Resources in Operational Excellence (OPEX)

Our focus on Operational Excellence (OE) is on the alignment of strategies, processes, performers, measures, technologies and management to achieve and sustain outstanding levels of performance of the entire enterprise.

Our belief is that Operational Excellence is achievable only when an organization has defined the major elements that affect performance and aligned them (which often means redesigning them) to support strategies and goals.

Just as often the task of alignment also means ridding the organization of things (practices, policies, organization structures) that impede Operational Excellence.

Displaying 41 - 50 of 262 resources matching your criteria.

The Virtual BPM Facilitator - Part 1

Contributed by:Shelley Sweet, Faculty Member, BPMInstitute.org and President, i4 Process

A Facilitator helps participants in a group work together toward the meeting objective by providing a meeting structure, engaging the participants, keeping them focused on the content, and remaining neutral himself. A BPM Facilitator is a person who guides a business process improvement (BPI) project, using the same group process skills and behaviors of a generic facilitator but in the context of BPM. So the BPM facilitator needs to know the BPM Methodology, have a structured method of working with BPI teams, be able to coach a Process Owner, and be able to work with the BPI Project Leader toward the improvement targets of the Process Owner. And the Virtual BPM Facilitator needs to do it virtually – not face to face but using telecommunications by phone, by video conference, by Web Ex, or similar tools. That makes the medium a bit more challenging but it’s the reality of today’s global world.

Building a Process Catalog: Final Steps

Contributed by:Karen Tricomi, Consultant, The Process Geek

This is the final article in my series on building a process catalog for the organization in which I work. For reference and context, you can find the first three articles at these links: Building a Process Catalog: The Journey Begins; Building a Process Catalog, The Ongoing Journey; and Building a Process Catalog: Moving Ahead.

As we have wrapped up the calendar year, the Process Catalog that we began last October finally can be completed. Below is a brief recap of the stages we’ve gone through to get the catalog to the current state.

A Process Based View of Customer Experience

Contributed by:Andrew Spanyi, Faculty Member, DBizInstitute.org and Managing Director, Spanyi International

A recent article in HBR informed readers on the “truth” about customer experience[i]. The authors argued that it’s not enough for organizations to excel at key touch points with customers – instead organizations need to understand and skillfully manage the entire customer journey. While this is true – and might be a new revelation for some readers – it should come as no surprise to those of us who have practiced a customer focused, process based view of business.

A process based view of customer experience is much more than just creating a roadmap of a customer journey; it also involves shaping what the organization measures and manages. Let’s consider how a process based view of customer experience can benefit service providers such as phone, internet, cable, and utility companies. The customers of such service providers have a set of very simple needs; including,

Organisation Ring of Influence

Contributed by:Imtiaz Abdul Kader, Head Core Banking PMO, Standard Bank Group

A famous quote, “Installing a Rolls Royce engine in a Hyundai can make it inoperable,” (Russell Ackoff, 1999) as used to explain why improving parts of a system can be detrimental as opposed to improving the entire system, could also be used to explain why you should consider improving Business Process Reengineering BPR project execution as part of an organisation in terms of how they operate and not just by focusing on the technical execution of a project in terms of the project lifecycle. In other words the “BPR Project System” is made up of the environment in which it is executed as well as the BPR project itself inclusive of its execution method, its team structure, its project objectives and execution deliverables.

Process Centric Enterprise Architecture: Aligning with Successful Customer Outcomes

Contributed by:Gerhard Basson, Process Architect, Old Mutual plc

Every primary process in the Enterprise Architecture should have some bearing on how it affects the customer. The process, its activities and the resources to perform the activities should be geared towards achieving Successful Customer Outcomes. When we state the requirements for the services, the processes, the resources and the IT systems or when we design or develop the solution, the interaction with the customer and the goals of the customer should be stated and represented clearly.

I discussed the process centric approach to Enterprise Architecture in a previous article. In this article I will focus on the solutions from such architecture.

How do we change our solutions to achieve Successful Customer Outcomes?

Process Governance: Leadership or Management?

Contributed by:Shelley Sweet, Faculty Member, BPMInstitute.org and President, i4 Process

Gartner’s definition of BPM is “a management practice that provides for governance of a business's process environment toward the goal of improving agility and operational performance.“

The definition implies that BPM has both management and leadership and I agree. I would clarify further: leadership of the environment and management of the practices. Let’s see how they both play out by looking at the What, Who, When, and Where of Process Governance.

WHAT are the elements of Process Governance?

There are two important streams to governance:

Leadership includes:

Accountability and Decision Making
Vision and strategy
Process Prioritization
Regular Monitoring

Management includes:

Business Politics Before Projects Success: The Games Executives Play

Contributed by:Imtiaz Abdul Kader, Head Core Banking PMO, Standard Bank Group

Business Politics, Organisational Politics, Workplace Politics, irrespective of what noun you place in front of the word “Politics”, an association can be drawn that there will be some decisions taken within organisations that are based on robust debates that are based on biased agenda’s and contrasting behaviours and personalities. Belsky G and Gilovich T in their book, “Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes”, infers that it is human nature to make decisions based on our personalities, self-motivated objectives, ego’s, peer pressure, fear and regret irrespective of the irrationality of the outcome. The inference can be generalised against any decisions we as individuals need to make and is supported by Belsky G and Gilovich T when they succeeded statements made in their book with, “financial and or otherwise”.

BPM Competence: Are We There Yet?

Contributed by:Andrew Spanyi, Faculty Member, DBizInstitute.org and Managing Director, Spanyi International

Industry analysts such as Gartner have estimated that the size of the BPM market was well over $2.0 billion in 2011 and some industry observers believe that the global market for BPM will surpass $5 billion by 2017. However, a rapid increase in the size of the global BPM market does not necessarily mean that companies are getting the best value out of BPM. Accordingly, some senior managers are asking the very same question that parents going on a long drive with small children typically hear, which is – “Are we there yet?”

Process Based Governance and the Role of SLAs

Contributed by:Andrew Spanyi, Faculty Member, DBizInstitute.org and Managing Director, Spanyi International

Anthony Murphy

By now, it is fairly well known that the root causes of excessive costs and errors, of delays and inflexibility, are related to the non value added handoffs across organizational boundaries. In most companies, work is fragmented across multiple departments, product lines and business units. No one has end-to-end ownership of the flow of work or responsibility for flawless service to the customer. In such environments, redundant activities and duplication of effort is common, errors are frequent, and overall responsiveness to customers’ needs is elusive. The key to resolving these issues is to take action on redesigning customer touching end-to-end processes and then install a governance framework which assures cross departmental collaboration, encourages different units to work together for value creation, and makes the changes stick.

Which BPM Methodology is Best for Us?

Contributed by:Shelley Sweet, Faculty Member, BPMInstitute.org and President, i4 Process

There are lots of BPM Methodologies. In fact I teach a class called BPM Methodologies 2-3 times a year for BPMInstitute.org. The next one is in San Francisco, June 25. But which BPM Methodology should you organization use?

First, let’s define a BPM Methodology.

An approach with principles and specific procedures that provides guidelines for how to approach different scenarios within the Business Process Management discipline.

Most BPM Methodologies have conceptual principles, a graphic model, and specific techniques for the elements within the model.

Some of best known BPM methodologies today are Six Sigma, Lean, BP Trends, Hammer and Rummler–Brache. Below is one of these graphical models for the Toyota Production System (Lean).