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How can I best communicate the topic of processes and process management and position it within the workforce so that its implementation is a success? This is a key question that companies should ask themselves early on when introducing process management and a BPM software solution. In this seven-part series, I share my experience from over 30 years of organizational development and process management, as well as insights from our partner network, using examples from numerous successful client projects. In the first article, you will get an overview of the seven success factors for an accepted and effective process orientation in your company.
Conveying information through good presentation and target-group-oriented communication is only one side of the coin. It is much more important to involve managers and participating employees in the implementation at an early stage. Process orientation is also always about a mindset. Externally, with a view toward customers and stakeholders, and internally, regarding the interplay of strategy, structure, and organizational culture, as my partner colleague Thomas Hardegger from Business-Partner repeatedly emphasizes. As with all topics for which there are no universally shared meanings, it first comes down to a shared understanding. In the context of organizational change, my experience shows that it is primarily about the question of how effective change can best be supported in a specific case. After 30 years of experience in organizational development and process management in the roles of manager, internal and external consultant, tool analyst, and management coach, I have a clear and simple understanding of process orientation:
Processes become lively and effective with the target vision of an economic customer focus when the responsibilities for carrying out activities and managing the processes are defined and lived by all involved.
The seven success factors for effective process orientation at a glance
I summarize my experiences and those of our key partners in seven success factors. Some checkpoints seem obvious and stem from "common sense." However, they are not, provided you face the realities and complexity of change processes, which involve more than just "common sense"—they require leaving behind old patterns and learning new ones.
Feel free to start with your assessment:
1. Attractive vision and target image
- Do all stakeholders have a uniform vision of what can be improved by working on and with processes, and what process orientation brings to them personally?
- What is in it for the managers, and what is in it for the employees?
- Is there a client or sponsor in the top management team?
2. Clear customer and stakeholder focus
- Are external and internal customer focus supported by process maps with good visualization of business relationships?
- Do the depicted processes promote a consistent end-to-end understanding and management with clear goals and handover points?
3. User-oriented process design and documentation
- Were the processes developed, aligned, implemented, trained, and practiced with representatives of all stakeholders and with clear objectives?
- Are the process diagrams easy to create and easy to understand?
- Do they use simple conventions, focus on clarity, and provide information tailored to the target audience and purpose?
- Are target groups supported by personalized views of processes and interconnected information?
4. Transparent roles and responsibilities
- Have the roles within the processes (RACI/DEBI, swimlanes) been defined along with their competencies and responsibilities?
5. Usable data, information, and deep knowledge
- In what form are data and information available, and can they be used in a practical way?
- Is the data sufficiently well-structured to be used for digitalization and automation?
6. Effective leadership and process organization
- Have the responsibilities for the processes (strategic, operational) been defined with the stakeholders and introduced alongside the processes?
- Is process execution monitored, supported, and improved by operational process owners in collaboration with the stakeholders?
7. Meaningful process measurement and management
- Are process KPIs measured, visualized, and used by stakeholders for management? Are opportunities and risks identified and used for further development?
- Is progress in process orientation identified, communicated, and celebrated?
I discussed these seven success factors for sustainably effective process orientation with Thomas Hardegger; their interrelationships can be visualized very effectively using the Business-Partner Process Performance Model. Starting with the stakeholders and their requirements, we will use it in subsequent posts as an illustration to locate the HOW with best practices for each of the success factors.
As part of a seven-part series of articles, we will discuss all seven success factors for sustainably effective process orientation in more detail on a bi-weekly basis.
How to master the challenges of digitalization through process orientation
As you explored these questions, you likely noticed that implementation can vary significantly in breadth (across many processes) or depth (in terms of effectively meeting all requirements). The more developed your company's process model is, and the more effectively your processes—including management processes—are practiced, the more potential you can unlock through process orientation. The management process "managing processes," in particular, unfolds the potential to truly lead and control processes within the company as maturity increases.
And the further your process orientation is developed, the more complex challenges of information networking and digitalization you can master. You can unlock your organization's potential in four typical stages and use Aeneis as a platform to build the "operating system" for strategy execution, your digitized organizational and process management, and process-oriented digitalization.
Here is how you can unlock the potential of process orientation in stages:
Stage 1: Establishing processes – Transparency through documented business processes and shared knowledge
Stage 2: Optimizing and living processes – Process stability through practiced and improved business processes
Stage 3: Integrated management of processes, opportunities, and risks – Holistically controlled processes that achieve their goals and cover external customer requirements and regulations via an integrated management system
Stage 4: Implementing strategy through processes and IT – Strategy-aligned processes and IT as a central success factor – not just for digital transformation. In short: Strategy becomes reality by consistently leading through processes
Aeneis offers numerous BPM solutions to support your process-oriented digitalization, organizational development, and corporate design
In addition to fundamental process management solutions such as audit management or compliance management, Aeneis offers further BPM solutions for additional use cases that are particularly important at Stage 4: How can processes be harmonized across countries/the entire company before digitalization so that implementation costs do not skyrocket? With our variant management, you ensure even at this stage that necessary variants (e.g., due to different legal requirements in various countries) can be derived in a targeted manner and improvements to the parent object can be consciously adopted.
We offer innovative solutions for mapping the enterprise architecture of processes, roles, organization, and IT to implement digitized, process-role-based, and workflow-supported identity and access management (IAM). This is an important prerequisite for manageable processes that are compliant and can be implemented with significantly less effort.
Last but not least, for companies planning a migration to S/4HANA, we offer a unique solution: You can execute the analysis and process redesign phase quickly, with as few consultants as possible, and with high acceptance using complete reference processes. This allows you to create process transparency in your current SAP system and automatically import processes, transactions, and test data into Aeneis. You can also incorporate existing SAP best practices into your corporate processes and keep them synchronized with those in the SAP Solution Manager, including the responsible roles. With the Aeneis BPM suite, you have the tool for harmonized processes, roles, and authorizations for your future SAP usage via the SAP connector.
Conclusion: Intellior solutions support your process-oriented digitalization, organizational development, and corporate design.
