I just came back from the Gartner BPM Summit a couple of days ago, and I found it quite stimulating and validating. The sessions were fairly diverse and the content was palatable for both business and I.T. professionals.
The keynotes were fantastic and I particularly enjoyed Peter Schwartz‘s talk on Scenario Building and thinking about the future. I’ll probably pick-up one of his books
On the last day of the conference, Gartner set aside 1.5 hours for “how-to” sessions. There were some tough choices to be made, because they crammed 4 very compelling sessions into the same time slot. I chose to go to Steve Towers and Terry Schurter’s session on aligning processes with customer expectations. Bruce Silver’s session on BPMN came in a close second. Too bad Gartner couldn’t give one more slot for How-To sessions, because I really wanted to sit in on his session too!
Steve and Terry’s session was a boiled down version of their full BPMG training. As in the BPMG training, they focused on how BPM should be done in the context of meeting customers’ expectations. That’s one concept that was lacking from much of the conference–the importance of the customer in dictating how we structure our processes.
I’m wondering if anyone else could help me answer the following: Why was the focus of the Summit mostly on making processes more efficient (inside-out) versus actually innovating processes to deliver on customer expectations (outside-in)? The biggest bang actually comes from innovating processes to meet customers’ expectations. Both approaches have there place, but the Summit really missed the boat on the Customer-centric approach.
I’m sold on the fact that this “outside-in” approach is the way to implement BPM, but aside from Steve and Terry and only several powerpoint slides throughout the rest of the conference, the outside-in approach was absent.
I think it still has to do with the whole concept of BPM being semi-new. I don’t think CEOs/CIOs are taking this concept seriously enough and until you get executive backup it will be difficult to instill the idea of outside-in thinking.
Doug –
Inside Out versus Outside In…. let me see if I can address this. Looking at things Inside Out is easy and looking at things the other way…. well, it just too much work, takes to much time and commitment.
But the difference is determinent. It helps define whether a company wants to be good or if it wants to be great – if it wants to have an amenable relationship with its customers or whether it wants to create a long term partnership for success with them.
I think the other part of the problem is (and Steve Towers articulates this quite well in his article at BPMG.org, “Maybe BPM needs re-engineering?”) that surrounding this rather simple and eloquent set of techniques is a cacaphony of alternating theories, standards, practices, measurements, software tools and on and on. And, in an effort to maintain a focus on the customer we’ve ended up focusing on the company….
It’s a double whammy…. it’s hard to put ourselves in our customer’s shoes, for one. And, all this noise and clutter in BPM, today, makes it even harder (not easier) for us.
Let’s not make the Outside In approach so absent. I call for a return to the fundamentals of BPM…. everything you are and everything you are about is thanks to your customers. Know them to know thyself!!!
David Novick
Novick Consulting LLC
http://www.novickconsulting.com