For their recent InformationWeek Analytics 2008 Tomorrow’s CIO Survey, the well-known trade publication quizzed 720 corporate managers, including CEOs, CFOs, and COOs, as well as CIOs and VPs of IT-level executives, about the attributes most desirable for future business technology leaders.

IW’s John Soat then posted an excellent write-up of the survey’s findings, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. John writes:

“Whether they know it or not–and most do–companies need an executive leader well versed in both technology and business processes. The CIO position is tailor made to take that role. . .the question is, which CIOs will step up to it?”

This chart (also below) based on the survey’s findings isn’t surprising if you’ve been looking at things from a process point of view as long as we have, but it’s not trivial that respondents noted “Need to manage or optimize business process” as the #1 priority as the CIO continues to strive to become more of a business leader.

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By Rod Favaron, CEO Lombardi

I get asked about market consolidation all the time. Customers, prospects, industry analysts and investment bankers want to know how companies like Lombardi can continue to thrive in the face of the relentless consolidation drive by IBM, Oracle and SAP. The answer is simple: innovation. Markets always consolidate. That very fact creates opportunity for the companies that are able to innovate. Consolidation and innovation actually feed each other. How?

Let’s look at consolidation. How does it benefit the end customer of software? The promises are many: better integration, comprehensive functionality, simpler management and streamlined procurement. That last point - streamlined procurement - may be the only promise delivered to date.

In a recent article in CIO Magazine, Martin Veitch commented - “IBM and Oracle seem to be in a race to build up the world’s largest miscellany of enterprise software programs,” and “customers continue to have faith until the next procurement round. However, a lot of people are unimpressed by the levels of integration and R&D that follow the incessant deal-making.” Within Lombardi’s own Business Process Management market, Oracle’s acquisition of BEA and the resulting announcement of a combined BPM strategy got similarly low marks from industry observers.

The end result is that customers wait many years - and still do not get products that can solve their immediate problems. They get roadmaps for rationalization and consolidation. They get long lists of product lines and product names. Take Oracle as an example. They announced the Fusion roadmap in 2005. At that time, oil was $50 a barrel and the housing and banking sectors were clicking along at historic levels. The world market has changed dramatically since then, but Oracle is still trying to deliver the original Fusion roadmap. And now, that roadmap is muddled again by the BEA acquisition.

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The best description of “executive level buy-in” that I know of is only 7 letters long:

F-U-N-D-I-N-G

Maybe that doesn’t help you as much as you had hoped, so I’ll provide some additional color around this one.  Funding is the absolute bottom-line when we talk about executive buy-in to a BPM initiative.  But funding has to reflect the iterative approach, which means that the project isn’t over when the process is deployed.  The project is really just getting started.

Funding has to map back to the methodology required to do the project right.  It has to reflect all three phases of a proper BPM methodology.  We’ve discussed this methodology on Process People before, and if you haven’t seen some of those posts, I recommend that you read one first!

In reality, executive buy-in also means you have to have an executive who’s willing to get up on a podium and endorse the process improvement program organization-wide.  It means that the executive has to be willing to commit funding in every manner necessary - money, people, time and so on.

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In part one of this two-part Process People interview, we welcomed Raju Oak, head of process services at Kleinwort Benson in London. Raju is part of the transformation and systems services group within the company. Kleinwort Benson is a provider of banking and financial services to corporate and private clients in the UK and Channel Islands. In Part 2 we hear more about Raju’s key learnings from his BPM implementation.

Process People: How did Kleinwort Benson determine the metrics by which the company deems the project to be a success, both initially and on an on-going basi?

Raju Oak: It is important to note that our initial project was a pilot designed to first prove out the potential of the BPM approach. We faced several challenges during the pilot project that we had to negotiate along the way. Perhaps the biggest issue was that the pilot was being introduced through IT, and at that time IT did not have strong credibility with the business. At the same time the business did not recognize the connection between the challenges that it faced and the absence of a managed process infrastructure. We also had a strong skepticism about BPM within some parts of IT as well, based upon an earlier failed attempt to implement a workflow tool from another vendor as a point solution. There really was no experience of process engineering within the business. These challenges made it a complex and vulnerable project, with a long gestation, and its success depended upon strong leadership from the CTO.

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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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Ed.: This is the third post in a series of Q+A sessions focusing specifically on playback session best practices, with our in-house expert, Kris Komassa. See our previous coverage here and here.

Of course there is never a “finished” process. How often do you typically use a playback session to fine-tune a process that is up and running? How often do you do this, once a quarter? Twice a year? Can you give us a few examples?

We have a customer in Dallas that is unique because they have a very wide sales force who are all remote and need a number of approvals before they can close any business. We finished a project with them just a little over a year ago, and we’ve since done a number of other engagements on top of that original project, so the work is more or less constant. They’re a good example of fine-tuning and building on top of a first project.

The way that I always start off the new work with them is by having them do a playback for us to see where we are, and then have that segue into a talking session around what it is that they want to see or what new work they want to have done for them. So, we start with what we have already, instead of starting with what we ultimately want. This helps to create that delta between what they have today and what they’re looking for down the road. They’re a very active customer and good to work with for this reason - each new project flows naturally and organically from the ones that have preceded it. I’d recommend this way of working from one process to the next for everyone.

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Last week, the BPM industry - and two Lombardi customers - gained some very nice attention in the Financial Times. Steven S. Smith, CTO of Wells Fargo Financial, talked about how he achieved adoption from the business side of the company. Another, James Thomas, IT Director at University College London Hospitals (UCLH), discussed how they are using Lombardi Teamworks to reduce the time it takes for a patient to receive medical treatment after a referral. Impressive stuff.

But I think the really interesting thing here is that people can use this article to help evangelize the value that BPM can offer their companies in terms that business people can actually understand: efficiency, effectiveness and agility.

While BPM has been covered for some time in IT-oriented publications that dive deeper into the technology, this story is fairly unique in that it talks at a business-level about some of the biggest issues companies face with getting success with BPM. It provides examples of successful approaches that other companies took to solve meaningful problems while connecting with the business - and it comes from mainstream business press source - not an IT journal.

What it doesn’t do (too much at least) is get bogged down by technical points that make business people’s heads spin. And that is the problem with a lot of the press attention that BPM has received in the past. Many articles either get totally side-tracked with technical ‘in the weeds’ points or only discuss the broad market trends.

So the point I am making is that if you need help making the case for BPM with your executives, or if you need concrete examples of the benefits companies are acheiving, have them read the FT article - it should really help. And they probably won’t even make that funny face when they read it (you all know what I mean). Let me know how it goes!