Social BPM – Reducing the Cultural Obstacles to Process Improvement

As BPM folk we are well aware that one of the major obstacles to BPM success is cultural. Most organizations are functionally orientated, organized on a vertical department basis; R&D, Manufacture, Customer Support, Marketing, IT, Finance, Sales and HR. Many business processes like warranty repair, complaint handling and order fulfillment however cut horizontally across many departments. As staff report to their individual department leaders naturally this is where their loyalty and commitment lies. Business process owners, if they exist, thus have the responsibility for the success of their process but none of the authority to ensure it is delivered.

A cultural as well as IT change is required if successful business process improvement is to be achieved. Organizations must begin to view the organization from a process rather than a departmental perspective.  Staff must perform the mental shift to realize that the department is there to support the process and understand that the business is in effect is the sum of its individual processes.

Outside of complete reorganization, businesses make regular attempts to facilitate this mental change. From goal setting to team building organizations attempt to forge stronger bonds between departments in order to improve process performance. In many cases despite initial good intentions to foster improved cross departmental bonds over time departments drift back to the norm.

This represents the big opportunity for Social BPM. Many commentators view Social BPM from the context of collaborative process design or the ability to trigger processes from social media events. While interesting use cases the major opportunity for Social BPM lies in its ability to support business process improvement initiatives by fostering closer alignment of the organization along process lines. Enhanced collaboration between departments facilitated by enterprise social networks help to blur the lines between departments, building trust and supporting the rapid sharing of ideas and problems. While organizations remain in their department structures enterprise social networks will help to improve interdepartmental collaboration ultimately improving process performance and the likelihood of process improvement success.

Social BPM thus represents an opportunity to eliminate one of the key barriers to success for many BPM projects, organization culture. Social BPM will allow organizations to deliver not only process change but mental change at the same time.

Is the 360 Degree Customer View Still Valid?

In a nutshell the 360 degree customer view is the ability to provide your service agents with all of the information they need to make a decision. At a basic level this means presenting the agent with all of the data relevant to the case on which they are working, as well as historical data on the customer e.g. previous incidents, other account information, purchase history. Multiple business applications and customer databases mean that even today for many organizations a basic 360 degree customer view, showing current and historical customer data, has been difficult to achieve.

In order to make the best decision on behalf of the customer and their organization agents need more than just historical and current customer information they also need future projections for the customer for example their estimated lifetime value and their potential to churn. Agents also need to be aware of current organization business targets as well as real time competitive information to for example validate customer claims about a competitive offer. Thus the 360 degree customer view is evolving extending beyond current and historical customer data to encompass future customer predictions, an organization perspective as well as competitive information.

As Data Analytics, CRM, BPM and Case Management applications begin to coalesce we will see new attempts to deliver the 360 customer view. CRM applications will continue to be used to manage the customer data and are today being be extended using BPM applications to automate and remove the mundane customer processes from the agent workload and Case Management applications to allow agents to handle complex customer cases and integrate with multiple data repositories. Add analytics tools that deliver predictions about future customer behaviour and real time data on your competitors and we begin to see how the service desk of the future will look.

The 360 degree customer view remains a valid if poorly executed concept.  With CRM, BPM, Case Management and Data Analytics we might however be on the verge of reaching the holy grail.

The Ideal Customer Service Agent

The Cloud – Transforming the Business Case for BPM

Despite rumours of its demise, or at the very least it’s description as a doddery old man who’s gotten lost after accidentally wandering out of the old folks home, there might be life in the old BPM dog yet. Like the movie Cocoon where a bunch of old folks are rejuvenated by alien visitors, the cloud has the potential to regenerate BPM.

The cloud is an opportunity to transform the business case for BPM and process improvement. Today many BPM applications are largely the preserve of large and multinational enterprises. BPM SaaS/PaaS presents the opportunity to extend the market reach of BPM applications into the SME market. Low start off costs and the ability to only pay for what you need with the reassurance of elasticity and scalability on demand has the potential to transform the business case for BPM for many organizations. The availability of on demand, pre-built process solutions delivered via cloud based BPM platforms takes this a step further giving SMEs the opportunity access to process solutions and industry best practice that they would have been unable to develop in house.

