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10 Steps to Selecting and Implementing BPM |
Get an executive sponsor who can force changes through the ranks and make tough decisions.
Set goals, and create an overall roadmap.
Determine key performance indicators, and be sure they are aligned with the company's business drivers.
Define the technology requirements.
Select a technology only after assessing what you have and how you want it integrated.
Get past the vendor hype, and make sure to look under the hood.
Gain user buy-in; a common reason for BPM failure is lack of use.
Find an engagement manager to manage the project to completion.
Educate the participants with training both up front and on the back end.
Analyze your results. Were the original results achieved, and are the users happy?
Source: BPM Partners, 2007
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Since the BPM initiative two years ago, Morton Grove practically runs its business off these reports. That is, many departments dig into the data to measure their progress against goals and drive decision making. The field sales department routinely produces 20 different reports. Chemists have 10 reports. This year the purchasing and supply chain departments will be on the BPM system and will be able to crank out reports. Accounting runs up to 50 reports monthly that cover gross profit, units sold, year-to-date budgets and more. Instead of waiting three days for data to close the books, the accounting department now gets the information overnight. Obtaining information for government filings used to take a couple of days; with BPM it takes 15 seconds, Sanders says.
BPM -- also known as corporate performance management (CPM) -- is the latest acronym to stir up the tech set. Think of BPM as a suite of five basic applications: budget planning and forecasting, financial consolidation, financial and statutory reporting, profitability analysis and score-carding. Its core processes include modeling, analysis and monitoring of key performance indicators (KPIs) linked to organizational strategy. The suite often sits atop an ERP system yet taps many systems, ranging from production to sales.
While business intelligence (BI) engines provide nitty-gritty data analysis and business process management tools optimize processes, BPM gathers key metrics and serves up a numerical "scorecard," or report, that rates business performance. BPM essentially enables businesses to define strategic goals and then measure and manage performance against those goals. "CPM is all about getting lots of different systems feeding the information into one system and then aggregating the data so you get the numbers," says Gerry Brown, an analyst at U.K.-based Bloor Research.
BPM and BI are very much related, but there are differences. As Sanders describes the relationship between the two technologies, "if we have a product and we're noticing through [BPM] reports that we're seeing a downtrend, then we'll pull data from [BI] and overlay it with other reports to find out why."
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