework is a management framework with a process-centric approach. A BPM
framework may encompass regulations applicable to the industry, policies, sector frameworks
and quality standards. There are three main types; Horizontal, Vertical and Full-service.
Horizontal frameworks deal with design and development of business processes and are
generally focused on technology and reuse. Vertical BPM frameworks focus on a specific set
of coordinated tasks and Full-service BPM suites have five components including; Process
Discovery & Project Scoping, Process Modeling & Design, Business Rules Engine,
Workflow Engine and Simulation & Testing. A process architect can develop a Management
Framework for an organisation and also translate these into Management Processes.

1. Horizontal BPM framework

This framework mainly deals with the design of business process and their subsequent
development. This framework is focused on using technology in order to design and develop
business processes. It may be the formulation of new technology to come up with new
business processes, or the reuse of already existing technology in order to
improve already existing business processes. This framework provides BPM solutions that
can be applied across several different industries.

2. Vertical BPM framework

The focus of this framework is a specific set of coordinated tasks for each and every business
process. It often makes use of pre-made templates. The templates are already there, but the
organization may perform some tweaks here and there with its configuration, before
launching it for full utilization. The BPM solutions in this type of framework will work only
to specific or particular industry or process types.

3. Full-service BPM framework

The full-service framework is a combination of the two earlier frameworks. It has all the
required components for the management of business processes.

There are five components found in this type of framework:

 Process discovery and project scoping

 Process modeling and design

 Business rules engine

 Workflow engine

14
 Simulation and testing

 THE FRAMEWORK

The diagram below depicts the conceptual architecture framework for a BPM system. The
BPM architecture framework is represented by a two dimensional matrix – a matrix of
interrelated abstract services. A set of operational/functional services along the vertical
dimension and their life cycle management services along the horizontal dimension makeup
the BPM system architecture matrix.


 Figure 1 – BPM Service Matrix
 Along the vertical dimension, the business process services represent the business
process behavior or business process flow logic. The process automation services
are distributed software services that enable automation of the business process
using variety of software technologies and tools. The adaptation services facilitate
seamless integration of the heterogeneous Enterprise Information Systems into the
business processes.
 Life cycle functions along the horizontal dimension cover the modeling, execution
and monitoring of these operational services. The Modeling service represents a
generic set of capabilities required to model an operational service through formal
modeling notations providing a model driven thrust to the architecture (without
necessarily the connotation of automatic code generation). The execution service
represents a generic set of capabilities required to interpret and execute the model.
The operations and maintenance service represents runtime monitoring capabilities
of the operational services, various applications and systems that participate in the
business processes. It is particularly worth noting that business process services are
defined and controlled by business owners indicating a paradigm shift in enterprise
architecture approach.

15
  There are inherent relationships between the abstract services in the matrix. The
business process, automation service and adaptation service models have a mutual
correspondence. Modeling services establish these associations between the models
at design time. Models are deployed in the execution environment. The overall
process behavior is realized by the runtime interactions between models executing in
their own execution environments. Operational services and the other applications
and systems, while in execution state publish events. Operations and maintenance
services consume the events and provide a consolidated status of the overall BPM
system at different levels of abstractions for business owners and system
administrators to monitor and manage the system effectively.
 Each cell of the matrix represents a specialized problem domain within the larger
BPM problem space and is characterized as an abstract service. Each one of them
has evolved into independent and niche domains with their own technical
complexities and challenges. There are relevant technologies and governing
standards and a host of products, platforms and tools in each of these areas. A
working BPM system can be realized by implementing the abstract services using
appropriate set of technologies, standards and tools.
 The decomposition of the BPM problem domain into distinct sub domains, their
characterization and their interrelationships and of course a host of enabling
technologies and standards in each domain form the corner stones of the conceptual
framework. This serves as a strong foundation for developing a comprehensive,
scalable and extensible Business Process Management System.
 A very brief discussion about Zachman’s framework is in order since this framework
seems to have some semblance with the Zachman’s framework. The operational
services roughly map to functional dimension. The conceptual framework effectively
combines the model driven approach to the functional dimension of Zachman’s
framework with the life cycle management functions that are crucial in a Process
Management system. In a sense the life cycle management functions can be seen as
an extended dimension of each cell in the Zachman’s framework. It is possible to
extend the conceptual framework to include the other dimensions as well. However it
is not in the scope of this paper to discuss these aspects in detail.
 The high level semantics associated with the core services are described in some
detail in the following sections. This will guide the technical analysts and architects in
evolving proprietary or standards based BPM system possibly leveraging third party
products and tools as well.

