Efficiency, Effectiveness and Agility: A Look at BPM Selling Points

In today’s economic environment, it is as important as ever to be able to provide hard metrics as proof of a successful BPM project.  This is not to mention that in general, metrics are the icing on the cake when making a case for further, organization-wide process initiatives (and to executives in particular).  Today, I want to dive further into that topic and discuss some of the common metrics businesses use, as well as the tangibility issues inherent to each.  The more familiar you are with presenting the value of a BPM project, the more likely you will be able to get executive buy-in.

Efficiency - How quick can we get it done?

Reducing the cycle time on a process, whether it is a new hire process or loan origination, provides value.  You can quantify the amount of time it took before the project and quantify how long each cycle takes after the process improvements.  Efficiency has a high tangibility factor, it’s measurable, and therefore remains the strongest, or most useful selling point when trying to achieve buy-in from other units in the organization.

Effectiveness - How effective is the process that was implemented?

Effectiveness is, of course, an extremely important criterion when assessing a process.  However, it’s not as measurable as efficiency.  There’s a low “tangibility factor” here because different business units, organizations and individuals speak different languages when discussing the effectiveness of a process.  Is a process effective because it improves customer service?  Yes, but is customer service a highly relevant criterion when assessing an HR process?  Cycle time applies to all processes and all departments, but effectiveness is measured according to the responsibilities and values of each department.  That being said, effectiveness is tied to consistency, which proves to be a tremendous source of value in any organization.  This a key point to bring up when presenting the benefits of a BPM project.

Agility - How quick and easy can you change?

There’s no doubt that agility is even more intangible than effectiveness.  Agility, although incredibly important to the organization, is always associated with the long term view of a process.  Individuals within an organization look for results in the “here and now” and often times don’t consider the value of being able to change processes quickly and with ease as the business requirements change.  We see this with IT all the time…you hand them requirements and they develop an application that meets those requirements.  Unfortunately, by the time that app dev is complete, the requirements have changed.  An agile organization is able to change quickly and with ease as the business requirements change.

Summary:

BPM offers process solutions that provide all of the above benefits.  A well planned and executed process improvement initiative will drive efficiency, effectiveness and agility. But organizations have to share a common language when they are looking back at their projects and measuring their value.  If you really want to get the budget for a process improvement project, you better know what benefits BPM can provide and how to present them to the budget gate-keeper.