On Choosing a Vendor

We've spoken before about the criteria companies use to chose a BPM vendor, but I want to revisit this in light of conversations I've been having recently with vendors.

The fact of the matter is that there are a large number of vendors on the market with products that are not differentiated to any great extent from the others on the market (no names, as that is not the point of this post).

Sure, they have the odd bell or whistle that might be useful to one organisation (or part of an organisation), so the differentiator is not in the software itself.

So what is it that a company will/should look for when looking at vendors where the product itself is not a differentiator.

As examples I've spoken to vendors who cite their excellent after-sales service as a differentiator. Also vendors who use the fact that they are small and responsive as a great selling point. Others point to their training offerings, Gartner approbation and other things as reasons why you would want to look at them rather than the competition.

Of course price will certainly be a differentiator for many companies. If your product costs peanuts (The 'Microsoft Visio' approach), you can put thousands of copies into an organisation and use other means to get your main income (consulting, training etc). On the other hand if you are selling a product that has a substantial cost per license, and the company needs many licences to make a project worthwhile, you are  looking at an uphill struggle in many cases to sell your product. But there are companies in this situation at the moment and they seem to be selling a substantial number of copies of their product to both large and small organisation around the world.

See here' my question: What are the differentiators you would look at when choosing your software provider for BPM software?

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What's your experience of BPM so far?

What's your experience of BPM so far?


It seems to me that a lot of the work I am currently doing is related to "Let's see what we’ve got and document it" rather than ”OK, I'm wanting to make this more efficient, how can I do that?”.

As an example I spent time last year working with a large merchant bank who were wanting to document their sales process to help them understand how they could better sell to customer. This included understanding what was ”core” to their business and what was ”ancillary, but still profit-worthy”. The whole thrust of the BPM side of things was just to understand what they did and how they did it. We used a process management tool to do this, but at no point where we considering understanding how we could automate this or anything similar to that. It was purely a documentation effort.

My last job, similarly, was with a large aerospace manufacturer who were looking to document their HR processes. They had built up over a period of about 50 years by acquisition and this had resulted in over 250 separate companies being brought into the fold. Each of these companies had their own ways of on-boarding people, promoting people, recruiting people etc. the company wanted to document and define a single method of doing all this and rolling it out to the all the divisions. Again, nothing about automating anything, mostly about documenting.

Now I'm in discussions with a UK based transportation company who are looking to document all their existing internal processes to ensure that everything is being done correctly.

Could it be that my experience is just limited in that I tend to do a lot of the ”Let's document what we do” type of work, rather than any of the ”Let's take what we do and improve it”? Or is everyone in a similar situation? Obviously if you are a vendor selling the tools that do this you're going to have a different view of this. But for the consultants out there who are actually at the coal face doing the work, what is the nature of the work you are doing?

I think it's important to understand where the market is at the moment. There are many tools out there to help document and automate, but if the end customer is more concerned with just seeing what they've already got (or want if they don't like doing ’as-as’ documentation) rather than taking that documented state and doing something with it, then we have a different environment (and a different level of maturity) than if the market was interested in improving and automating their processes to gain efficiencies and ”synergies” (excuse the buzzword).

I'm also aware that in ”the market” there are going to be companies that are more advanced in their thinking, and, indeed, in their projects, than some of the companies I'm working with. They will have documented, improved, automated, and implemented their processes already, either as a stand-alone project or as part of a bigger project implementation. And thats all right. But I'm trying to gauge an overall level of maturity across the people who read this blog.

If we were to look at the CMM scale for maturity I'm seeing companies at level 1 or level 2 when it comes to their processes. I think that a lot of vendors are looking at their clients as being at a level 3 and above. What's the truth to this? (The above statements are based purely on anecdotal, not empirical data)

Look forward to hearing your comments and thoughts.

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Top posts for January 2012

The top posts on The Process Cafe for January 2012 were:

1) Silo Thinking and Why it is Bad - A perennial favourite
2) Ten BPM blogs you should be following. This is closely linked to the BPM Blacklist
3) What are your criteria for choosing a BPM tool?
4) Seven ways PI's can make your process worse - a guest post from Bernie Smith at madetomeasurekpis.co.uk.
5) As is vs To Be. One of my personal favourite entries
6) The Two Axioms explained. In which I explain my assertion that there are two key axioms in BPM. 1) There are a large number of process issues that are common amongst most companies, regardless of market sector and line of business. 2) Most people in the company know what their process issues are but don't address them.
7) The Top Ten Tips for Business Process projects
8) Bowling and BPM: All Style and No Skill. In which I equate BPM users to ten pin bowlers.
9) More reasons to document your As Is.
10) Why SaaS pricing will kill BPM in the Cloud

What is interesting looking at some of these is that they are - with minimal exceptions - generally reasonably old posts. The most up-to-date of these is number 4 which was a guest post from January, but the top entry dates right the way back to January 2010.

Thank you, everyone, for reading this blog. I know I don't update it as often as I used to, but the statistics indicate that the original entries I made are the most popular and are the ones that people keep coming back to look at.

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Reminder: 'The Perfect Process Project Second Edition' is now available. Don't miss the chance to get this valuable insight into how to make business processes work for you. Click this link and follow the instructions to get this book.

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All information is Copyright (C) G Comerford
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7 Ways KPIs Can Make Your Process Worse

(Today's post is a guest post from Bernie Smith from madetomeasurekpis.co.uk. In it he lists seven ways in which the use of Key Performance Indicators can make your processes worse).

Most people nod vigorously and agree that KPIs and measures are a "good thing". Used sensibly they are, but many organisations are actively undermining their process improvement through the poor use of measures. 

Here are some of the most common pitfalls and some ideas on how to tackle them.

