BPM is one of those acronyms that have different meanings to different interest groups in the same market. Business executives and managers commonly refer to Business Process Management or Business Performance Management as BPM. But they are distinctly different concepts. Or so we have believed up to now. We’ve had different consultants, methodologies, supporting technologies and we’ve even been reading different books on these subjects. But are these really different sides of a coin? Or are they different perspectives on how to achieve the same business objectives.
Executives are not really interested in performance measures, dashboards and processes if it doesn’t assist them achieving their single most important goal. Improve overall business performance. That is really the task assigned by company shareholders to the management team that they employ that manage the business on their behalf. That is really the only overall objective that a CEO, President or Managing Director drive in an organization. Continuous improvement not only in terms of shareholder value, but also in overall financial performance, customer relations and satisfaction and employee productivity to name a few. These principles also apply to non-business environments like charities, public sector and non-profit organizations. BPM, in both flavors, is equally as important in these organizations as their business counterparts even though BPM have business in the names of both acronyms.
In my experience as a business consultant, process practitioner, technology solution provider and businessman, I have not come across a single top executive that want to buy business intelligence tools, process management suites and business rules engines or portal technology. They all just want to manage the performance of their businesses and they try to use these methodologies and tools to achieve that. That is the only thing that they really want.
The objective of this blog is to provide some strategic perspectives on how to use BPM both from a performance and process perspective to provide a holistic management approach that accelerate continuous improvement by combining the two perspectives in Business Performance and Process Management or BPPM. The approach will show that performance management is the foundation of such a methodology and process management is the means to achieve the quickest sustainable results. Business Process Management is the best practical means to deliver on improved business performance requirements.
The blog also serves to structure the content and my thoughts for a book called “The Performance Focused Process-Centric Organization” or PFPC organization. I will provide regular posts over the next couple of months with some of the ideas and content of the book to get feedback on some of the opportunities and challenges with this approach.
