BPM To Automate or Not to Automate Is that the Question?

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1 BPM To Automate or Not to Automate A NEOS Whitepaper 20 Church St. Harford, CT Office: Fax:

2 BPM To Automate or Not to Automate Introduction To keep up with the ever-changing technological landscape, business process operations certainly need to be flexible. However, whether you are seeking to reduce the time and resources necessary to accomplish a task, a series of tasks or reengineer an operation end-to-end, process efficiency is the answer, but because so many are seeking process efficiency solutions, there is an overwhelming amount of information out there on the topic. Finding the solution that will help deliver the business process efficiencies you seek to gain for your organization may be puzzling, but not impossible We know we have issues with some of our back-office operational processes. They re not keeping up with our sales volumes today, let alone when we increase volumes based on our projections. We need to move faster and more efficiently to compete going forward. Do we digitize? Modernize? Automate? Can we just plug in a new system? Invest in BPR, BPI, BPM? In this paper, we ll look at simple, actionable steps to 1. understand technology s role in your organization s desired future state 2. determine the right path to achieve your organization s strategic process improvement goals Understanding Technology s Role in Your Future State Your core processes are business assets. They define your business and make you stand out from your competition. From customer experience to speed to market or product innovation, your core processes are your organization s bread and butter. Start at the core to understand how you want and need technology to enable your business. Technology plays a major role in any business operation today, but it s only one piece of the puzzle. Core business processes generally need some level of technology to operate, but the process should define and run the system not the other way around. A recent blog posted on Gartner s site states, If one were to say an Internet of Engagement, then it might show that the intention is not to digitize everything, but to exploit the power of digitization to drive better understanding of the customer, prospect, and partner to improve business results. 1 1 Michael Moaz. Fooling ourselves with an Internet of Things, blogs.gartner.com, June 30, 2014 NEOS LLC 2014 Page 2

3 In other words, technology is an enabler, not a driver, of business results. The place to start looking for efficiencies is with the process, not with software. Companies who adopt the technology is the answer philosophy spend money, time, and resources implementing large scale business process management software (BPMS) or complex workflow systems that ultimately fail to deliver the anticipated business value. Industry studies show that over 30% of technology initiatives fall short of their specified business benefits. One reason is companies choose the software before redesigning business processes and generating accurate requirements and selection criteria. Automation is a powerful tool when aligned with business strategy and core process needs. Determine what you re trying to achieve before you choose the solution. Are you focused on: Speed. Does the end-to-end process take too long to deliver an end result? Do you suspect there are there too many handoffs or redundant steps in the current process? Bottom line: Is time-to-market slower than you want/need it to be? Case Study 1 Insurer A implemented a workflow system to support their policy admin system. Two years later, the company was not realizing the process efficiency gains they had anticipated. They did an assessment and learned that they had been utilizing only 10% of the workflow system s capabilities. Most, if not all of their pain was due to repetitious, manual steps that they could have automated if they had redesigned their business process before implementing the workflow tool. Costs. Is your operation costing too much and you need to bring costs down? Competitive positioning. Your competitors are gaining ground and market share. What are your differentiators and how can you pull away from the pack? Headcount. Is your organization top-heavy and you need to figure out a way to reduce in size? Outdated technology. Are the system(s) that support your business operation old? As a result is performance lacking, reliability shaky and you re not attracting new IT blood due to inferior technology? Customer experience. Are customer satisfaction survey responses indicating that your business services or products are not where you expect/need them to be? All or some of the above? Once you have your business context and a solid set of future state business processes that align with your strategy, you can determine the most effective way to move forward. Determining the Right Path to Process Improvement In separate but similar cases, different companies have gone through time-consuming and costly technology RFP processes in an effort to find the right software solution to support their business operation. Eventually and ultimately what they ended up with was software from vendors who promised NEOS LLC 2014 Page 3

