In the previous Industry Insight in this two-series, I looked at the first five steps that are crucial for business performance management (BPM) success. I will now review steps six to 10.
6 Bring the right partner on board. BPM is not something lightly tackled, and without the right partner, companies could find themselves down a skill-strapped creek without a paddle.
There are people who do this every day, morning to night. It's what they know, and what they do, and with the best will in the world you simply can't replicate that experience - and neither should you want to. A consulting and implementation partner can help improve the chances of success, and reduce the time and cost taken to implement it.
But do be extremely careful in selecting a BPM partner: not all have the same level of experience, so ask for successful referral sites, with a proven track record of delivery.
7 Set an end-date for the implementation, and ensure deadlines are met, and that all has been delivered within the time constraints. The BPM project office is vital here. Critically, ensure achievable goals were set right up-front, and they were met and can be measured. Then, knowing the business will always want more, set sights on the next set of BPM applications. After all, BPM is a lifelong journey, not a single destination. Companies may begin with financial consolidation, but then rapidly progress towards budgeting, planning and scorecarding.
8 Nominate the users and ensure they are trained properly. There can be nothing more dispiriting for an executive to commit his name to a BPM (or BI) project, allocate money, time and effort to it, and then find a year later that users are not using it in significant numbers and not making it part of their daily lives.
The way around this is to identify which users will derive most value and then train them properly. And do note that training is not a one-off: users need frequent auditing to see if they are making use of the new BPM application; where there is a shortfall of knowledge; what value is being derived; and corrective action.
It may even be necessary to involve high-end consultants to ensure users are happy, that the right ones are using the system, not building parallel structures in Microsoft Excel, and that ongoing training matches that of the future roadmap.
9 Make IT part of the team. There is a temptation to view a BPM project as the preserve of business: it deals, after all, with corporate measures and issues: budgets, actual, variance, reporting, financial consolidation and planning, to name a few. But in every case the data and platforms which will be used to deliver BPM will come from IT, and without the direct, explicit and engaged involvement and cooperation of IT, the BPM project will not succeed.
A consulting and implementation partner can help improve the chances of success, and reduce the time and cost taken to implement it.
Adrian van der Merwe is MD of 8th Man Consulting.
In this regard, it is ideal for the project champion to be high-level enough to straddle IT and business and ensure they form a unified team.
10 Build a quality implementation team. Such a team must be composed of high-quality external consultants along with the best and most qualified internal users. The consultants will be responsible for designing and delivering the BPM system to specification, within budget and on time. They will spend time with the internal project manager and system administrator to ensure an orderly transfer of responsibilities and duties, with the ultimate aim being sufficient knowledge transfer and ownership of the new BPM system to the internal team. There can be no long-term dependency on the consultants, as this hinders return on investment and increases total cost of ownership.
The five steps identified above, in conjunction with those nominated in the previous Industry Insight, will significantly boost the chances of BPM project success.
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