I think I may have finally figured something out, why it is so hard to get businesses to buy-into BPM.

To me it makes complete sense to use a BPM approach to define a business problem, document and learn from what you are doing now and eventually design a future state that provides increased value to the organization and your Customers.  I have difficulty grasping why you would not want to do this?

So if this makes sense, why is not everyone buying in? Shouldn’t I be able to walk into an existing Client or a potential new Client and say “BPM” and they just open their checkbooks?

BPM as a Journey
This is the” I get it part” – No! BPM is not viewed as a short term solution, but rather a “journey”. When I think of the term journey, I think of two things.  First the rock group and their song “Don’t Stop Believe-In” and secondly, a long arduous process with twists and bends and obstacles in the way, but the journey is usually worth the effort. Both of these, interestingly enough, have merit, but the focus here is on the BPM journey.

Short-term focus
We live in a business world of quarters; every quarter we need to reach sales quotas, billable hour targets, new software sales goals, and the list goes on and on. Every 90 days you are either a Hero or a  heal. So how do you take the traditional BPM journey approach and apply it to this environment?  It does not make sense.  If I am an executive and have to decide between funding a sales campaign to reach my quarterly revenue goal or begin funding a BPM project or program, where I may not realize results for some period of time, what would I do?  Probably fund the sales campaign, as everything is about the quarter.

Pragmatic approach
But let’s say you could and can realize BPM benefits quarterly?  What is to say you could not apply a BPM approach to solving a quarterly sales decline issue? I believe you can.  You can define a business problem, in this case “not meeting sales goals”, you can look at the high-level activities and information and issues with the current sales process and identify potential improvements. These could range from; potentially streamlining the process to determining our marketing campaign is not aligned to our sales goals, or a myriad of other reasons. The point is, by taking a pragmatic BPM approach, you can objectively and in a timely manner, look at a business problem, identify potential improvements/ solutions and implement them.

So back to BPM as a journey.  Your BPM journey could be a long process or it could be short or hopefully a combination of the two. The long and short of it is, BPM is a very worthwhile effort, so open up those checkbooks and “Don’t Stop Believe-In”.

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