Business process optimization always links back to the heart of your business. It helps a business reach its goals and fulfill its mission more effectively and more efficiently: your customers get better products, delivered faster and at competitive cost.
Optimized processes, and optimized process applications, in turn enable your company to grow, outcompete, thrive. Optimization efforts should therefore be focused on the end-to-end business process, starting with the customer and again ending up with the customer.
Along the route to a successful outcome there are some classic, frequently encountered problems that we have acknowledged as “pitfalls.” Perhaps they sound familiar:
- The project completion point is not clearly defined
- The measure of “success” is not defined, or is defined to the wrong criteria
- Lack of support or commitment from management and/or key stakeholders
- Resistance to change on the part of the key actors
- “Analysis paralysis”
Even when you know what they are, can you avoid* them?
We suggest that it’s the first requirement for success: recognize where cracks threaten the integrity of your path, and be prepared to fix potential fissures before they manifest as gaping potholes.
And once recognized and acknowledged, what should you do to avoid falling into failure?
Consider the customer, apply correct KPIs, collaborate, communicate, and more…no, it’s not complicated, but when you make the issues and their preventive measures explicit, you can increase your chances for success.
Let’s consider a step beyond. Once your optimization project has been deployed, how can you keep it optimized in the face of continuing change?
With flexible BPM application deployments that have built-in methods to allow your team to give continuous feedback on what is working and how the process can be improved; that provide a means to monitor process health and take corrective measures when there are blocking issues; and that allow you to make changes easily when your competitive or administrative environment changes around you.
Process and process-based application optimization should always support the core of your business – your customers, and your employees who are ultimate at the heart of the products and services that keep you competitive.
* Want to know how to avoid these problems? Then join the free webinar about “5 Pitfalls for Process Optimization & How to Avoid Them” organized by BPM Leader & Bonitasoft. The webinar is held at December 3rd at 11am CET (Europe & APAC) and at 10am PST (Americas).
Reint Jan Holterman, publisher at BPM Leader, will go deeper into what pitfalls you may encounter and present the pre-requisites based on the 5-C model to avoid these pitfalls and to realize successful optimization projects.
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