1. KPIs that show you only part of the picture. 

Even if your measures and KPIs are set up properly, you may be missing a big part of the picture giving a false sense of security - as they may not comprehensively cover the things you really care about. Some of the biggest process improvement opportunities come in the form of things that organisation may not even be aware are problematic. To find this type of opportunity you need a structured approach to mapping out the key drivers on the outcomes you are looking at (I use my Success Mapping approach, you could also use a modified version of TPM PM Analysis or derivative of the BSC approach)

2. KPIs that are WRONG

KPIs and measures can be wrong in a number of ways (and often several ways all at once!). They can be incorrectly defined (I've seen countless organisations define OEE incorrectly), there can be variable definitions within the same organisation, there can be spreadsheet arithmetic errors, and there can also be wide variations in the understanding of what those measures are showing. 

The solution is simple, although it can be demanding: create a KPI database. This can be pretty simple (link to the checklist on my site: http://www.madetomeasurekpis.com/2011/post/tools_to_help/kpi-definition-checklist/) but it is key that there's one clear definition of each measure, with the issues and inaccuracies also recorded and maintained.

3. KPIs that drive the wrong employee behaviour

We have all been rushed off the phone by a call centre employee who is measured on AHT (average handling time) rather than something more meaningful (like total time to problem resolution). People generally behave rationally, it's often the measures that make then do odd things. One way to avoid this is to simply ask your team "What do you find yourself doing to make the numbers that doesn't feel right to you?".

4. KPIs that are out of date

There's an old joke about being able to produce a perfectly accurate 7 day weather forecast, only it takes 14 days to create. Often the analysis produced in organisations is too old to be enable effective decisions. This leads to one of two choices: stop producing the analysis or improve the KPI production process.

5. Sucking up valuable operational resource to produce them

I've worked with teams of 40 or 50, all dedicated to creating reports and dashboards. Some of the work will always require a human, but most won't. The first port of call should be looking to automate much of the tedious Excel legwork that seems to happen in most corporations. Next look at quick-to-implement BI tools like Qlickview and Tableau (there are a couple of first-look reviews http://www.madetomeasurekpis.com/2011/post/first-look-qlickview-10-data-visualisation-software/ and http://www.madetomeasurekpis.com/2011/post/review/first-look-tableau-6-1-data-visualisation-software/). In the long term a consolidated data warehouse can yield benefits, but has a high capital cost and can introduce as many problems as it solves.

6. KPIs as a management club to beat staff up

We've all seen it, measures being used as a club by aggressive managers. There really isn't a KPI fix here, it's all about addressing those behavioural issues with the managers and making it clear that KPIs are not an instrument of torture. But be certain that if you don't address this issue it will shatter peoples enthusiasm for measurement (and management).

7. Drowning process managers in detail - making sensible decisions impossible

Most humans can hold between 4 and 7 "chunks" of data in their mind at once, so how do they cope with 95 page "Risk and Compliance" reports. Put simply, they don't. In this situation they skim through, looking for exceptions and at their "pet" measures. Dashboard and report design is a big area, but this link http://www.madetomeasurekpis.com/2011/post/howto/how-to-build-a-brilliant-dashboard/ gives a few starting tips.

KPIs can be a great force for good, but if you fall into one, or more, of these traps you can miss out on much of the value they can deliver. For more practical advice on tackling some of these problems visit Bernie's site at www.madetomeasurekpis.com

About the author: Bernie has helped his clients deliver surprising levels of improvement across a wide range of industries over the past 15 years. His mission is to help clients with a repeatable, practical and jargon-free method for generating insightful and clear KPIs and management reports. He understands that most people don’t get excited by KPIs, but believes it’s a curable condition..


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More reasons to document your 'As Is'

The 'As-Is' process: Much maligned and quite divisive? Or a necessary piece of BPM work?

 Regular readers of this blog will know my opinion when it comes to documenting the As Is process (TLDR: Do it), and I was encouraged to see a note from Scott Cleveland on his blog which, basically talks about the same thing. He brings up a number of other points which I think are relevant:

First, companies that have improved processes have followed this tried and true process: Document the process; Check to be sure you have it documented properly; Measure how long that process takes today; Improve the process; and measure again to see if you really did improve it.
Second, if you thought you could come up with the 'perfect' process - I guarantee that by the time you implement it, you will find new ways to improve it. So, the search for perfection is a wasted effort.
Third, implementing your 'perfect' process without measuring the existing process leaves you with no way to show that you actually have made any improvement. 'It just feels better' isn't measurable

Couldn't agree more. I am firmly in the camp of "Let's see what we have at the moment and how we do it before we start running off and defining the future."

Wonder how many times people will have to learn this the hard way before it sinks in...?


(Coming Friday: KPI's and 7 ways they can make your processes worse.)

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Reminder: 'The Perfect Process Project Second Edition' is now available. Don't miss the chance to get this valuable insight into how to make business processes work for you. Click this link and follow the instructions to get this book.

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Holiday Greetings from The Process Cafe

Wherever you are, and whatever your denomination, I would like to take the opportunity of thanking all my readers, subscribers, Twitter followers and Google+ circlers, and wishing you all the best for the New Year.

 Thank you.
 Gary

The System is not the Process. The Process is not the System

(In the style of Seth Godin)

It is well worth remembering that when you design a process it should be designed independently of the underlying system that will support it. That's what procedures are for.

Designing a process based on a specific piece of software means that when the software changes the process needs to change as well.

You don't want that.

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Reminder: 'The Perfect Process Project Second Edition' is now available. Don't miss the chance to get this valuable insight into how to make business processes work for you. Click this link and follow the instructions to get this book.

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All information is Copyright (C) G Comerford
  See related info below