Why, When and How about Projects under BPM – An example using real time business scenario (With case study – Business Process change for Robust O2C)
Business Process Management (BPM) team always work for identification of and removing the burning-pain of various contributors in different business processes – be it Purchase to Pay (P2P), Order to Cash (O2C), Record to Report (R2R), Master Data Management (MDM), Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or any other critical business process in an enterprise. Basic idea is to optimize the end-to-end business process flow with objective of smooth execution of business operations cohesively for the fulfilment of organizational objective.
All burning pains or business requirements are first identified, then sorted out based on criticality to business. Resources are always limited with any business enterprise and hence BPM Projects are carefully examined on various parameters and then prioritized to kick-off the project.
Generally, business requirements are prioritized for ‘study, review the need of process re-engineering and then implementation’ based on following 5 factors (in given sequence) –
1. Legal requirement or Compliances (Tax or any other statute)
2. Impact on Customer Satisfaction
3. Contribution to Business Value (High BV features with less complexity are picked up first)
4. Clarity or Maturity of Business Requirement (High clarity attains higher priority for project implementation)
5. Efforts to change/re-design and implement the changes.
Besides above highlighted points, following are also considered-
1. Target Implementation Dates
2. Budgeted Cost of the project
3. Estimated Savings from changes.
4. Complexity to implement changes (dependent on multiple factors)
Normally, business process changes are implemented by way of ‘projects’ if changes are
1. Complex and costly
2. Dependent on lot of entities, resources, people, and technology,
3. Expected to be completed in multiple phases.
Once a business requirement is identified, project is defined in an Organization to create mindset of change in the Organization for given business process. Project Charter is then defined, honest support to project is achieved starting from top-level management to the operations or user-level resource. Unless, all contributors to the project gives their 100%, project success always remains a challenge.
A typical Project Charter should have key information about the project such as-
1) Project Identification
2) Business reasons for the project
3) Project Objective
4) Project Deliverables
5) Project Organization
5) Project Timelines
Apart from above mentioned information, Project Budget, Risks/Challenges can also be mentioned for giving better clarity on the project.
Basically, during a Business process reengineering, a lot of initiatives/activities are undertaken and it is better if sequence of deliveries are defined in such a way that ‘Business-as usual” is not negatively impacted during re-engineering or project implementation phase. Normally, business-process engineering is performed keeping in view following critical factors –
1) Project budget,
2) Systems/Technology deliveries,
3) Business process contributors (or Business Users) participation in user acceptance and trainings.
4) No/Minimum impact on business-as-usual activities.
5) Project timelines vis-à-vis business key events timelines.
Understanding BPM Project using real time business scenario (Case Study)
BPM Project for systems enhancement (ERP and CRM) for robust O2C Processes
BI-C-RIDE LTD: – Case Study
An Indian Company maintains its key business processes in SMART ERP System while its key CK System (Customer King) – a CRM system is not fully integrated with SMART ERP. Business Process management team takes up a challenge to use maximum technology-based opportunities for the benefit of customers as well as human resource within organization. A project is identified to create an integration between SMART ERP System and CK (CRM system) so that transactions are efficiently managed in both the systems with maximum benefits to the customers.
Follow through next post on PROJECT CHARTER that shall be created to kick-off the project of integration between ERP and CRM System.