| ------------------------------------- BrainStorm Bulletin e-newsletter of BrainStorm Group December 11, 2003 -------------------------------------
==================================================== -- INTRODUCTION: ==================================================== Seasons Greetings! The economic trends are positive, and the new year looks like it will be a better one for all of us. It isn't too early to begin planning to attend BrainStorm Chicago on April 13-14. In this issue we feature Irene Dec of Prudential Financial. Irene gave the keynote address at BrainStorm New York, "Global Integration - Meeting Business Challenges." Irene gave a succinct and powerful presentation on how and why projects fail, how to read the signs early, and when to cut and run. She made a very complex topic seem simple by taking it down to the fundamentals. Our second article is on Trevor Naidoo's presentation on Business Process Management at BrainStorm New York, "BPM: Technology or Philosophy?". Trevor's talk highlighted the importance of adopting the philosophy of BPM before implementing the technology. BrainStorm conferences feature the best information on the technical and business issues of today, from top industry experts, authors, and analysts along with one-on-one sessions with our presenters to give you the latest technological and business advice for your organization. Go to www.BrainStorm-Group.com to register. Best Regards,
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| ================================================= Irene Dec's presentation in New York focused on "Changing the way we implement our business objectives." Through her long experience in management, Irene explained why many business objectives can never be achieved, even after spending millions of dollars. She covered the key factors of failure, including which can be fixed and which signal that a project must be terminated. Irene described the importance of global business integration and gave attendees a business model matrix approach that can simplify the process of identifying business functions for integration. She also related how the choice of approaches can lead to either success or failure. Irene Dec has the dual responsibility of being the CIO and Operations and Risk Officer. She has led the implementation of significant business objectives in the areas of technology and operations. She led the Prudential Y2K company-wide program, spoke at conferences, seminars, and government hearings, and consulted with other major U.S. companies and government agencies. Upon a successful implementation of Y2K, Irene was assigned to the International Division. Currently, her key objectives are to assist in the "building" of this critical international business division. She is best described as an "implementer" of significant business objectives Irene said that without a strategy and a strong direction, technology can not meet business needs. Today success is defined by some very high standards. Critical business requirements need to be delivered ASAP; processes, systems and data needs to be integrated; solutions need to be flexible and risk free, and all of this must be delivered for less money. Plus, all of this work needs to be alive and well in three years. She then listed the challenges facing integration efforts today. Today businesses are faced with:
Irene listed the attributes of failure and explained how to recognize them. It isn't enough to just see the failure; you must decide whether you can fix the problem or terminate it, and before the project loses even more money. Irene went into detail on business problems, recounting some of her more than 20 years of corporate experience.
Irene listed two business models, the Business Solutions Approach, and the implementation approach, along with the technological models. The implementation approach can be done in-house, outsourced, or a combination of the two. The technological models are self-development, outsourced development, or purchased software. Each business function can be self-developed, outsourced, or bought. The seven business functions on her list included:
Quoting Einstein, Irene said that "complex things should be made as simple as possible". Each of the business functions listed above can be put into a business model matrix that has business functions on the left side and the three categories of self-developed, outsourced or bought in columns to their right. The boxes are marked with a simple Yes or No. When each "yes" is tied with the others, it reveals the integration path. This slide was the simplest integration path model I have seen. You should try it with your business functions. Irene added a caveat. In business, some things are Lincoln Logs and some things are Lego's, and integrating Lego's and Lincoln Logs will not work. It is important to understand your business integration model. To do this:
The three critical success factors for being able to see business failures are:
The four critical success factors for business models are:
