From todays OpenText press release:

MEDIA ALERT: Independent Study Reveals Who’s Who List of Dynamic Case Management Influencers

Study identifies the thought leaders who are shaping emerging market where content and process intersect

Waterloo, ON – 2012-10-25 – OpenText (NASDAQ: OTEX, TSX: OTC) today announced the top influencers in the field of Dynamic Case Management (DCM) as identified in a recent study conducted by Influencer 50, an independent market research company. According to the study, the most influential voices shaping the definition and direction of the emerging dynamic case management market include end users, industry analysts, consultants, systems integrators, academics and technology providers.
Starting today, and every Thursday over the next four weeks, OpenText will reveal the top case management influencers by category as follows at Case Management Influencers and via social media using the hashtag #DCMInfluencers:

• Today: Industry Analysts and Consultants
• November 1: End Users
• November 8: Systems Integrators and Vendors
• November 15: Academics and Standards Organizations

Biographies, LinkedIn profiles, blogs, and educational content for each influencer will be available on the Case Management Influencer site following each announcement.
The study was conducted by Influencer 50, a leading influencer identification and engagement management firm, and involved a thorough analysis of the dynamic case management market, seeking candidates who guide, educate and advise decision-makers on this emerging space. Influencers were identified from an initial field of candidates and evaluated against six scoring criteria: market reach, frequency of impact, message independence, expertise, persuasiveness, and thoroughness of role in decision-making. For more information about the study, visit OpenText’s Because Process Matters blog.

Browsing through BPM success stories, you are apt to get the impression that (with the right tools) it will take you no more than 6 months to have your new process up and running. Right? Well … nearly.

The median value from our survey into process quality tells us it’s more likely to be 39 months and even the top quartile only averages out at 21 months.

If you want to find out what the underlying reasons are and what best-in-class companies are doing to beat the average, join us for our survey presentation on ‘The Deceptive Nature of Process Quality’ at BBCCon12, Tuesday, Oct. 30th, 10:25 am, Room: Diplomat 5.

Contrast this with the often highly selective way in which we involve the ultimate users of processes. While keeping someone in the dark may be a good approach when planning a surprise birthday party, this should not be the strategy of choice when it comes to business processes. But what does our survey tell us about the real world?

There are two important aspects to consider here:

• When, how and to what extend is the individual process user informed, trained and involved on the changes as far as they relate to his or her work?
• When and how is the context, i.e. the whole process, communicated – if at all?

Imagine the team manager simply writing the days game plan down on paper and handing out copies without further explanation or refusing to answer questions from the players. Premier League goodbye. Actually: Manager goodbye. But that’s not how the game is generally played in the process world. If companies do in fact share information about processes with their employees, it’s mostly either by publishing process models on the intranet or by informing employees via email.

None of this is particularly result-driven. More often than not it’s simply discharging your information obligation by “having published something somewhere”. How much of that information actually reaches the intended recipients and what they can make of it seems to be of secondary importance – as those 13%+33% in the chart above tell us.

What companies should be aiming for is a mix of general process information coupled with engaging process users to such an extent that they UNDERSTAND what they should be doing and WHY. Note the WHY as this is where context comes into play: This is when the midfielder understands why this weekend he should be playing long balls into the penalty area instead of trying the delicate 1-2 passing game.

Football (or soccer to those more accustomed to wearing helmets and shoulder pads when walking onto a playing field) was never designed as a 4-4-1 or 4-3-2 game, that’s just the team-internal formation. Instead, it’s ONE team and not really that much different from how we should be looking at processes.

Having said that, let me improve on the heading of this article: Process is a team sport played by knowledgeable people.

By the way, the survey also asked about the importance of twitter, blogs, wikis and other channels to communicate about processes. I’ll leave that chart for the BBCCon12 presentation next week – we might have something to think about.

The Building Business Capability Conference 2012 will for once be slightly different: In my pre-conference hand-out material I’ve concentrated of providing the – in my opinion – most striking and important results from our survey into process quality and gone easy on drawing any conclusions. By contrast, on the actual day itself I will focus on the implications of the survey. Hopefully we will be able to discuss issues such as

• How does the skillset of business analysts need to change?
• How can we better integrate the processes users into our projects?
• Where do we need to change our checklist when planning changes to processes?

and last but by no means least

• How do we define a successful process and live up to these expectations?

These may not be the questions foremost on our minds as business analysts, but our internal and external clients are telling us to come up with some reasonable answers. So let’s get the discussion process going.

Thank you to OPENTEXT. I can honestly say that this was totally unexpected! And it seems that I’m in good company too, as Theo Priestley also received this certificate.

After my 6 months sabbatical (spent in fact supporting a rather prestigious client in unravelling a process and IT mystery that demanded 100% of my time and attention and left no room for anything else) I’m now getting back to matters at the heart of taraneon: Improving the way our clients deal with their processes.

And what better way is there than to start off this new chapter with a presentation at the Building Business Capabilities Conference 2012 in Fort Lauderdale. I’ll be talking about some of the results of our survey into process quality.  Anyone believing that BPM is a done deal, a low hanging fruit, an effort with high gains and no risks should drop in on my session on Day 1 because the participants in our survey tell a completely different story:

• BPM projects running exceeding time and budget,
• process design errors which remain undetected until they threaten the day to day operations of the company,
• a workforce that remains in the dark about process changes,
• the impact of process managers on projects …

If there’s one thing the survey tell us it’s that successful BPM is not about the tools but about the ability to organize.

