ReachTejasvi's blog

Is BPM dead? I remember Gartner and Forrestor ramping up their research, in the late 2011. But now, there seems to be a slow down on this front. I believe there is always process to be discovered, mined and improvised.

Is crowd collaboration the next big thing in process discovery?

The other day, on my way to office, held in gruelling traffic of Bangalore, a twitter feed on a new role named social business Architect caught my eye. Was it really necessary was my second question.

When it comes to internal collaboration within the organisation, Social interaction for successful process orchestration has already been a buzzing topic in BPM lately. There are a lot of posts out there so I would not detail much on this here. In brief, it involves pushing process to the lower levels of the hierarchy by giving employees a chance to interact on the decisions taken at higher levels. This gives the pool a feeling that they have a part of the ownership in the new process, which in fact helps in better process implementation and ultimately its success.

Collaboration in the internal pool is already discovered stuff but what remains undiscovered is leveraging lots of crowd talent outside the organisation. A tap into the social platforms outside the organisation gives leaps of benefits for retailers in the present market. The same has to be tweaked and can be used in other sectors for better process discoveries. I will tell you in my later post why it works.

Bringing in a feedback system involving stakeholders that has a backing of responsive BPM can be helpful. In general business analysis, Power interest Grid is an effective tool to grade stakeholders where much attention is not paid to Low Power-High Interest teams which has to be reversed in social collaboration. Every stakeholder has something to provide – not only a customer, even a supplier of service. So a stakeholder wheel helps here from missing anyone who can make a difference from their inputs.

I mean to say that Social business architect is a role that can span different existing roles of marketing, BI, Business analysis but for a size full organisation, such roles can be prominent. Equipped with the best tools and frameworks in social collaboration, I am sure process discovery can take a different turn maximising its impact.

It is time to save NFIP rather than it saving citizens.

NFIP Long-Term Reauthorization is one of the hot topics in P&C insurance industry. NFIP supports more than 5.6 million Americans. Catastophic losses are not just a coastal concern but a nation's concern.NFIP expires on May 31, 2012 and whenever it expires as in the past, it creates anxiety in people. NFIP backed insurers are a boon to the citizens living in coastal lines. But is this taken advantage in the right sense. Well-to-do Brazilians are buying up luxury condos on the beach in Miami, The Times reported in Jan. Florida shoreline is more vulnerable to storms. The vulnerability is shifted to the citizens insurance backed by state and ultimately by citizens. 2011 has been a year of losses for property insurers in US which drives them to increase the premiums. The increase in risk is reflected by the rise in premiums.

If the situation needs to change, then

1. The people should have a healthy attitude towards risk.

2. Fraudulent use of insurance claims should be controlled.

3. Seek the advise of state to shield the properties from the disasters.

For private insurance providers there is an oppurtunity lying here. The state-backed insurers are encouraging people to move to private insurers. If the risk is balanced by the premiums, there is a glow for profits, if CAT is weary of not striking in the following years.

Thought travels faster than light. So why not pack and sell it first

Thought leadership(TL) is one of the present day key sales drivers in 'take any sector'. The home page of most service/product providers today boast of the 'TL' word. It is upto the buyers to recognise the innovation quotient in thesesolutions that the prospective sellers are providing. 

1. It is best for firms to socialise around with ideas that attack  current problems. Basel-2 is no more interesting though required, think about oppurtunities that basel-3 provides and something that can be teamed up innovatively with solutions.

2. I have seen TL content lingering in pages that date back to ages. Well, it may make a case of sucess as well as distinction but let the customers taste current innovations from your shop.

3. Innovation that bars other competetors from sight will be visible without much effort. Thanks to Social media for pitching these thoughts.

 4. Most of these home born ideas can be easily adapted by competetors. But if it is your idea why dont you pack it and sell it first as a brand package.

5. Syncronised (in-time) thought leadership - Responding to ultra fresh happenings by catching situations nascent is essential in present day.

Good one! Weekend toonie - starring BPM'er and tech geek.

People management or Process management! which first?

I was going through Ally Gill’s view on current process climate in organisations. He says “Some organisations simply did not have effective processes in place which was preventing them from achieving the levels of performance they could have expected from their people”. I have detailed some of the issues that he has pointed to along with my experiences.

 

I had similar experiences while I worked in IT, where process and productivity improvement was mandated large scale for folks. There was no abstract process layer at that time and the 30 member support team scurried around like mousses nibbling at bits of cheese from the system. Stubs were created, implemented which showed temporary improvement in the system but the planned overlaps and releases never helped. Moreover they made it difficult for systems appreciation. I remember the system to be a ball of troubled yarn comprising of scattered improvisations, business rules and internal policies. The business must have set proper goals in people management after a definitive plan for enablers in process management.

People management delivers substantial results temporarily whether or not aligned with process management. In the long run you might be a strong business with much stronger people management but only lagging behind in leveraging the full potentiality of business and by not meeting the industry success rates.

