LEAN BPM: A WHITE PAPER OUTLINING A SOLUTION FOR SATISFYING CUSTOMER SERVICE DEMANDS WITH CONTINUOUS PROCESS CHANGE

Transcription

1 LEAN BPM: A WHITE PAPER OUTLINING A SOLUTION FOR SATISFYING CUSTOMER SERVICE DEMANDS WITH CONTINUOUS PROCESS CHANGE ABSTRACT Satisfying customer service demands is paralyzed by the inability of IT departments to quickly deliver stated requirements and needs, as identified by business operations and process analysts. Karl Hindle Swift Software, Inc

2 Table of Contents The Problem... 2 Drivers Fueling the Need for Agility... 3 Driver #1: Customer Demand... 3 Driver #2: Technology Advances... 4 Driver #3: Regulatory and Legislative Change... 4 One Example: Dodd-Frank... 4 The Solution: Lean BPM... 6 Pricing... 7 Existing Clients... 8 References

3 The Problem Satisfying customer service demands is severely hampered by the inability of IT departments to deliver stated requirements and needs on a timely basis, as identified by business operations and process analyst. By the time a solution is delivered, even one which fully meets stated requirements and deliverables, it is obsolete. Customer needs have moved on, and the cycle repeats itself with its inherent latency and time lag. Businesses analysts must be able to design processes from scratch, modify and push them to the live environment in direct response to customer service needs. To be effective and agile in meeting customer service demands, creating and modifying processes and workflows must be performed in far less time than current practices allow: hours and days, rather than months and years. Agility and flexibility demand such changes take place with either minimal or no involvement of the IT department, specialist coders and developers, or third-party partners, such as Accenture or Cap Gemini. The reason for this need is that such involvement has two effects: (a) Time to deploy a solution is greatly increased, leading to latency and obsolescence by the time of deployment with zero guarantee the solution will work as promised; and (b) The cost of the solution is greatly increased, which also increases time to ROI and increases business risk. This means that the power to design, modify and optimize business processes should reside with those who are responsible for them the process owner(s), business analysts and those operational staff working with the processes. The challenge is how to achieve agility and flexibility without the need for IT departmental input or specialist coding and development skills, and in miniscule fractions of the time it currently takes. 2

4 Drivers Fueling the Need for Agility We see three major drivers fueling the customer demand for agility and flexibility: (a) Customers themselves; (b) Technology advances and the acceleration of the pace of technological change; and (c) Regulatory and legislation changes. Driver #1: Customer Demand Craig Reid is the CEO of The Process Improvement Group, and is an independent expert and leading BPM thinker. According to Reid (Reid, n.d.), We are in the midst of a process revolution. At no time in our history have businesses been so prone to the speed of change. Technology today has changed the game plan and the field is becoming more level. Big businesses no longer have the advantage they previously had. New media has turned things on its head. However, the speed of technological change is not truly the underlying reason for the need for process improvement agility. Rather it is how technology is being utilized by, and the service demand feedback from, customers that is driving this need. For instance, Uber Technologies, Inc. was founded in 2009 and released the ubiquitous Uber app in Since 2010, Uber has been made available in over 58 countries and over 300 world cities, revolutionizing carpooling with crowd-sourced drivers. Uber has, and continues to face, numerous legal challenges and bans motivated by governments and taxicab regulators, yet it is on track to generate $10BN (USD) in 2015 revenues, and has a current market capitalization in excess of $50BN (USD). The reason is not the technology it is the consumers who have responded to the opportunity provided by the technology, and along the way, created Uber s hyper-growth despite the efforts of governments and an entrenched industry to stop their development. As Reid goes on to say, But it s also a consumer revolution never have we had the ability to express ourselves so rapidly or as effectively as consumers. For organisations this means that it s a case of adapt or die. Social media tools such as Twitter provide customers the opportunity to vent like never before both good and bad (but mostly bad!). They are now able to be heard by the world and heard instantly. 3

