Global Logistics and Supply Chain Strategies - September 2008 - (Page 40)

Business Process Management Merits New Look from Corporate Strategists BY JEAN V. MURPHY Information technology advances, along with a need to respond to the increasingly fast pace of business, is driving renewed corporate interest in business process management. B usiness process management (BPM) is garnering a lot of corporate attention these days, along with a new wave of interest in process-based business transformation. This may sound familiar to those who were around in the early 1990s when business process re-engineering was all the rage and initiatives like Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR), Efficient Consumer Response (ECR) and Quick Response (QR) were at the top of many supply chain agendas. For the most part, these programs failed to live up to their promise, largely because of cultural barriers and integration difficulties. But underlying process improvements did help boost supply chain efficiency and began to slowly pry open the door to intraand inter-enterprise collaboration. Since then technology has made huge advances and added capabilities unimagined a decade ago. That progress, along with a need to respond to the increasingly fast pace of business, is driving renewed interest in process management. This interest was documented in a benchmark survey conducted early this year by the Aberdeen Group, Boston. (The Supply Chain Executive’s Strategic Agenda 2008: Managing Global Supply Chain Transformation). The survey found BPM to be the number one concern among the 800 supply chain executives polled, with 48 percent of respondents listing it as a top priority. Due to this relatively high percentage of interest as compared with other focus areas, Aberdeen predicts that investments in BPM will grow significantly in coming months. So just what is business process management? There are many definitions, but most characterize BPM as a technology-enabled management discipline that emphasizes three things: cross-functional business process modeling and simulation; process implementation using workflow automation and integration; and performance monitoring, measurement and feedback. “What is most different today about BPM are the enabling technologies,” says Michael Lees, director of BPM product marketing at Software AG, Darmstadt, Germany. Lees previously held a similar position at webMethods, which was acquired by Software AG last year. “In the past, when businesses re-engineered processes they had to hard-wire the results into their IT systems and into the culture and organizational structure of the enterprise,” says Lees. “This was fine if all you wanted was the most efficient process for your business at a set point in time. But businesses have never been static. And companies today face much faster cycles and much greater change and have far more threats to defend against than they ever have before.” These changes create huge opportunities as well for companies that are flexible 40 SEPTEMBER 2008

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Global Logistics and Supply Chain Strategies - August 2008 Contents Editorial GL&SCS Exclusive Fast Forward Up Front Cover Story: Free The Enterprise: Busting Silos in the Supply Chain Business Process Management Merits New Look fromCorporate Strategists Ships and Ports Explore Many Ways to Go Green The Right Information Should Help Avoid Any Kind of Risk Industry Voices

Global Logistics and Supply Chain Strategies - September 2008

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