Competitive Advantage in an Era of Change: Eleven Typical Business Situations Where Business Process Management Delivers Value

Business process management (BPM) can help companies respond to constant change and increased competition by governing the transformation of key processes—and so help them achieve high performance.

Faced with an unprecedented volume and pace of disruptive marketplace shifts, global organizations are in need of transparency; agility and compliance; quality; and efficiency as well as improved networking with external partners and increased internal employee integration—important components of responsiveness to major change.

Business process management is a management discipline that can help businesses attain these important attributes. It adds pace and certainty, moving new strategies into technical or people-based action. It helps “get things done.” And while building a lasting BPM capability requires the development of new skills and abilities, it also promises to help global organizations manage many of the most challenging marketplace developments they face, thereby generating immediate value.

Companies that embrace BPM today will enjoy a significant and lasting edge over the competition. Establishing a “BPM process” means creating competitive advantage that is very difficult to copy.

BPM can be used to support and improve a wide variety of large-scale initiatives at organizations by providing a solid underpinning for managing the transformation of key processes:

• Standardization initiatives. Companies can use a business process repository to identify and define process standards and implement them effectively across the organization.

• Post-M&A rationalization. Merging organizations can use business process repositories to identify optimal practices from each, and design completely new processes.

• Innovation and growth. BPM allows organizations to identify and manage their most promising innovation and growth opportunities to enhance the customer experience, boost competitive differentiation, add efficiency and responsiveness, or slash costs.

• Next-generation process automation. BPM can help prepare processes for automation, thus enhancing efficiency.

• Risk management. BPM gives companies the ability to create alternative processes that can operate without the use of specific resources—a given plant or distribution center, for instance.

• Combating emerging competition. The transparency of BPM lets organizations measure the performance of differentiating processes, compare them with the competition and easily make adjustments.

• Cost reduction. BPM’s process models and repositories allow these businesses to conduct a systematic analysis of their processes, finding opportunities to reduce costs and boost efficiency.

• Establishment of a BPM unit. Companies can use BPM itself to design and implement a BPM capability from scratch, effectively creating a “process of process management.”

• Core systems implementation. BPM can keep major technology implementations on track and aligned with the business.

• Major transformation programs. BPM can help reduce the risk of failure when businesses undertake vital business and IT transformations.

• Compliance initiatives. A mature BPM capability lets an organization build, publish, enforce and revise safety and compliance processes, thus ensuring that its operations stay within rules and guidelines, regardless of how complex or dynamic.

The global business environment is characterized by challenging and unpredictable economic conditions, constant technological evolution and new, strengthened competitors with disruptive business models and value propositions—all of which can lead to situations that require BPM and can trigger the need to develop sustainable BPM capabilities.

Indeed, BPM is a powerful ally for leading organizations as they navigate many contemporary business challenges. By boosting their transparency, agility and compliance, quality and efficiency as well as improving external networks and internal integration, BPM helps these organizations deal with change successfully and take greater strides toward achieving sustainable high performance.

Dr. Mathias Kirchmer is executive director for BPM at Accenture. He leads the global BPM-Lifecycle group, as well as the program for the development of Accenture’s BPM Reference Models. His special field of interest is establishing BPM capabilities that deliver both immediate benefits as well as sustainable competitive advantages. Dr. Kirchmer is an affiliated faculty member of the Program for Organizational Dynamics of the University of Pennsylvania, a faculty member of the Business School of Widener University, Philadelphia, and a guest professor at the Universidad de Chile, Santiago. He is the author of numerous articles and white papers, as well as six books.