The Eclectic Zone

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So, you’ve got the budget approved to roll out a BPM project. You have couple of projects (Business Process areas) already aligned with your BPM program. You’ve got the teams set up, platform evaluated and finalized, and licensed have been negotiated well. You’re on your way in the BPM journey!

You’ve fought a lone battle (at least so it seems at your function or departmental level) to get this going and have been able to finally take a step forward. There have been obstacles from standards committee, Finance organization, and other departments that do not seem to align with your program so easily (What’s their problem?! How do they not see the benefits from the BPM program that are so obvious?!). Nevertheless, looks like you’ve overcome most of that, and you’re ready to roll…

But, wait. Let’s go over some of the possibilities:

• Is it probable that the other departments or functions that are not aligned have a similar looking (but not the same) plan for optimizing their part of the business process?
• Is it probable that the finance did not see a direct value in so many people trying to do things with same objective, but with little alignment with each other, hence the multiple iterations of convincing?
• Is it probable that the platform that you are building may not align with the architectural scheme at the organization level?
• Is it probable that what you are calling as the process is still a section of the overall Business Process that may not benefit from your initiative unless the other departments acted as stakeholders in your program?
• Is it probable that other departments (as they hinted) have a similar platform getting built which could be based on a different product set?

If your answer is not a confident ”No” to any of the above questions then it is quite probable that the benefits that the BPM proponents and product vendors have been claiming may not be realized in your scheme of things. Simply because you may not be positioning the BPM implementation at the right level in the organization. Think again.