Process intelligence with people disruption to people ovation 

What are the favourable organisational prerequisites to succeed? Simply put: who do you need to succeed?

We see when processes work, businesses work

1. Executives are advocates as they see a clear and real strategy for execution.
2. Business teams have defined feasible and business-critical use cases together with process leads and experts in the process, with clear monetary benefits articulated (e.g. xx M EUR savings).
3.  IT leaders support the initiative and see the benefits of process intelligence to better support the business processes with technology that matters to bring business value back to the organisation and drive the enterprise AI agenda. Resources are prioritised and allocated more easily.

A good consideration when engaging and finding the right stakeholders for the initiative:

• Have a process-oriented & value realisation mindset and is open to new improvement ideas
• Faces challenges in critical business operations
• Are willing to expose inside the company with new concepts (open to being a lighthouse)

Hiccups

When there are hiccups or complete breakdowns and ultimately shut down of initiatives that had a very promising start and buy-in from leadership, these are often pitfalls:

1. Executives change position and the top-down push disappears with momentum slowing as a result.
2. Business teams get budget cuts as they haven’t focused enough on business value realisation and measurement in money saved, resources freed up, and improved customer satisfaction. In other words, cannot defend the business rationale for the initiative.
3. IT leaders have a different agenda, a siloed approach to BI, AI and data management.

What are the best ways to organise process intelligence practice from its inception to a rollout in an organisation

Establishing a strong center of excellence for process intelligence requires some planning. There are different aspects to consider when setting up:

1. Initial process intelligence project: Start in a business unit that has a good business support and executive sponsorship, with joint resources from IT supporting to deliver technical implementation.

Partnership between IT and business teams and a common understanding of what process intelligence can bring to the organisation is key.

2. Initial center of excellence (CoE): There are possibilities to have the CoE in the strategy and process excellence unit, or in another central staff function, e.g. the global business operations (GBS).

The key is that the function is looked upon as a value creator and has a mandate to drive standardisation and continuous improvement. If it is an isolated unit, there are additional efforts required to manage stakeholders and it can become harder to succeed.

Some organisations choose to go with standard and common processes like accounts receivable and procurement. Here, you can find quick wins in the gaps between process steps. While the exciting opportunities that catch management’s interest often come from the core of the operations, such as:

• Supply chain, e-commerce and omnichannel or store operation processes for retail
• Production or potentially maintenance process for manufacturing
• Customer experience/advisory service/loan process for banking
• Research and development processes for pharma

3. Establishing a scaled CoE across your business units: As you grow from succeeding in one process or business area, the CoE might have to shift from being in a business unit to being in a central unit that can serve the full enterprise.

Depending on how your executive sponsorship looks, the strategy & process excellence unit, GBS, or another suitable central function can be the right option to govern the process intelligence agenda. What will become important is to allow business units and countries to embrace process intelligence and drive their own use cases, a so-called hub-and-spoke set-up. If you try to keep all control from a central perspective, you might lose out on user adoption and value opportunities realised.

How to mitigate potential issues setting up and scaling process intelligence

• Get started right! Read my previous blog post: Process intelligence from potpourri to perfect recipe.
• Define & quantify business-critical use cases that keep executives up at night. At the same time, focus on early wins that aren’t too difficult to implement and is understood by many, while still having great potential to create value.
• Keep a living governance – cross-functional with affected business and IT stakeholders, focusing on unblocking barriers, the path to value realisation, and end-user empowerment.
• Use active change management good practices to manage change effectively to avoid slips, manage stakeholders, celebrate wins and ensure the end-users are empowered correctly.
• Understand the business/data/AI strategy and leverage the tech stack you have if suitable and don’t try to replace all.

Interested for more? Join our Crash course in Transformation beyond projects and technology on Apr 28!