The key prerequisite for process management is primarily the understanding of the base business logic, key activities, and their connections, in a relation to the business strategy. Organization structures and information systems play the role of a supporting infrastructure for the business processes.
Except for the deep knowledge and experience in process engineering methodology, based on the industry experience, we believe that covering especially the following dimensions are critical factors of any process engineering project:
- Management Support – any major process change impacts the organizational culture, people, processes, and technology and thus requires a great deal of resources (leadership, human, finance) which need to be committed by the management.
- Strategy Alignment – the process system shall be linked to the business strategy so that the activities of the individual key processes altogether lead to fulfill the strategy; also, the process change would not beat other projects, more aligned with the strategy.
- Business Case – comprises an identification of the initial situation, the motivation for the process change, and the proposed state, together with measurable objectives, required effort and costs, and a calculation of the project rentability.
- Sound Methodology – in general, we use four interconnected models, respecting the organization’s notations or bringing standards:
- global process system model – an overall view on the processes with their relationships, e.g. in the Eriksson – Penker notation,
- global object system model – an overall view of components of the business reality with their relations, e.g. as an UML Class Diagram,
- detailed process system model – a detailed workflow for every key process describing the flow of activities, e.g. in the BPMN notation,
- detailed object system model – a view of the “lifecycle” for every major object, describing its states and the transitions, e.g. as an UML State Chart diagram.
- Change Leadership – for the purpose that the process change becomes an integral part of the organization, we utilize a variation of the Kotter’s 8 Step Change Methodology, framing the whole process engineering project.
- Line Ownership – by the time a process engineering project finishes, the line people are those, who execute the processes, so to ensure sustainability, it is necessary to ensure the transfer to the line and an active adoption.