Only a parallel process management will achieve results that can last and make an impact in the industry. Though we can say that critical success factors for a business activity are dependent on identification of process performance indicators and indicators for individual tasks at macro level, these indicators should be more oriented towards the value proposition of business when seen at bird’s view.

 

A short story on process mining - starring as organization guard.

It was Christmas Eve but the users complained about not enjoying the perks of the lean period. The business groaned of empowering trends in mobility coming around in the new-year. A major revamp was planned early this year and we were asked to check the systems and process for improvisations. A strategic analysis using Pestle, resource audit, SWOT and MOST showed that the organisation had stronger objectives and strategies. The long term strategy was strong and same were the short terms’. Analysis showed that short term objectives collectively did not serve the strategy used by the organisation.

1)      On walkthroughs with the business and users, we came to know that –

• Entry into this industry segment became easier while competitors and substitutes started driving in with advanced product offerings.
• So, a major revamp was planned to the systems by employing the best technology trends to serve business and customers.
• On enquiry, 3 years ago there was a project which kicked off with pomp; process layers were abstracted, KPIs were set in place, monitored for  meeting customer service agreements.
• The monitoring ceased after a few weeks and the process experts were made unavailable under the good impression.

 

2)      After 3 years we came into picture. The process documentation available was of little help. It was completely subjective of the services. While everything changed around  alignement was not process oriented. The process and services overlapped over time and made it unpleasant for us to move ahead.

 3)      Setting up a BPM centre would have been a strategic move but resource limitation popped the bubble that came in business minds . Process mining using available logs from legacy systems was opted to fill gaps in models. The existing appreciation documents for services were helpful. After a scintillating week of work with users, business and system logs, we came up with a process model which was objective and 100% complete :) . Tasks were realised into rational processes. Value proposition analysis was used to identify customer’s views of satisfaction. We came up with the critical success factors for the business and industry. Then KPIs came up for processes and performance indicators for tasks followed. There was a great deal of improvisation recommended which I will talk about in later posts and for now that was the end of our endeavour.

So, Process mining helps in building  objective working models while only reviews and walkthroughs provided subjective  models. I still remember the blogs by processmining.org, Forrestor, Wil van der Aalst’s blog,fluxicon which are a recommended reading if you ought to learn techniques. I believe they have some free tools to helpl. I did not browse much of process mining blogs but please leave your blogs for recommendation.

Process mining – stuck diamonds while digging for silver

Process mining the new sensation in Business process niche has been gaining popularity recently. Industry is waiting for it to be hyped – till the usual selling point is reached. Process mining existed well before the term was framed but is gearing up now and it sure provides tangible value in the organisation.

Process mining (PM) is similar to data mining, where data from logs is mapped to process and deviations are identified and corresponding processes are improvised. The better part of PM is that it supports us to dig deep into complex processes while mapping them into sub processes for convenience.

BPM on the other hand has an abstracted process layer where sometimes KPIs generated could not narrow the problems in complex process. Enterprises which have BPM COE established can use PM to narrow root cause in these environments.

I recently worked with an Insurance client, one of the fortune-100, where I used PM to provide improvisation. Insurance sector is one of the hard ones to cope up with trending technology and be sure to accept that BPM is not used extensively.

I acquired an overview of event triggers, high level activities, deliverables and touch points to other processes and the end states. I modelled the system using process modelling and KPIs were already available but did not help much. The logs from legacy systems were combined based on the applications (front desk/support) and workgroups to form cases. I used excel to find the mean and deviation for each of these cases. On mapping the cases to process diagram, I found that there is a particular activity where users were delaying the return payments to customers. On further probe, I analysed delay in data collection which the system uses to process the request. The data used for return payments can be collected in the initial process of customer addition which in fact increases turnaround time and improves customer’s experience. The other improvisation was in processing payment requests where transactions have been failing and a delay is embedded in the system. This has gone unnoticed and the users have been through this minor discomfort for long. The system was improvised to handle failed transactions immediately.

Finally, to summarise, I think process mining is useful to narrow the root for improvisations in the system.

 

Innovation Architecting - A how to?

Innovation is not a daily routine for architects, be it in IT or Business but a valuable one. In fact I read somewhere that boredom moves you towards innovation. We have to agree that something routine or expected might not be sheen. Innovation is always valued as Entrepreneurs get to churn more revenue; existing business owners improvise their value chains. Innovation is not limited to pulling something entirely new, it can be as simple as an improvising a part of the existing business process in an enterprise.

The basis of innovation comes from a strong understanding of the problem or a scenario. So, Greater insight into the problem scenario along with knowledge of existing system will form the basis. Every idea coming in this direction should be considered valuable. Incomplete loose segments of thoughts and parts of ideas pertaining to the scenario on alignment would definitely assist you to build a complete prototype. Rapid thinking from the peers or brainstorming would also assist in this process. Approach towards generating the prototype can be in the same way as the architects approach the blank-sheet-of-paper challenge. The architects use a blank paper to come up with a business model in no time by putting their thoughts on it - prototyping.

Peter Sims' in his book Little Bets describes prototyping as “The initial prototype that emerges over an hour or so barely looks like a building. But it's merely a starting point. They have begun and can work quickly and inexpensively to explore dozens of initial possibilities.”

