Should You Outsource BPM?

According to Michele Cantara, research VP for Gartner, “BPM is intended to empower business stakeholders to work collaboratively with IT to change the solutions supporting business processes. Most ESPs do not possess the governance, modeling and change management skills to effectively foster this collaboration.”The point being made, as this article remarks, is that many organizations lack the skill set needed to create an effective BPM. The article further lists 11 steps that companies can use to determine whether or not to outsource BPM skills.

Step 1: Establish a Holistic View of the Five Dimensions of Multisourcing
Step 2: Understand the Pros and Cons of Different Sourcing Options
Step 3:Establish a Big-Picture View of the Three Competencies Needed for BPM
Step 4: Identify the Roles Needed for a Typical BPM Project
Step 5: Target Candidate Business Processes and Agree on Nomenclature
Step 6: Identify Who Implements Process Change and Frequency of Process Change
Step 7: Determine the Magnitude of Process Change
Step 8: Decide Whether You Can Manage Change at Three Levels
Step 9: Identify Your BPM Buying Scenario
Step 10: Conduct a Skill Gap Analysis
Step 11: Determine Which Sourcing Options Are Appropriate for BPM Skills

For further information on each step check out the article. Do you think that your organization falls into the category of those who should outsource BPM skills?

E-mails Role in Business Process Management

This article discusses how e-mail, instead of being simply a supplement to BPM, has morphed into a tool that is increasingly taking up more and more of an employees time. The author, Ramon Padilla, quotes Ross Mayfield, President of Socialtext,

“(Employees) spend most of their time handling exceptions to business processes. That’s what they are doing in their inbox for four hours a day. E-mail has become the great exception handler.”

Padilla further expands by discussing reasons as to why e-mail has become time consuming in organizations:

1. [We are] Making it up as we go along
2. Not enforcing business process
3. Business processes that are not automated or automated with software that is outdated or doesn’t fulfill the user’s needs
4. Lack of communications within an application or integration with other communication mechanisms
5. Lack of communication alternatives besides e-mail

These points raise questions regarding organizations use of BPM. If e-mail is taking up much of an employees time as a way to deal with exception in BPM, does this mean that the company does not have effective business processes in place? Do you agree with the author’s points? Is there anything you would add or detract from the list above?