I couldn’t agree more. Isn’t that what business solutions are all about!? Without customer satisfaction, there would be no need for us!

However Barium Live! provides you with all the tools to make business process development a success. I have been involved in a discussion today where all agreed that engagement with those implementing the process and taking on board their input and feedback was one of the most important factors in a high performing process. A business process owner will be able to listen to his/her team and, using Barium Live!, amend the process map or web form themselves and immediately publish and upgrade the improved process application.

What better way to involve the right people in having the right process and the right information in improving your results and reaching your goals!

– Having the right (real) processes
– The right information in the processes
– The right people
– The right way of steering to reach your process result and its goals

And there might be more important factors, depending on the process.

Although a lot of modern process tools create nice applications, they do not automatically create a well performing process.

But a giant leap forward is that those applications are at least created out of a business focused process map. And it is better than only having a static process map.

Keep the processes alive!
Procesje

I think your perception is right, so we agree. If you could read Dutch, you would see the latest post on my website is also about this perception.

Keep on improving by process!

Regards,

My topic is based on my perception of the market and not what I actually think, because I absolutely agree with what you just wrote. Too many companies are mixing up “mapping” and “managing” processes. My job would be much easier if the process maturity grew within the market!

The mix up may be due to lack of process-competence and maybe because the process orientation initiative is driven from the wrong hierarchal level within the organization. In Sweden, a Quality Manager is often responsible for the business processes, which of course is rarely ideal. In Sweden they are most likely not responsible for the actual line-of-business, which gives them no incentive at all to drive process improvement work.

As Frederick Winslow Taylor wrote:
“The first step in gaining control over an Organization is to know and understand the basic processes.”

Not mapping, but Executing and Managing by (so, not a) process is your final goal if you want to become a process oriented organisation.

If I want to become more process oriented at first I wouldn’t even think about mapping any process. My first question would be “What processes do we have” and “Do we really need them”. So this is about process discovery and wondering what real process performance means.

And f there is a process that I need and it’s also performing bad, then a process map might help me to get more insight in why the process doesn’t live up to its expectations.

Discovery and prioritize first, mapping later. Then you are really Improving by process.

I’ve seen so many companies get lost in detail and not knowing why they are mapping their processes. For many cases it would have been better to not map a process at all.

In that case mapping becomes a goal instead of a means. Indeed that’s often the case when regulation or ISO comes in. Mapping then becomes “Because we have to”. In that case I should stop and just buy the ISO certificate on the Black Market