There are tools that assist you in forming the base for innovative approach.

1. Business activity Modelling is valuable in case an immature business model is considered. If the enterprise already exists and value chains have already been identified, try to use process modelling to look at the opportunities available based on process performance indicators. Prototyping on the To-Be process will be useful.
2. More mature enterprises have BPM COEs set up which optimise and improvise the processes. Developing As-Is models and To-Be models and bridging the gaps is a common and systematic approach here. BPM tools provide granularity but use of dual BAM (both business activity monitoring and business activity modelling) help to provide better abstraction from business level to workflow level. BPM tools like PEAS help simulating the process models that you have prototyped.
3. IT modelling using UML diagrams forms the initial steps towards understanding the existing systems. Identifying Gaps in the process and resource audit will help you to move towards innovative ideas. Innovation can be simple as better resource utilisation or process improvements or better system usability. Prototypes are deployable if evolving structure is built around them.
4. Entrepreneurs look towards polishing their business plans for sustainability and better ROI. This is what is being valued by Incubators and VCs.

Finally, think about valuing every idea and rapid prototyping

 

Are thought leadership and innovation to IT & consulting similar to Twitter and Facebook in social media? Is an innovation architect crucial in the present industry?

Once online news and magazines encompassed social media, but now it is dominated by a couple of sites. The same is the case with ‘T’ and ‘I’ words. If ‘Innovation’ is one of the tactics used by an organisation to retain more client portfolios, then an approach that would effectively utilize the effort spent is necessary.

Innovation and though leadership are common approaches employed by organisations at present to gain market penetration or product development. They are being included in objectives or tactics put forward by the organisation to achieve their mission. One reason might be, as I have detailed in my previous post; the customers are more attracted to the “T” word.

Innovation is often included in contractual terms by customers and if not, is used as a trade strategy by organisations to sell their models/services or retain customers.

The innovation architect services horizontally in his domain by providing feasible solutions to meet the objectives. So he must be aware of the changes in the organisation’s objectives. He is often a business analyst with modest technical expertise, as extensive domain expertise and model communication are the crucial.

The process starts with circulating a mailer having clear intention of idea gathering, scope and the incentives. The organisation should provide some incentive for people to complete and return the mailer. At times from an account of 100 members, around 200 ideas are received quarterly.

 

From the first step of collecting ideas we move to evaluating them. The evaluating team consists of domain experts essentially business analysts, technical consultants and senior managers. This is the crucial part of the cycle. Initial screening would leave the team with a fraction of the list.

 

Questionnaires with judgement factors are sent to idea owners along with their engagement managers. The factors often include tangible savings – effort and resource, effort spent on current process, ease of process if implemented, client’s present inclination towards innovation, reusable quotient, effort to deliver the model, scalability; the scale is rated against 0-10.  The innovation quotient is calculated from the Questionnaires.

 

The ideas are then classified into

1) Process improvement – Daily, Weekly and Monthly process – ideas majorly from the users of the UI systems, servicing teams and business users.

2) Innovation in Model using stub model – An idea of a stub embedded into an existing model, from Business analysts and system architects.

3) Solution for problems that the client is currently facing – ideas can be from Business analysts.

The process further requires inputs from Timesheets as the effort spent is often exaggerated. The use of activity sampling sheets is found to be helpful by leaving the settling period. Activity sampling can be done by shadowing the users combined with the ethnographic study (getting familiar with the users and process).  The assembled ideas are mapped to the processes or activities virtually. Quoting an example, from sampling, the daily activity of a user can fall into 3 activities, A: B: C while the effort spent on A to B to C is 1:3:4.

From my experience, I found a trend that majority of the ideas fall into activities such as “C”, predominantly due to the massive efforts spent on a redundant activity.

For these ideas, effort savings if deployed apart from the build effort is calculated. If the build effort of the model is high, it is advisable to attract budget from the customer weighing the pros of the innovation. If the idea is a solution to a problem, the resource savings or revenue generated is estimated. By now, with the information available you would be able to sieve ideas that would add considerable value to the customer.

The next part is decision making which starts with a workshop including the idea owner and rest of the team. The pros against the cons of the model are analysed and brainstorming is done on negating the cons. If the team comes to a decision, the idea is taken forward or abandoned. It is advisable not to put ideas on hold and decision them in a single workshop. Such workshops often work well on Fridays.

Communication to customer about the model is crucial in the next phase. The innovation architect can come up with a presentation from the data collected along with the stats. If the customer is more inclined towards innovation, he would ideally be attracted to the worthiness of the solution. If customer is not able to provide required budget, it is better to go with ideas that provide breakthrough but utilize minor build efforts and deploy them as a discount.

The final stage includes building and deploying the model.

I would outline the entire process as

1)      Eliciting the ideas from the users or servicers.

2)      Evaluating ideas includes initial screening and detailed score based model.

3)      Decision making in workshop.

4)      Client communication to attract budget.

5)      Building the model.