BPM for All

Role of business processes in a digital company is far more important than in a traditional organization because digital organization literally consists of the digital business processes it implements. Traditionally, most business processes are in possession of workers or groups of workers, in other words, process stakeholders. Every worker holds in memory, experience, notes or corporate regulations certain course of action to follow in every particular situation. This implicit or partially formalized set of rules comprises a business model of a company. The model is subject to change by mere verbal discussion and agreement between workers and management, happen business environment evolves or new challenges appear. Situation is entirely different in a digital organization. Digital systems do not have any implicit awareness on business aspects, just an explicit algorithm to do exact functions, for which they were designed. Therefore, a digital business system is a manifestation of a bu

BPM will become a key driving force behind further development of AI. Machine learning in business applications is blind without guiding role of BPM, similarly as a company is blind without its management. Despite impressive success, AI is still in its infancy in respect to its literal involvement into high level business processes. Concurrently with the increase of the role of AI in principal business contexts, there will grow demand for BPM in coordination and structuring of AI for business purposes . As in any other business domain, BPM is suitable and responsible for proper AI positioning in business. Without precise BPM governance, AI bears excessive risks for a business as any important but poorly managed and not transparent part of ongoing operations in an organization.

There always exists a discrepancy between a model of business process, however well designed and accurate, and real execution of this process in a business environment. The reason for this gap is an unforeseen depth and hidden details inherent to any real process. Real business model of organization is ultimately unlimited in its depth. Going from highest management levels, it descends to individual departments, client relations, production units, technical code of equipment and controllers etc. In vast majority of cases, it is impossible and senseless to build a complete model covering all and every fine detail of the business. Omitted lower layers of the model create (pseudo) random fluctuations during execution of the model. Real execution paths of a process never follow its model exactly. However, in case of the correct model, we can expect to see that an ensemble of execution paths statistically converges to the model as to its average path over a significant set of observation

The crucial skill needed for a digital transformation of business is the skill to transform business architecture . Surprisingly, most experts in digital transformation are fluent in digital aspects of their favorite platforms but cannot clearly explain and foresee its impact on business as a whole. Too often digital transformation boils down to just implementation of certain digital platform or software titles. But software alone does not give any transformation as such. Vast majority of software solutions does not take care about peaceful coexistence and interaction with other similar solutions. Instead the goal is, as a rule, to eliminate competition. It often creates toxic and artificial alloys of randomly picked and poorly interoperable titles in IT landscape and business as a whole. This explains ever growing demand of enterprises for universal business transformation technologies and skills capable to deliver smooth integration and evolution of existing business practice into

Despite all fashionable favor, agile processes are a disaster in terms of customer outcomes . Imagine that you ordered a fridge but received a dishwasher instead. It is unlikely that you will be happy on this sort of creative agility. Customer process must be as precise and reliable as a Swiss clock. It is another story that customers always do their best to break this clock's precision in every possible and impossible manner: change their mind ten times a day, disappear at the moment of delivery, break supplied goods and claim a refund etc. And yet, customers highly appreciate flexibility of a company in response to their instant whims. We must not confuse agility of customers with precision of the company in response to agile client demands. Company can achieve accuracy and flexibility in serving clients only through rigorous process approach with detailed mapping of all possible client scenarios. Naturally, this detailed work-through may yield dozens and even hundredths of co

One of most evident but widely neglected reasons for poor process performance in a company is a failure to recognize a process as such. Systematic process mapping is an essential factor for efficient process governance and optimization of business performance. However, organizations often miss to distinguish processes they run and to reveal them as business models. Another even more typical and closely related reason is that a company creates abstract to-be processes and strives running them while ignoring objective reality. Again, essential mapping of as-is processes is neglected for the sake of an imaginary abstraction often borrowed from a book or ready framework and disregarding crucial aspects of the specific organization. Not seldom, externally enforced processes are even artificially simulated by workers to satisfy inadequate management requirements. It creates additional inefficiency due to a friction and time loss by workers to observe such a fake compliance. Fictitious proc