I’m hoping to see many of you at the conference and I’m sure that we will have a lively discussion about the state of process quality.

Check out the conference website, it’s again a packed program with many great session taking place.

Slightly closer to home (at least it’s on the same continent) I’ll be speaking in Graz/Austria on Nov. 5th at an roundtable event organized by the Gesellschaft für Prozessmanagement.

Successful companies change their processes more often
It must rank as one of the more popular myths that companies which seldom change their processes run a stable and successful ship. In reply to our question on how frequently companies change their processes, 44% responded with ‚at least once a year‘.  This number, while being surprisingly high in itself becomes even more significant when it’s put into the context of a companies market success: A full 63% of companies which change their processes at least once a year are more successful than their competitors from the same industry. This leads us to conclude that a high change frequency leads to a high level of process competency which in turn results in successful company performance.

>> Read on

Even though business process management still ranks as one of the leading topics for senior management (as it has for the past 10 years or so), the quality of the processes designed, implemented and operated does little to suggest that much attention is paid to delivering something that comes even close to the importance attached to it.

With just 4% of companies claiming that their processes are ready for operations once they leave the project phase and more than a third of companies having to invest substantial effort to re-work processes to turn them operational, it seems that a lot of the BPM initiatives are a far cry from anything that could be called successful.

Of course, all this is not from lack of trying: Many companies have invested in technology to support their processes, have created roles such as process managers, process owners and have even established some sort of process governance. Much is in fact being done and companies are continuing to invest heavily into BPM. Only it seems that more investment and technology are unrelated to the causes behind the lack of process quality.

Over the next few weeks we will look at some of the survey results in more detail on this blog. And despite the negative tone of this post let me assure you that the survey results also show some positives: There are clear indications which explain why companies which are more successful than the rest of the industry have achieved that status through their approaches to managing their processes -  from design to operations. So tune in again soon to find out more.

Selling the process to the enterprise is the prerequisite for your solution even having a chance to solve the problem. The challenge is really to understand the imbalance you’re facing: The problem is there but your solution isn’t.

First question therefore: Who is your customer? Just as you have (hopefully) made sure that the process you designed is suited to the process customers’ requirements, your solution development process should also address the customer – in this case, the people you stand to profit from your solution. Note that I didn’t say ‘the people facing the problem’, because they are in many cases not the same people.

When it comes to ‘selling’ processes to the enterprise you need to look at two different sets of people with different motivations.

Let’s start with the easier of the two groups, the people facing the process problem on a daily basis. They need to be convinced that your solution will make life just that little bit easier for them without causing new problems in other areas of their work. What you need from them is acceptance and at least tacit support. Nothing more but certainly no less. With the recent surge in collaborative approaches and ‘Social BPM’, communicating with the process ground force will become easier to accomplish.

The second group – and this is where we turn to the hard sell – are the decision makers. We may shake our heads as much as we like but this group usually has a different main interest and a totally different perception of processes. They are (and maybe need to be) primarily interested in risk: Risk that KPIs of processes they are formally responsible for will reflect badly on them, risk that they have to share responsibility and also the risk, that any decision taken will be boycotted by their staff. What they are looking for is predictability and reliability.

Decision makers are also driven by the results of processes, whereas business analysts are usually focussed on the causes of good or bad results.

So now we have this situation where management may be unhappy with the results but at least they know what they are getting. It’s ‘the devil you know’ thing at work. And now there’s you holding up your process maps, trying to talk about the detailed flaws and causes of the present situation before outlining why changing this and that in the process will produce better results. See anything wrong with this picture? Still wondering why so many project results never see the light of day?

Also consider this: Among the many qualifications and skills a good business analyst needs, the ability to create a good abstraction of the real world must rank near the top of the list. That is YOUR skill and now you’re asking someone else with a different skillset and different qualifications not only to understand and appreciate your work but to promote it from concept to reality. Aren’t the bells of risk beginning to ring in your head too? They’re certainly ringing close to the decision makers ears. Frustrating, isn’t it?

One approach to solving this problem is to translate your abstraction of the solution into a scenery and language your customers understand. We do this by way of process validation and simulation. Creating a setting for management to experience the effects of your solution provides a much better chance of uptake than explaining your idea. No danger of interpretation, no danger of using the wrong buzzwords. Simply create a new (temporary) reality for your customers. Forget the causes, allow them to view the effects.

The Process TestLab has recently seen an increase in the number of process validation sessions which were run solely to allow decision makers to understand the impact and consequences of potential process solutions – without having to commit themselves to financing a sandbox environment. Reduced risk, reduced cost: higher chances of management buy-in and solution uptake.

Singing We are the champions under the shower may be an enjoyable experience for you but it won’t turn you into a mega-selling rock star. For that you need an audience willing to listen and to give you that much needed break. The Process TestLab can do the same for your process ambitions: You provide the content, we provide the stage – and then you have a real chance at process stardom.

• Nearly 50% of respondents say that they change their business processes at least once a year, with an additional 35% saying they do so on an event driven basis
• 2% of respondents say that processes delivered by projects require no further work and were ready for operations
• 73% of respondents say Cloud has no impact on their process strategy while 90% say the same of Adaptive Case Management
• 33% of respondents use no formal models during business process design

Note: All of the above comes from the raw data without any cross analysis and is based on the survey input received until last weekend.

Here’s your opportunity to benchmark your company against the overall results: Take the survey and once we’ve analysed all the data received we’ll supply you with a summary of the overall results and your individual input.

Survey website: www.q-in-bpm.org