Whitepaper Business Process Management

In the turbulent economy of today, a Business Process Management approach is not a luxury. It is a way to survive, thrive and capitalise.

Although the process thinking and end-to-end approach are now widely accepted with concrete implementation initiatives, companies and organisations still rely on the traditional split of work approach. It is the typical “you do that and I do that” which in organisational terms becomes a breakdown in functional domains – different business units, different operational and/or support
units. And these functional units try to optimise within them. For example, production is optimised for production tasks while sales are optimised for sales tasks. In some way it is a feudal system where the coordination between different units becomes a significant burden. A steering group mania and a prioritisation haze for example in budgeting and for common resources.

On the other hand, let’s look at organisations that are put to the hardest test – like football teams playing Champions League, or the most professionally conducted military campaigns, or the medical team in an emergency ward. In all these, the functional breakdown play is overtaken by a joint way of planning, managing and working that focuses on the overall end result. Why shouldn’t this apply to common business too? Don’t all companies and organisations have overall common goals that actually is the reason for their existence?