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Business
Process Management Articles
The Value of a Formal Business
Process Repository
Sandra
Lusk, BPM Institute Website and Newsletter, June 5,
2007.
A Business Process
Repository is a central location for storing information about how
an enterprise operates. This information may be contained in
various media including paper, film or electronic form with a
storage mechanism appropriate to the medium. Electronic
repositories range from passive containers which store process
artifacts (also referred to as process objects) to sophisticated
tools that serve as active participants in monitoring, executing,
managing and reporting on business processes.
Business Process
Management: Time For Change
Caspar
Hunsche, BPM Institute Website and
Newsletter,
June 18, 2007.
In his previous article,
“The Design phase”, Caspar Hunsche discussed the concept of
designing the change from the current way the process operates to
the improved way with very few constraints. Does this mean that you
can do without rigorous deployment planning? No, but you need to
separate the discussions: First focus on what needs to be done. What
type of changes need to be made, what type of skills do I need on my
projects to make those changes, and what changes are dependent on
each other: understand the possibilities. The final phase of a BPM
project is to get ready for launching these projects you defined in
the Design phase.
When Operational Reports Aren't Enough
Jill
Dyche, Evan Levy, BaseLine Consulting, BI
Review Newsletter and Website, June14, 2007.
The term business intelligence (BI) has become a catchall for a
range of capabilities, from data warehouses to dashboards, from
predictive analytics to performance management. During a recent
engagement with a financial services company, we drew a sharper line
between the terms reporting and analytics.
When Best Practice is Just Not Good
Enough
Mark
McGregor, BPTrends Newsletter
and Website, July 03, 2007.
One of the management
buzz words really getting a lot of air play and column inches these
days is "Best Practice." Wherever you look and listen, you will see
or hear people writing about or speaking about the virtues of doing
or being "Best Practice." It does not matter what the type or
size of your business, everyone seems to tell you that you have to
adopt best practice and that if you don’t you will surely be left
behind in your chosen marketplace. Yet for how many of us does
"doing" best practice feel wrong?
Managing Performance: IT Disasters -
A Root Cause
Geary Rummler,
Alan Ramias, Performance Design Labs, BPTrends
Newsletter and Website, July 03,
2007.
The purpose of
technology is to enable human performers to do their work or to
replace manual work with automation. What is being enabled or
enhanced are business processes. So it follows that if an
organization’s business processes are not well defined, designed,
and managed, then the technology that enables them is going to be an
imperfect fit at best. How can rational choices about technology be
made without a deep understanding of how work is performed in a
given organization and how best to monitor, manage, and guide that
work?
Using the 5As to Help LEAP into Lean
Implementation
Pradeep Mahalik,
iSixSigma Website and Newsletter, July 02,
2007.
A good acronym for
the way an organization can implement Lean is LEAP - Learn it,
Explain it, Adapt it, Provide it. The 5A's - assessment, awareness,
association, adherence and ascendancy - are the steps an
organization takes toward implementing Lean. The implementation of
the Lean way of dong business is approached in many ways in
different types and sizes of organizations. Lean is not just a set
of tools and techniques that can be learned from training or
certifications session and then implemented in an organization to
get the ultimate results. Lean is a culture that has to be developed
over a period of time.
Cutting-Edge Methods Help Target
Real Call Center Waste
Dennis
Adsit, iSixSigma Website and Newsletter, June 11,
2007.
New methods of operation
for call centers allow Lean Six Sigma process improvement techniques
to be applied to a process that has been difficult to address but
that provides the greatest opportunity for increased efficiency --
agent call-handling. Lean Six Sigma has been introduced and
successfully applied in thousands of call centers. But the efforts
to date have been off-center, focused on ancillary processes, as
opposed to being focused dead-center, on the call handling process.
Business Process Outsourcing
Articles
Creating a Culture of Innovation
Through Outsourcing
Lou Agosta, IBM, BI
Review
Newsletter and
Website, June 28,
2007.
Companies are leveraging offshore partnerships and skilled global
talent as a vital part of a successful business.
Maximizing Your
Outsourcing Efforts
Mike
Epner, Borland Consulting Solutions, BI Review Newsletter and Website,
June14, 2007.
Here are five questions
you should ask yourself before moving forward on an outsourcing
endeavor.
An Ounce
of Prevention Guarding Against IT Outsourcing Failure
Mark
Robinson, Peter Iannone, EquaTerra, CIO.com Newsletter and Website, May 11,
2007.
A three-part
approach to maximizing the value of an IT outsourcing deal.
Business
Continuity Dashboards
William Laurent, BI Review
Newsletter and Website,
June 28,
2007.