PROCESS-CENTRIC ORGANIZATION
A process-centric organization works on the principle of dividing a task or a project into
separate, individually executable stages to get efficient results. These processes go through
their development lifecycle including stages of design, development, testing and quality
check, etc. However, maintaining a „human-touch‟ within the organization becomes tedious.
Such organizations tend to be exclusively result-oriented, as they divide projects into stages
and the output of each stage should be as per the organization‟s standards.

16
The attributes of a process-centric company are:

 There is a proper understanding of the key processes that provide a competitive edge
to the company
 They focus on meeting the customer goals, which at times can be at the cost of
functional goals
 The industry is structured around processes or value streams
As stated above, in process-centric organizations the workload on employees tends to be
more and hence they tend to lose the human touch.

Steps to Creating a Process-Centric Organization.

1. Define realistic and clear goals

In a process-centric organization, defining the target goal is the most essential key to getting
desired results. Defining realistic and clear goals ultimately helps organizations to focus on
the right priorities and progress helps employees stay motivated to drive the right outcomes.
The need to define realistic and clear goals are because of clear goals are target oriented and
easy to understand. Realistic goals can be achieved with a proper strategy. It must be able to
define goals and targets as per an employee‟s capability. This way he performs the best to get
the efficient results.

2. Scale expectations with reality

Always check if the employees are fit into the organizations. Do best-fit hiring of the
employees so that they merge well in the work environment and culture. Give achievable
targets to them so that they can achieve them & stay motivated. Scale the expectations with
reality, i.e., know the potential qualities and scope of improvement of the workforce.

3. For new employees, the learning curve matters

In a company, every department is interconnected. They have to work in sync to achieve the
targets. Hence, whenever hiring a new employee, give them proper time for training for the
processes of the organization & understanding peer-to-peer relationship building. This way it
will be easier for the employees to blend into the culture of the process-centric organization.

4. Mix-and-match: Innovation + Efficiency

Every process-centric organization aims at achieving effective results. The organizations

must look for employees who are innovative and efficient enough to achieve the desired
results. Hire those people who can;

 Take the initiative & have enterprising nature.

 Develop ideas and create solutions on their own.
 They must be confident enough in getting the work done rightly.

17
 They must be productive, and they must respect deadlines and submit their assignments well
on time so that it doesn‟t hamper the company‟s reputation in the market. They must also
know the importance of achieving the ultimate organizational goals.

5. Maintain a work-life balance

Usually, product-centric companies have more workload of finishing their targets well on
time with the best quality. Maintain a better work- life balance in the organization to maintain
a good retention rate. Assign tasks to those employees who know better and are willing to
tackle that particular task. This way it is easier for them to come with more and better ideas
since they already know about it. Be open and available to them. This way the employees will
appreciate how care and nurture them as an employee. Make training and learning available.
The employees can learn and gain more knowledge through training, seminars and other
work-related learning activities. This will also help them to unleash their hidden talents that
can be of good use to their work.

Structure of a process centric organization

18
Steps towards becoming process centric.

Organizations exist to exchange value with customers and other stakeholders. They do this
via the collections of cross-functional activities called business processes. This is the only
way any organization can deliver such value. By themselves, individual functional areas of an
organization cannot deliver value to external customers. Value is created by the collaborative
activity of different parts of an organization – that is, through cross-functional business
processes. Value accumulates in the flow across the organization to be delivered at the end of
the value chain. It follows that organizations also execute their strategic intent via business
processes. The sequence from strategy to execution is as follows:

 Organizations exist to deliver value to customers and stakeholders. That’s strategy.

19
  They do this via a series of coordinated activities across a number of functional
elements of the organization. That’s a process.

 It makes sense to optimize these processes so that they satisfy the requirements of
customers and other stakeholders. That’s process improvement.

 Taking a coordinated view of the performance of all of the processes by which an

organization delivers value, optimizes performance. That’s process management.

 Process management allows organizations to focus on processes that create the

market differentiation described by the strategy. That’s execution.

Organizations must always be searching for new ways to improve customer service, seize
opportunities, increase productivity, enhance resource usage, increase flexibility and adapt to
change. The increased understanding and capability that comes from effective BPM enables
such outcomes. Process-centric management is about improving organizational performance
in meaningful ways. It is about knowing that an improvement was achieved and is being
sustained. Not guessing, but knowing. It is also about accurately forecasting performance and
anticipating potential problems. It knows that the correct resources are available and that they
are being invested sensibly. Process-centric management encompasses all that is required to
sustainably deliver value to external customers and other stakeholders.

20