BPM in the cloud creates a business process outsourcing (BPO) opportunity for organizations with a specific area of process expertise. Organisations with specific domain expertise in for example financial services, healthcare or legal services can now not only deploy cloud based process solutions within their own enterprises but rapidly enter the BPO market and resell their intellectual property (IP) through the development of BPaaS (Business Process as a Service) process applications.

Deployment of business process solutions is de-risked through the ability to carry out rapid prototyping and testing of BPM solutions in the cloud. For organizations still developing their cloud strategy business process solutions can be incubated in the cloud before bringing on premise.

Most BPM vendors offer applications across a variety of mobile devices and form factors. Cloud computing extends the mobile capabilities of BPM suites through access to cloud based storage and processing and delivers process access via web browsers on any device, anywhere.

While it’s been slow to develop the cloud is a major opportunity for BPM. BPM SaaS/PaaS is an opportunity to strip away, the sometimes self-inflicted, barriers to entry for process improvement, to stimulate much broader adoption of BPM technologies and to engage with a whole new audience.

CRM – Pimp My Ride

I’ve only watched the MTV program Pimp My Ride a couple of times, I actually prefer Trick My Truck for some good ole boy, big rig action. On Pimp My Ride car enthusiasts take an old banger and add a bit of bling to it. The end result usually confirms the age old saying that you can’t polish a turd.

I got round to thinking about Pimp My Ride this week while reading this article on the “5 trends that will change CRM”. In the responses to the “5 trends that will change CRM” the usual suspects appeared; mobility, social, data analytics as well as some new ones gamification, customer influencing factor. This is all fine and I expect that all of these will influence CRM in some way over the next five years. The problem is though that at the moment CRM is still a bit of an old banger. Adding social and gamification to a CRM suite is the IT equivalent of pimping your ride.

My call centre colleagues are going to be jealous as hell when they see this.

Despite spending huge sums on CRM suites many organizations still struggle to deliver competent customer service. Within the CRM suites themselves the horizontal integration between the Sales, Marketing and Support functions of the CRM suites remain poor let alone CRM integration with other business applications.

Call centres remain the modern equivalent of the workhouse. A production line where employees work to a script or fixed workflow and have no opportunity to use their own discretion or to suggest alternative paths for their customers. All of this leads to high employee turnover, demotivation and poor customer service.

If there’s one trend that will change CRM my vote goes for, focus on your employees. It may not be sexy, it may not have chrome bumpers or jewel encrusted cup holders, but it’s likely to be more effective than pimping out your CRM application with social, data analytics and gamification features.

Empowered Customers need Empowered Employees

It’s now generally accepted that customers are more empowered than ever. What isn’t accepted is how we deal with this.

Customers have always had power. Power to take their business elsewhere. The perfect storm of web, social media and mobile technologies however has made it not only much easier to switch supplier but to also rapidly communicate your dissatisfaction with a product or service to the masses.

Trying to handle empowered customers through technology alone is a non-starter. It’s like trying to round up cats. Customers are unpredictable. Customers are engaging with companies via multiple channels, virtually and physically and trying to handle the multichannel customer by technology alone is impossible.

Many businesses are in a technology arms race with the customer always one step ahead. For example adding social capabilities to your business application stack may help you to sense problems better but it won’t make the customer experience any better. When one of your customer channels is direct face to face customer engagement it’s impossible to expect technology on its own to deliver a consistent multi-channel customer experience.

Empowered customers need empowered employees. Customer management is a dynamic, unpredictable, ever changing environment. Businesses need to empower their employees so they can roll with the punches.

So how do we empower employees?