Irene emphasized the need for a simple description of the project at hand. If it can't be described in a simple and direct way, it will not be understood by the people overseeing the project or those affected by the project. If it isn't understood, the project is at risk. Irene left a good ten minutes of her time for the numerous questions that came from the audience. You can see the slides and hear her presentation by logging on to www.BrainStormU.com. Jon Huntress ================================================= Join 1000's of your peers already taking advantage of the member benefits of these sites including: access to dedicated news, case studies and articles; downloads of white papers and research; private peer to peer discussions; submission of your own articles to the site; member only newsletter; related news gathered and linked on one web page; discounted/complimentary conference registration; solution locator directory; access to archived presentations from live events; online roundtable meetings with industry experts and analysts, plus much more! BrainStorm Bulletin subscribers are eligible for complimentary membership through the end of 2004 when you join by December 31, 2003! For additional information
on BPMInstitute.org and to join, visit: For additional information
on GOInstitute.org and to join, visit: ================================================= Trevor Naidoo gave a presentation at BrainStorm New York emphasizing BPM as more than just a collection of the latest technological tools. The promise of BPM is that it will make businesses more nimble through the design, implementation and monitoring of complex business processes. The technology available today does in fact enable this. However, organizations must first embrace the philosophy of BPM into its culture before the new technology can work. Trevor is the President of the Philadelphia/ New Jersey Chapter of ABPMP and Director of Consulting at IDS Scheer. His experience is in the areas of business transformation, reengineering, business architecture and process improvement. Trevor began his presentation by stating that the consensus today defines BPM as a collection of technology solutions that focus on business process execution using workflow engines, EAI engines, and Web Services. At this time, the top ten BPM players are:
Automating inefficient business processes merely ensures inefficiency on a consistent basis, according to Trevor. So BPM is more than just technology, it is also the approach and philosophy used to change an organization. One of the most difficult things to do is to chart and document the business processes you already have. This documenting must be done in order to achieve the benefits of Business Process Automation, and this first step is a difficult one. Trevor showed a slide that covered the BPM lifecycle, with the executive suite at the top. This is where business decisions are made, and where the business problems and strategies for overcoming them are formulated. Once the problems are identified and understood, the specifications for their solutions can be created. Following this, best practices for design, organization, optimization and control of the processes can be decided. This is where the technology comes in, and where you have to deal with your legacy applications. Some legacy applications can be tied to EAI engines and others with Web Services, but there will always be some that cannot be integrated. A single process may touch many systems, and this is a difficult process to monitor. Each system may have its own tools, making end-to-end monitoring and the creation of business dashboards difficult. The next step is process automation (EAI and BPA), along with customization. Monitoring flows continuously back to the top, and standards are key to making this happen. There needs to be strategic alignment around the chosen business process strategy for this to take place. The whole process is a philosophical concept, supported by technology. Innovation needs to cover products, cooperation, and process. Collaborating your business processes with other organizations becomes even harder if you don't understand your own. These business-level decisions need to come from the top. Modeling the processes helps communication, but the modeling itself can be questionable. Trevor showed a slide of a business process model documented in Microsoft Word, and next to it the actual process, which was captured by interviewing the people involved in the actual process. The Word process was simple and concise, while the actual process had dependencies and process lines all over the place. If the goal is to automate the business process, then a higher level of detail is needed. Web Services and BPMs will simplify the spaghetti-like dependencies involved in most business processes. Technology solutions can help, but the philosophy needs to come first, Trevor emphasized. Are we driving a business value? If so, the technology can be used to achieve a successful initiative. The methodology of change management is the key. Trevor gave some examples of organizations that have followed this approach. When the question was posed: Is BPM a technology or a philosophy? Trevor answered that both are correct. In order for the technology to work, business has to embrace four aspects of Business Processes:
The benefits of doing this are:
There were a number of questions after the presentation. Most had to do with how difficult it is to accurately map the processes within different organizations. It seems that documenting how the processes ought to work is fairly simple, but tracking down how they actually work is much more difficult, and a concern of many at the conference. Since this falls on the philosophy side of the question, in that it has to come before the technology, it would seem that philosophy is the Achilles Heel in BPM. If an organization tries to implement BPM without embracing the philosophy, it will merely be automating inefficiency, according to Trevor. To hear Trevor Naidoo's talk and view his slides, log on to www.BrainStormU.com. Jon Huntress |
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