Information Age magazine in the UK recently published an interesting article about how social software is changing the way companies design and execute business processes.

The author, Pete Swabey, points to the dramatic events of late as proof that collaboration software and online social networks are rewiring the fabric of society.

Here at Lombardi we agree, and have spent a lot of time and effort looking at ways to further expand the role of BPM to more people through social technologies. They are manifested in Lombardi Blueprint and Teamworks in many ways. You can learn how each incorporates social capabilities here and here respectively. 

The article also interviewed both Phil Gilbert (Lombardi’s President), and Aviva’s CIO, Toby Redshaw. It is a very good article – I encourage you to read it here

Two weeks ago, Lombardi presented at the BPM Tech Show in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia. The conference is organized to help organizations with their decision-making process for selecting a BPM vendor by having each of the vendors demonstrate their approach to addressing a specific business process use case(s). By giving attendees a chance to evaluate several vendors in just three days, it helps them speed up the decision process and avoid some of the risks of the whole process.

The great news is we were just informed that the attendees rated Lombardi as one of two “Best-In-Show” vendors at the event!

Our very own Brandon Baxter delivered the presentation that won. He participated in the “BPM Product Shoot-Out” where each vendor was allotted 10 minutes to demonstrate how they would address one of two possible scenarios with their products. Brandon picked the loan approval process scenario to demonstrate Lombardi’s end-to-end BPM capabilities. In it, he highlighted how to use the Lombardi Solution discover and document processes, deploy and manage them, and to analyze and measure their performance and continuously improve their performance.

Judging by the votes, Brandon clearly demonstrated how our product separates itself from the rest.  We’re really pleased to be named “Best-In-Show” by the attendees.

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.

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In a previous post I said that it should go without saying that you have to showcase your initial BPM project if you want to drive adoption across the entire organization.  I focused on metrics.  Although other areas of the business might not understand the functional process implemented, they will find interest in how you are measuring the process for improvement.  This can correlate to other areas of the business as well.

Today I want to address the folks out there who don’t feel comfortable showcasing their project because they don’t have the biggest ROI numbers yet.  Maybe it has only been in production for a couple of weeks.  What else can you focus on?

The Before and After

What did the process look like before the solution and how has it changed?  Were there lots of manual hand-offs, faxes and emails?  Did participants have to log onto four different systems just to review a work item? Was there inconsistency in the way people executed the process?  How much time did managers spend building and running reports before status meetings?  What does it look like now?

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Showcasing the success of your initial BPM project is often times requested from other departments, but it’s also required to help drive adoption across the entire organization.

If showcasing your initial BPM deployment can help gain process adoption and ignite enthusiasm in other areas of the business, then you’ll get more and more value out of your overall BPM initiative. That being said, here is the first in a two part series of posts that will help you to showcase your BPM solution within your organization.

Get ‘em excited!

Everyone has had to sit in a presentation during their lunch break that seemed like a never-ending PowerPoint slide show. Now imagine watching someone explaining a process flow diagram that has no relevance to you. Then follow that with a “live” demonstration of someone clicking through a bunch of screens acting as a participant in the process that you didn’t get. Trust me, it can be very painful.

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Driven 2008 has come to a close, and we’re really thrilled with this year’s event. Many of the conference attendees stayed for the Lombardi golf tournament yesterday, which took place on the beautiful Fazio Canyons golf course at Barton Creek Resort and Spa. The weather was perfect and the golf was great.

On that note, I thought it might be timely to provide a quick recap of a session that Toby Cappello hosted on Wednesday. The session was called: “The Monday Morning Quarterback Discusses 10 Painful Lessons Learned.” Toby started things off with a golf analogy – one which he lived up to on the course yesterday!

The analogy went something like this: “BPM is like golf – you need to build muscle memory if you want to develop consistency and achieve success.”

In all honesty, I can’t really think of any other combinations of a technology (BPMS) and a discipline (BPM) that fits so perfectly with this analogy. It cuts to the core of Lombardi’s methodology. In fact, if you break it down even further you’ll see more uncanny parallels that help to visualize what exactly you’ll need to do to achieve success with BPM.

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