What Businesses Can Learn from Processes of U.S. Elections

I came across this very intriguing post by Dennis Byron at BPM in Action earlier today. Today is Election Day, and he explains that many businesses today are just like ballot initiatives. There is much human intervention with double and triple checking at times, and technology is a very small part of the work flow itself.

Human interaction at election locations start at the beginning with ID checking, calling out your name in public, signing the book, and then finally voting. The main idea here as with processes in businesses as well, is that problems occur in the human workflow process and not the technologies. Do you agree?

The Difference between BPO and BPM

I came across this post on BPM in Action in which Dennis Byron reminds us not to confuse BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) with BPM (Business Process Management).

Business processes that do not provide any particular competitive advantage are good candidates for BPO. Here are some processes that Dennis mentions are good candidates for BPO: payroll processing, benefits administration in highly regulated jurisdictions, purchasing office supplies, shipping small packages, demand deposit accounting in banks, anything that follows an ACORD form in insurance/assurance, and scheduling worker hours in any kind of retail operation. Any processes that do provide competitive advantage is a good candidate for in-house responsibility.

So according to Dennis, BPM is the best way to automate business processes whether it be outsourced or retained within the enterprise.