• Devolve decision making authority

Move decision making from the centre of the organization to your customer facing employees. Give employees the authority to choose alternative approaches to resolving a customer problems. Give employees the authority to resolve a complaint or an issue at the first point of contact. For example do senior managers really need to approve all refunds or give the authority to match a competitive offer?

• Don’t tie employees to processes

Use business applications like case management that gives them options and allow employees to adapt or chose alternative process paths.

• Support employee decision making

Use business tools that provide employees with a 360 degree view of their customer (customer purchase history, current contract status, projected lifetime value) and help them make better decisions.

Be realistic in your technology choices. Trying to handle customer processes by technology alone is impossible. Use empowered employees to fill the gaps where technology can’t go.

BPM and CRM – Inside the Social Train or Outside?

There’s a little known business proverb, actually it’s little known because I’ve just made it up. It says that in business it’s easier to urinate out of the window of a moving train than it is to urinate in. This is why businesses acquire or partner with other businesses rather than start up new lines of business or try and catch up themselves.

Social networks are throwing the rule book, of how businesses engage with customers and with themselves, out the window. BPM and CRM applications are right in the middle of this change with their responsibility for both customer and business processes. As a result many BPM and CRM applications are starting to add social capabilities, rebranding themselves as social BPM or social CRM platforms. But is adding social capabilities to CRM and BPM applications a sensible approach? Is this approach the business equivalent of trying to urinate into a speeding train?

In a previous post I suggested that successful enterprise social solutions will require a cultural change within an organisation. Successful social adoption must be enterprise led rather than by individual departments. Businesses must have a strategy for social adoption rather than acquire social capabilities via the back door through their BPM and CRM suites.

Not all employees will have access to the BPM or CRM application. Where is the value in a social BPM or social CRM application only accessible by a fraction of the organisation? If an enterprise social network is to be successful it needs to have enterprise wide reach, it must reach everyone the process can reach.

BPM and CRM applications should integrate with social applications rather than embed or mimic or social capabilities within their suites. BPM applications already orchestrate ECM, CRM and legacy applications so why would social applications be treated differently?  Why not integrate with the best of breed enterprise and public social networks instead of developing in house?

The social train has left the station, the best BPM and CRM applications can do is try and get on at the next station. Choo! Choo!

BPM Marketing – A Failure to Connect?

As we embark on another round of BPM navel gazing, otherwise known as the BPM conference season, I’m wondering whether the BPM Marketing community are failing to connect with our target audiences.

A couple of recent blog articles brought this to mind. This first article by Ian Gotts “Why does nobody care” highlighted the declining audiences at BPM conferences compared to huge audiences for CRM events.

This second post by Connie Moore highlights the failure of BPM to engage with the C suite, the majority of whom she says don’t really care about process and methodologies and are turned on by business outcomes, profit, market share, growth.

The role of marketing is to create connections. This is done by clearly defining the problem you are trying to solve and showing your prospect how your product or service does this (preferably with case studies to reassure the client). The two blog articles indicate that BPM is failing to connect.

Customers don’t buy BPM suites they buy solutions for business problems. BPM customers don’t wake up in the morning and say to themselves, you know I really need some complex rules, predictive analytics or social bpm. Instead they enter the office with problems they need to solve; transform customer support, drive increased revenue, lower service delivery costs or utilize their staff more efficiently.

Which brings me back to this year’s BPM conference season. How can we light a fire of interest in BPM and connect with our audience? I’ve an idea. BPM conferences regularly have solution provider sessions. These solution sessions however tend to be around the edges of the event, separate from the main conference tracks focusing on BPM technology and related topics like organizational change.

Conference organisers should flip this model on it’s head. Focus the event not on BPM technologies but on BPM Solutions, with solution tracks for Finance, Government, Telco, Retail etc. and push the BPM technology and theory sessions to the edge of the event. Let delegates see best practice elsewhere and learn from it, let them see what is possible with BPM rather than the potential of BPM. Then we’ll begin to connect.