Business continuity (BC) projects have
recently become more likely to be considered components of
enterprise corporate governance strategy. Managing a company's
risk exposure to business interruptions and keeping business
operations running at acceptable levels under duress is a
critical component of overall corporate strategy. BC dashboards
are the latest class of business intelligence (BI) applications,
as senior management desires more transparency - both proactive
and reactive - into their organization's crisis management
infrastructure and methodologies.
Companies
that Off-Shore Fail to Meet Performance and Cost Savings
Sandra Rossi, CIO.com Newsletter and Website,
July 28,
2007.
Sixty percent of companies that send operations offshore fail to
meet their operation performance expectations, and more than a
third (34 percent) fail to meet their savings expectations,
according to a new study from global management consulting firm
A.T. Kearney. The study of multinational companies also revealed
that those with a focus on overall performance rather than cost
were the biggest winners, saving 3.5 times more money than
companies that offshore simply to cut costs. In fact, companies
that improved on at least three out of six operational
performance areas experienced average savings of 44 percent from
off-shoring, while companies that improved on two or fewer
measures saved only an average of 30 percent.
Agile Outsourcing:
9 Skills for Managing Projects
Nari Kannan,
Ajira Technologies, Inc., Sourcingmag.com Newsletter and Website,
July 2, 2007.
Project management
deals with clear business and technical goals, phased
development with regular and measurable progress, a systematic
approach to addressing high risk factors in the project,
maximizing the contributions of all the team members in the
project, assuring timely project execution and ensuring proper
quality. However, in many software development efforts, project
management becomes an exercise in tracking the efficiency,
rather than the effectiveness of the project management effort.
Notable
News
Appreciating Rupee : Impact on Outsourcing
ValueNotes Database Newsletter and Website, June 15, 2007.
The strengthening rupee in the last few weeks
has been threatening to hit the Indian outsourcing industry's
competitiveness. The rupee has risen by about 9% since March 2007
against the dollar. The exchange rate went up from Rs.44.11 on 1st
March 2007 to Rs.40.84 on 15th June 2007 beating most expectations /
predictions. Adding to the industry's woes are rising wage rates,
attrition and real estate prices. Concerns about a possible downward
revision on earnings expectations are now getting increasingly real.
H1B Bump : Not Yet Dead
Larry Barrett,
CIO Insight Newsletter and Website,
July 2, 2007.
When the Senate's
sweeping immigration reform bill went down in flames last week, it
also meant the end for a proposed amendment that would have given
American high-tech companies the ability hire more foreign-born
workers. The amendment, proposed by Sens. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and
Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), would have almost doubled the number of
H-1B visas and green cards available for scientists and engineers
born outside the U.S.
Phillipines : Destination Medical
Transcription Outsourcing
ValueNotes Database Newsletter and Website, June 15, 2007.
Though much has changed since the nineties, managing costs remains
the most pressing issue for the American healthcare companies. For
decades transcription was outsourced to another city or in some
cases to another state in the US. However, due to worsening cost
pressures and a widening demand-supply gap, tapping global resources
has become an obvious choice. Hence, since the 1990s offshoring of
transcription work has picked up steam.
Lean Six Sigma Improves New Hire
Reimbursement Process
Wiliiam
Englehaupt, iSixSigma Finance Newsletter and
Website, June 27, 2007.
A government
agency used Lean Six Sigma to streamline a cumbersome reimbursement
process for new hire relocation expenses. The changes eliminate the
reimbursement bureaucracy for new hires and save the company
$185,000 a year.
Learning to Recognize Process Waste
in Financial Services
Bill
Kastle, iSixSigma Finance Newsletter and
Website, June 27, 2007.
One of the biggest challenges for Six
Sigma practitioners in financial services is developing the ability
to recognize waste. To help Six Sigma practitioners in financial
services begin developing a "waste-sensing" ability, here are seven
types of process waste that someone is doing right now somewhere in
virtually every company.
CUNA Mutual Group CIO Tom Gosnell Talks With
I&T About The Company’s Customer Operations Transformation
Lisa
Valentine, Insurance & Technology, June 20,
2007.
The shake-up
continues: Gosnell and his team are in the midst of a three-year
customer operations transformation that includes merging more than
50 call centers into three and consolidating 37 product
administration systems into a few applications.
Banks Make Headway Towards Basel II
Nacy Feig,
Bank Systems & Technology, May 24,
2007.
While international banks have made
considerable progress toward complying with the provisions of Basel
II, U.S. banks still are waiting for the final rules. But that isn’t
keeping them from reexamining their risk management technologies.
Notable
Events
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