“Business Performance Management (BPM) is still a very new discipline and there are far more organizations with less than successful BPM implementations than those with successful ones. Far too many organizations are launching BPM projects today without really understanding what they are getting themselves into and what it takes to make a BPM project successful. Like so many other technology advances and management fads, BPM is becoming somewhat of a bandwagon.”
“Too many organizations have little or no experience with BPM implementations and seem to have to go through a maturity process before they can gain enough experience to have any reasonable confidence that a BPM implementation in their organization is likely to succeed. Nevertheless, despite the lack of unqualified success by so many companies, BPM is an exciting new area that shows excellent promise of becoming one of the most important new trends in Information Systems (IS) evolution over the next decade.”
“Over the next few decades, BPM applications will become as commonplace as spreadsheet applications are today within larger organizations as well as those that are mid-size or even smaller. Users of BPM software will expand to include virtually all levels and backgrounds of managers, professional staff, and clerical workers.”

Previous articles in this series have presented overviews of important aspects of implementing BPM in organizations. This article focuses on several key factors that seem to be in the top priority category for BPM implementation success even before a BPM project is launched. However, we cover only a few of the many important prerequisite factors that can affect the success of any major initiative in an organization.

The initial spark for a BPM initiative in an organization will usually come from a senior person working within the organization or with an external IT/business vendor or consultant. It is imperative to any successful BPM initiative that someone or some group that is senior in the organization must become sufficiently familiar with the basic purposes, concepts and potential benefits of BPM to become convinced that the organization should at least investigate the feasibility of launching a BPM initiative. Presumably, whomever is willing to take the personal risk of recommending a project for investigating this kind of new initiative for their organization would have to believe that there is a strong chance that this kind of an initiative could be well received throughout the management ranks of their organization as well as becoming an important source of new benefits to the organization.

However, before this initial spark ignites, at least one senior manager of an organization would have to become convinced that a proposed BPM initiative is worth investigating. This implies some kind of a preliminary cost/risk/benefit evaluation, at least at an intuitive level. It also implies some minimum level of knowledge of BPM and sufficient confidence that the organization is ready to accept BPM applications and can benefit from them in some significant ways. This conviction and cost/risk/benefit analysis would often come from reading published business case studies of successful BPM implementations, discussions with other executives where BPM has been implemented, vendor presentations, and/or previous involvement with BPM initiatives.

“…the most important prerequisite…is to create a ‘critical mass’ of support…”

It should come as little surprise that probably the most important prerequisite for a successful BPM initiative in an organization is to create a ‘critical mass’ of support from the organization’s senior managers. A BPM initiative is just like any other type of significant organizational initiative in that it requires a sufficient level of senior and middle management support to be successful. This support must be widely publicized, demonstrated, informed, consistent, ongoing, and with meaningful commitment by senior managers to devote sufficient time to give the BPM initiative a real chance to succeed. Without this support, a BPM initiative is not likely to be significant success for an organization, as has already been proven many times in failed BPM implementations in recent years.

“Secondly,…everyone likely to be involved…would have to become convinced that the senior and middle managers are serious about applying BPM principles…”

Secondly, everyone likely to be involved in a new BPM project who is at the managerial and professional levels in an organization would have to become convinced that the senior and middle managers are serious about applying BPM principles to help make the organization more successful. People will not be willing to devote a lot of their personal time unless they believe that senior management is really serious about this type of initiative. Senior and middle managers would have to show clearly to everyone involved in a BPM project that it is an important initiative for the organization that will involve a tremendous amount of effort, cost, risk and disruption, but potentially significant benefits.

A third critical prerequisite would be the need for a well-planned approach to the BPM investigation project. This consideration precedes the project management methodology that would be followed when a BPM project was launched. It would include:

Another prerequisite to a successful BPM investigation project requires that key members of an organization have at least a reasonably well developed understanding of the management decision-making environment. This includes wide spread recognition throughout the organization of concepts like strategic, tactical and operational decision-making levels. It also requires that key members of the organization have at least an appreciation of the power of quantitative analysis and descriptive and predictive modeling to aid in making more structured decisions. Managers and professionals who are to be involved in a BPM initiative also need be convinced that BPM initiatives can yield significant benefits at all decision-making levels and in all functional areas of operations.

Other critical background perspectives that these key people must comprehend and which are essential to understanding how BPM can work in an organization include the “systems perspective” of the firm and the role of “business processes” in the organization’s operations. The “systems perspective” requires that people understand the nature and scope of the interrelationships among the key business activities and how these must mesh together to create a successful organization. “Business processes” are the specifics of the many business activities and the individual steps in the flow of these activities in the ordinary course of the organization’s operations.

“It will often be critical to provide…educational programs in order to begin to build support for the BPM initiative.”

It will often be critical to provide the staff who are to be involved with the BPM project with a sufficient level of background and basics about BPM and the necessary background factors through various types of educational programs in order to begin to build support for the BPM initiative. This is especially important because most people working in organizations today have little or no understanding of what BPM is all about. BPM is still so new that it is not being taught in many universities, colleges, or private schools even where they do teach management, decision making, information systems in organizations, and/or business fundamentals. These are the main reasons why so many organizations have problems trying to implement BPM projects.

“BPM initiatives will also need…effective project management methodologies.”

BPM initiatives will also need a formal project approach with effective project management methodologies. The Project Management Institute is an international professional association that is attempting to build the recognition and status of project management and offers a professional certification (PMP) as well as a body of knowledge for project managers (PM-BOK). This body of knowledge covers the areas of project scope, schedule, budget, staffing, coordination, quality, and integration. This body of knowledge is gaining wide recognition as a standard for effective project management approaches and techniques. Any investigation of a BPM initiative should also include what methodology might be adopted for the BPM project itself.

Next, it is essential that a ‘critical mass’ of capable and committed people be assigned to the BPM project This includes BPM project sponsors, executive management, project team members, and managerial/professional/technical/clerical/operational staff who will interact with the BPM application. This capability and commitment requires the previously mentioned senior management support, adequate training in the purposes of BPM, the tools and techniques for BPM system design, competence in building valid business models, understanding a systems perspective and key business processes, understanding of business metrics for performance measurement, proficiency in using BPM software, and the ability to communicate the BPM process and results to business managers.

“Senior managers must pay attention to basic change management principles…”

Senior managers must pay attention to basic change management principles to help create a supportive organizational culture for a BPM initiative. They need to pay particular attention to these concepts before launching a BPM project because many peoples’ roles/responsibilities/status/comfort levels/etc. will be affected by the BPM initiative and this must be allowed for in the BPM implementation plan. Adequate training for their use of the BPM software and how they might use BPM to improve their role in the organization is especially important to ease people’s concerns about the impact of a BPM initiative on them personally. It is also critical to analyze the expected changes in peoples’ roles/responsibilities/status/comfort levels/etc. and develop plans on how each person’s position might change. It would also be important to win support for the BPM initiative from all affected staff, even if they don’t have any immediate direct involvement in the design or implementation of the initiative. (See the “Change Management Learning Centre” for more details on change management.)

Assuming that the investigation for launching a BPM project leads to a decision to continue, the final prerequisite for a successful BPM project would be a highly publicized “kick-off” meeting where there are senior manager speeches, actual examples of successful BPM projects in other organizations, a thorough description of the BPM project’s scope, schedule, staffing, budget, risks, expected outcomes, and impacts on all staff.

This series will conclude soon with the following article: