Does your Company Really Need BPM?

Featured Article by Mac McConnell, BonitaSoft

Those of us working in marketing spend a lot of our time coming up with reasons why people just can’t live without our products. You’ve heard the pitches. A certain product is important, essential, timely, flexible, strategic, scalable and critical for any situation. It fills the customer’s needs now and will continue to in the future.

Which got me thinking about our experience in our industry – BPM. Like everybody else, we’ve made our case about why companies need process management tools to help their businesses run more efficiently. We have plenty of happy customers in industries ranging from education to finance to retail to government to life sciences that use our tools to manage their processes more efficiently.

But, really, does everybody need BPM? Are there companies out there that would have no use for the kinds of solutions we provide? Hate to say it, but there might be a few. In the spirit of a Letterman “Late Show Top 10” list, here are 8 types of companies that simply don’t need BPM.

Your company does not need BPM if …

#8 – All of your company’s employees have adequate time to complete their work by the end of every day.

If no work gets rolled over from one day to the next, you don’t have to constantly reevaluate and reassess priorities. Your tasks are perfectly organized, by definition, because you always have plenty of time to do them. You have a process that you’ve followed for years and you’re not worried about workloads mounting. So, no need to get more efficient, right?

#7 – Your company has never experienced a corporate “fire drill.”

Wouldn’t it be great if deadlines didn’t shift radically, without notice? If there were no surprises that forced the whole organization to rethink its plans? If you have no fire drills, you don’t have to set up systems that prepare for them. So, there’s no need to create mechanisms within your workflows that alert people when important situations arise. There’s no need to create alerts because they might cause fire drills. And there’s no such thing as a fire drill in your office.

#6 – You work in an industry that has absolutely no regulation and doesn’t require an audit.

Regulations are messy. They create work for people, and if you don’t provide the necessary documentation on time, you can get in trouble. If your industry has no regulations, you may be able to get away with having systems that don’t create a paper trail. If you don’t have outside parties (investors, business partners) requiring regular audits, you don’t necessarily need to sweat the small stuff. But if you do have people looking over your shoulder, BPM creates the kind of paper trail you’re going to need.

#5 – Your company does not have any information technology systems.

We’ve all heard about the paperless office. But what if an office ran solely on paper and had no computers? All of the company’s processes, schedules, plans and other documentation would be kept on paper. You could certainly set up processes – like who handles what tasks and who does what in certain situations. But you’d be relying on phones and notes on the bulletin board to communicate changes in tactics. All measurement would be manual. If you had IT systems, you could automate the measurement and streamline communications. But, with no IT, paper will have to do.

#4 – Your company doesn’t use email.

Again, the communication thing. Your company does all of its business by phone and you just don’t like the impersonal nature of email. If you have no email, there’s no easy way to tap into a BPM system to automatically forward it to the right person for approval and keep track of the document’s journey. You can call Phil and ask if he’s approved the transfer, so Shelly can weigh in and then walk it down the hall to Bob. If Shelly doesn’t approve it, she can ask Paulina to call Ted, who can meet with Margaret – if she’s back from vacation. They’ll know what to do.

#3 – Your company doesn’t put a premium on customer service.

Customers can be fickle. If you’re not delivering what they want, when they want it, with a smile, they might just see if your competitor can. This is the way it works in most industries. Maybe yours is different. Maybe you are the only company that does what you do and your customers don’t care about service. In this case, you don’t have to worry about setting up workflows that alert the marketing department when a customer Tweets that the gadget he just bought from your organization doesn’t work. There’s no need to trigger notifications if a customer calls to inquire about cheaper monthly plans or suddenly changes his buying behavior. You have your market locked up. You have better things to worry about.

#2 – All employees live and work together in one location

Talk about efficiency! If everybody lives and works in one place, you can be sure that there will be constant communication – 24/7/365. You can always shout over to your colleague and check on the status of a project or call a quick meeting to refocus a project. You can have a whiteboard in the kitchen that keeps everybody updated with new initiatives and changes in organizational priorities. In decentralized organizations communication can break down – if there are no systems that track projects and update people when changes happen. But all-under-one-roof businesses don’t have to worry about that.

#1 – Your company is not run by humans.

Humans are fallible and they forget things. They get distracted. They’re not always well organized. There might be other animals out there that can stay on task better than we can, but it might be a few years before any of them start running companies. So, chances are, humans are at the helm and your company is at the mercy of human failings.

Conclusion

If your company falls into one of these categories, then you’re all set. Your processes are fine. If not, maybe you could use BPM after all.

Mac McConnell, Vice President of Marketing, BonitaSoft. Mac is responsible for all aspects of global marketing, including brand awareness, communications, demand and lead generation, and go to market. He comes to BonitaSoft from BlueBird Strategies, a San Francisco-based lead generation advisory firm that he co-founded and served as managing partner. Previously, Mac was Global Marketing Lead for Sun Microsystems’ mid-market group, where he developed successful programs that generated over $400 million in sales pipeline. He has also held prominent sales roles at JPMorganChase and Deutsche Banc Alex Brown. Mac holds an M.B.A. from the University of San Francisco and a B.A. from Colgate University