5 Driver #2: Technology Advances We have all been raised and immersed in a business environment where technology has not only continuously changed, but that rate of change has continuously accelerated. Technology advances are responsible for 30% of KPMG s clients triggering changes to their business model, according to a 2013 client survey by the global consulting and accounting firm. Technological advances create new opportunities for those agile and flexible enough to take advantage of them. Equally, such opportunities represent threats to older, established businesses who are not capable of taking advantage of them, cf. Uber. Stephen Hasty (Hasty, n.d.), a partner with KPMG and member of the US Innovation Leader team, was quoted as saying, "Technology that is geared to help drive performance in support of a customer-centric focus is taking center stage," Hasty said. "In fact, more and more company leaders see that emerging IT advancements can drive business improvements to help them grow their business and maintain a competitive posture in the market, even amid rising costs for raw materials and narrowing margins for products." Businesses understand they must be fast and agile in order to remain competitive, and to adapt to change. However, there is a very strong interaction between how businesses redefine their operating models and the influence they wield upon consumers, which in turn ignites the development of consumer preferences and feedback to the business and how it delivers customer service. Driver #3: Regulatory and Legislative Change Consumer protection in one form or another has been around for decades, but the pace of regulatory change is faster than ever before. Businesses are required to adhere to a plethora of regulations, laws, and compliance regimes at local, state, national and international levels, most of which has a very heavy focus on how a business conducts itself with customers. One Example: Dodd-Frank The recent banking-led collapse of the global economy has spurred even greater compliance and regulatory burdens on businesses, including the exceptionally broad Dodd-Frank Federal legislation. Andrea Kramer is one of the world s most respected experts on Dodd-Frank, and testified before the joint hearing of the Senate Committee on Finance and House Committee on Ways and Means on Derivatives Tax Reform. Kramer said (Kramer, n.d.), Dodd-Frank is so enormous. The implications to the financial services industry are so broad that it has reaches in all parts of banks, insurance companies, and investment advisors. 4

6 One of the things that Dodd-Frank means is, it means a compliance nightmare and further, it has compliance issues with respect to dealing with your customers that has compliance issues with respect to dealing with regulators and it s intended to make our financial markets safer. [Emphasis added] Businesses operating in highly-substitutable, commoditized industries are most exposed, e.g. banking, retail, healthcare, telecommunications, insurance, energy, and pharmaceuticals. That said, all businesses must deliver world-class customer service in order to remain competitive. And all while maintaining full compliance with the changing legal and compliance environment within which they operate, and have non-repudiable record-keeping to demonstrate such compliance. The issue is that consumers are not directly concerned with satisfying your compliance procedures; customers simply want to acquire products and services from you with an easy transaction (but with the option of suing you later if they so wish). Non-repudiable Compliance Enforcement and Audit Trail: JobTraQ Screenshot 5

7 The Solution: Lean BPM Lean BPM, also known as Low Code or No Code BPM, is a viable alternative to Big BPM as delivered by IBM, Oracle and Pegasystems for example. JobTraQ is the pioneer of Lean BPM, and the major differentiator between JobTraQ and any other BPM solution is this: JobTraQ differentiates itself by WHO designs, modifies AND deploys business processes. In every JobTraQ instance, it is the process owners and business managers, with ZERO requirement for input from IT, specialist coders and developers or third-party consultants. JobTraQ achieves agility by providing a BPM solution which includes a visual workflow interface utilizing drag-and-drop functionality. This means that if you can design a process on a piece of paper, you can design one in JobTraQ just as quickly. Big BPM and traditional process management require that once a process is designed, it must then be turned into a statement of requirements and deliverables and handed over to IT to implement. This typically takes months, if not years, and generates high costs and business risk, and due to the delay in deployment, such solutions are frequently obsolete by the time they are implemented. In contrast, once a process has been designed in the JobTraQ visual workflow interface, the new or modified process can be pushed into the live, operational environment automatically and immediately with no IT involvement or the need for specialist skills and expertise. Automated workflows, associated tasks and reporting are all automatically created in accordance with your preset business rules and procedures. JobTraQ requires less time to implement a new or modified business process than it takes for staff to hold the initial meeting to approve the same process design and modifications. A secondary differentiator between JobTraQ and its BPM peers is this: it is the only solution which publically publishes its pricing, and JobTraQ typically costs between 20-30% deployment and TCO compared to traditional BPM providers. JobTraQ is also fast and simple to deploy, with both SaaS and On-Premises versions available, and typically is deployed in less than a tenth of the time of a traditional BPM solution. 6

8 Pricing On-Premise Annual Subscriptions and Permanent Licenses are also available, and are based on the same model. 7

9 Existing Clients 8

10 References Hasty, S. (n.d.). Stephen Hasty, Partner KPMG as quoted by Chad Brooks. Retrieved from Business News Daily: Kramer, N. P. (n.d.). Nathaniel Palmer Interviews Andrea Kramer. Retrieved from BPM.com: Reid, C. (n.d.). Why Speed and Flexibility Are Today's Business Essentials. Retrieved from The Process Improvement Group: 9