PROCESS ANALYTICS Statera’s process analysis approach focuses on a client’s business purpose and assists in the definition of those elements which support the business objectives. This includes a concentration on affected business activities which must be clearly defined and understood to best approach business transformation.
Business models are frequently used to visually deconstruct the actions which occur within a business process, providing easily consumable images which can quickly and efficiently represent essential business characteristics, allowing for tactical and strategic analytical discussions to identify real business problems and recommendations.
The critical driver behind any business model is understanding the reason for that model. This reason is required to ensure all relevant business characteristics, or elements, are identified and captured within the associated models. Focusing on these relevant elements will allow a greater concentration on understanding the justification for these components while avoiding time wasted on non-relevant material (e.g. avoiding modeling for modeling’s sake). This will allow for a more productive use of project time, money and subject matter expertise involvement.
ROOTED IN BPM PRINCIPLESBusiness Process Management (BPM) is a management discipline which treats processes as corporate assets, with the goal of improving business agility and operational performance. The workflows, decision points, policies and intellectual understanding within an organization all comprise the core components from which corporate strategy and vision are realized.
BPM also prescribes process management as not exclusive to improve operational performance, but to also increase responsiveness to change. All businesses are living entities, which evolve based on internal and external forces. As such, every business process has a perpetual revision cycle, and must nimbly evolve to react to these changes.
Process modeling should following an engineering approach, to ensure all analytics are based on factual considerations and remain non-bias. Standardization in technique and approach will remove the natural variance which occurs within artistic models and allow for methodical discussions and recommendations.
TECHNOLOGY AGNOSTICProcess analysis should be technically agnostic, meaning there should be no focus on solutions until the business issues and opportunities are identified. Too many new technologies are introduced within organizations based on known symptoms, without taking the time to address the true underlying problems.
This ends up causing a classic ‘cart before the horse’ solution scenario, which limits a companies’ ability to fully realize the best solutions based on a sound understanding of the current practices and corporate vision of where a company should progress.
COMPLEMENT TO ITIL® HOLISTIC APPROACHWhile IT is just one area where process analysis may occur, ITIL® reflects a similar attitude in that IT service management should be viewed not by its various technology silos, but from an end-to-end holistic approach. Managing an entire business service should not only include the functional components, but a comprehensive view including service levels and warranties as well.
Its emphasis on understanding who its IT customers are, and defining the service offerings to support its customer’s needs, reflects the same focus on reason for actions/services to exist. With today’s technologies becoming more robust and dynamic in what they may provide, it is critical to ensure business processes support an agile and repeatable approach which allows for greater efficiency to exceed customer expectations.