There is only one way that can drive and enable these demanding results, and, that is, Business Process Management: Create the Strategic Intent to reorganize the silo staff functions to ‘move progressively towards agile business processes’, review, redesign current processes of one or more functions to Implement the BPM strategy, and achieve the resultant business Impact.

In this fast-paced changing world, Indian Corporations and Business
Leaders are required to deal with huge demands of ever-increasing
Complexity, Variability and Scalability. They are realizing that there is
a need to simultaneously achieve three outcomes (the three Cs) - Cost
Optimization, Customer Experience and Competitive Advantage.

In a way, the Manufacturing Sector and IT Sector can be, respectively, referred to as the mother and father of the BPM (Business Process Management) of today’s world - off shoring, outsourcing, captive, third party and the likes, for the business process related revolution!

Historically, a typical firm in the ‘manufacturing sector’ has been a vertically aligned entity. Steel companies had their own coal mines to fire up their mills, computer manufacturers made their own chips that went in, and fizz companies manufactured their own glass bottles for filling. The ‘Make vs. Buy’ became the innovative way to develop the production and distribution value chain by realigning operational activities between what is in house and what is bought-out.

Thus, manufacturing organizations have been focused on ‘process agility’ as an integral part of their production functions to reduce cycle times, effect process improvements and enable transformation. Similarly, leading ‘Service Industry’ organizations like Banking, Retail, IT, have launched structured initiatives to make their ‘operations’ processes more agile to improve customer response times, compliances and business partnership.

The revolution in Information Technology in the last 3 decades – the less said the better! It has changed the lives of people around the globe – a common man or a multi-millionaire! With access to information and people over IT enabled devices, the world has become a ‘virtual’ one, changing the way the economic, business and personal interactions take place. As in several other business practices, the services sector follows the Manufacturing sector and by using the advancement in Information Technology, they have adopted outsourcing their activities to other companies.

There are two major happenings that opened the pathway to BPM strategy for India: India becoming a global hub for BPM thereby setting standards for the world outside, and from a domestic business point of view, India as a country shaped itself as the world’s largest democracy and over the last 2 decades, one of the rising economic powerhouses in the world.

If Indian corporations have to retain and sustain their competitive
advantage and achieve the outcomes of Three Cs, BPM is the ‘Hobson’s
choice i.e. there is just no choice or may be, a false illusion of a choice!

Hence, there is a clear need for Indian Organizations to focus on service, support and staff functions to segregate, metricize, document, track, monitor and transform the interdependent processes. The end goal of BPM is to bring the proven practices in Manufacturing & Services Industries to make ‘support functions’ to become ‘strategic functions’ and to move ‘staff’ functions to operate like ‘line’ functions, thereby, enabling speed, quality and value. Any Organization which exercises its choice ‘not to do’ BPM will become obsolete and irrelevant.

Strategizing and executing BPM requires multi-disciplinary streams:

• three-dimensional focus on Consolidation, Technology and Transformation of business processes
• Ability to make interdependence really happen by independent functions
• Plan, achieve and demonstrate the power of business case
• Reshaping the roles and skills for the new world that is process and metrics driven
• Building a robust employee experience-based engagement and
• Finally, building an ecosystem of service partner relationship that will enable combining focus and capabilities with the external service partner

BPM: ‘Not a Choice Anymore’ is loud and clear... The perspectives and
insights that follow, bring a focus on these multi-disciplinary streams to
make this a bouquet of flowers spreading BPM adoption in the Global India!

 

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