4 functionality to solve the company s specified requirements, but invariably received cookie-cutter systems that fell flat of delivering the solution they were hoping for and banking on. Understand what you need to address before jumping into the technology pool. By getting a handle on what parts of your core business processes are causing your operation pain, you ll be in a much better position to investigate solutions, including technological. You can gain process efficiencies right out of the gate based on your findings. Outlining the organization s primary process improvement objective(s) will provide the direction for focus areas. As an example, if Speed and Outdated Technology are considered as key process improvement objectives of your organization, then a new or enhanced system may be part of the equation, but in order to champion that decision and understand exactly what, when, and who s impacted, first take stock by: 1. Assessing what you have. What does your current end-to-end process look like? 2. Identifying where things are breaking down, causing pain or not working as efficiently as you need them to. This is also the step to identify where things are working. 3. Soliciting customer input (keep in mind that customer can mean back-office operational support staff (subject matter experts) or end-customers buying product off of your company s website) to suggest solutions, relief from the pain and build in modern efficiencies. Solicitation can be accomplished many different ways depending on who the customer is in context, e.g. surveys, face-to-face interviews or group brainstorming sessions. 4. Planning improvements that will make your business process hum and delight your customers based on what you ve uncovered in line with your objective(s). 5. Communicating with all involved parties throughout the journey. Tell them, tell them again, and then remind them of what you ve told them. Understanding Your Current Environment Step 1. You can take a number of different approaches to Assessing your current state, from extensive documentation and process mapping to lightweight diagnostics and surveys. It s worth the time and effort to assess what you have so that you can: Document assumptions and create a common understanding of the end-to-end process from Field Sales through Inforce Management. Ensure you address process inefficiencies as you define your future state. Create a baseline and compare your future state results once you ve rolled out your new processes. Going through the exercise is beneficial for many organizations if part of their overall strategy is to educate internal resources on business process improvement tools, techniques, and methodology for ongoing maintenance reasons. Current state documentation may be as involved as swim-lane process maps showing each step down to the lowest level of detail, or they could be an array of the primary process steps with bulleted high-level sub-processes, who s involved, input and output. The level of detail really comes down to the organization s wants and needs and, of course, their budget. NEOS LLC 2014 Page 4

5 Step 2. Identifying problem areas and pain points, as well as what s working well, comes right on the heels of Step 1. In fact, it usually occurs at the same time as Step 1 if interviews or workshops with the subject matter experts are being conducted. Subject matter experts, or SME s are the people-in-theknow, your professionals carrying out the day-to-day tasks and activities within the process(es) being assessed. SMEs can identify breaks in the process, redundancies, and overlaps, and they can describe the pain points because they are the ones experiencing the pain! When you engage customers in this analysis, you ll adapt your collection process to include surveys or focus groups, but the end-goal is the same: identifying problem areas as well as capturing positives. Step 3. Soliciting input from the people most impacted by the process(es) being assessed is probably one of, if not the most important thing you can do if you truly need the current state to reflect truth and honesty: good, bad or indifferent. These are also people you ll need to involve when you go to define your future state. Think of all the good process improvement ideas they ve been harboring for a while now. It s time to tap into those resources. Workshops will support the cause best. Take out the pain point heat maps or process score cards you created in Steps 1 and 2 and let the improvement brainstorming begin! Defining Your Future State Step 4. The planning step will help determine priorities for moving forward on defining your future state, which ultimately should be driven by: Your organization s business process improvement objective(s). The voice of your customer. Whoever your customer is in this exercise, take their input into account. These are people in the trenches in your back-office or spending their money on your products. Their word counts, or your business won t survive period. Severity of breaks and/or levels of pain experienced throughout the process as captured during the identify step. Lastly, a word to the wise communicate. Step 5. Communicate. It is vital to the success of any business process improvement effort to communicate, communicate, communicate, and then communicate again! It s amazing how many times this simple, hugely important human interaction is understated or gets overlooked. By this point, time and heart-felt effort has gone into assessing, identifying, soliciting and planning for a future state world that will ultimately impact the same people who have so far contributed. Make sure those who have contributed to the process continue to be included through, e.g. updates on shared recommendations, next steps and timeline projections to executives future state detailed brainstorming sessions and definition workshops sharing of quick hit and/or continuous improvement ideas to existing or modifying processes through such vehicles as department newsletters, group meetings, idea inboxes, etc. success stories of where defined and designed process improvements delivered tangible results NEOS LLC 2014 Page 5

6 Conclusion The real question is not whether to automate a process or not. Rather, the question is how you can best deploy technology to create the strongest and best business process possible. Technology impacts every business today, but unless you fully understand what you need technology to do for you, introducing it is like buying shoes before knowing your size. Address business process inefficiencies by taking the first steps of assessing, identifying, soliciting and planning. NEOS can help you define the what, which may include technology-related recommendations, and further help you arrive at a scale-able, streamlined and efficient process, to bring your business into the desired future state. About NEOS NEOS is a management consulting and technology services firm with unparalleled experience in holistic modernization, enterprise data and business operations consulting. Our clients trust us to help them transition from legacy business processes and technologies to their optimized future state. Our mission is to bridge the business-technology divide with creative, implementable solutions that yield short-term results and long-term benefits. About the Author Claudia Clu Monroe brings over 20 years of collective experience as both a Senior Business/Process Analyst (BA) and Business Process Improvement (BPI/BPM) consultant primarily in the Insurance and Financial Services arenas. Clu has been involved in and led many business process improvement and systems projects of various sizes - enterprise-wide to small operational processes within an organization - for varying groups within different organizations. Clu joined the NEOS Business Consulting practice in April of Before joining NEOS, Clu honed her process improvement and business project and management skills primarily between Liberty Mutual Insurance, a Fortune 500 company, and Putnam Investments, a leading financial investment firm. Contact Information View the NEOS website at to download additional whitepapers and to learn more about our complete suite of offerings and solutions. Contact us at (860) NEOS LLC 2014 Page 6