StrategyDriven Enterprises

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StrategyDriven Enterprises, LLC

StrategyDriven is dedicated to providing executives and managers with the planning and execution advice, tools, and practices needed to create greater organizational alignment and accountability for the achievement of superior results.

We help our clients create and execute a clear, forward-looking strategy – translatable to the day-to-day activities of all organization members – that’s critical to their realizing success in today’s fast paced market environment. Not only does a compelling, well executed strategy align individuals to a common purpose, it ensures that purpose best serves the company’s mission.

The StrategyDriven website provides access to a wide array of best practice business planning and execution tools, streamlined process flows, how-to articles, example-rich podcasts, and customizable ready-to-use program management templates. Premium Members receive access to over 200 members-only articles, whitepapers, models, and tools and templates; providing an in-depth look into critical business performance areas; placing specific focus on the alignment of organizational standards, programs, and behaviors to the optimal achievement of mission goals. Sevian Business Program purchasers receive fully implementable business performance improvement processes out-of-the-box, enabling the acceleration of business growth and heightening of operational efficiency needed to significantly improve bottom line results.

Collectively, our products offer business leaders the opportunity to access the knowledge of a highly educated and experienced staff without the associated overhead expense.

At StrategyDriven, our seasoned business leaders deliver real-world strategic business planning and tactical execution best practice advice – a blending of workplace experience with sound research and academic principles – to business leaders who may not otherwise have access to these resources.

Contact StrategyDriven Enterprises, LLC

Phone: (770) 765-3692

Email: [email protected]

Website: https://www.strategydriven.com

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Fueling Business Process Management with the Automation Engine that Can!

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Organizations deploy automation technologies as the primary resource in their Business Process Management. Gone are the days were BPO meant Business Process Outsourcing, with Robotic Process Automation technology fueling new millennium enterprises, BPO has taken on a new meaning, Business Process Optimization.
 
In the recent past, businesses had only external, third party vendors to rely on for major projects, operational emergencies, and other labor-intensive initiatives that required resources they did not have. Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) meant businesses had to succumb to the high-cost, untimely, and unskilled labor in order to remain in operations.

Today’s C-level executives understand peripheral management of their critical applications, data systems, and shared services is not an effective, efficient, secure, or financially-feasible effort and require more robust, permanent solutions for assimilation into their BPM.

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About the Author

Richard MilamRichard Milam is the president and CEO of EnableSoft. Prior to founding EnableSoft, in 1995, Richard was a partner and Senior Vice President of FiTech PLUSmark, and held other positions in Information Technology, Operations, and Sales.

3 Reasons to Automate Your Business in 2015

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If you’ve added ‘being more efficient’ to your list of New Year’s resolutions recently, you may be struggling to find ways to generate more productivity with little effort. Chances are, the solution (and the problem) is literally right in front of you. Your mouse and keyboard are major sources of inefficiency. Communicating with colleagues, manipulating spreadsheets, entering customer information into a CRM… these are all examples of time-consuming manual processes that can be done better and faster by someone (or something) other than you.

If your idea of fun is copying and pasting text all day then by all means, continue doing what you’re doing. But we’ve got some thoughts on why you should at least consider ways to automate business processes in your organization and be more efficient in 2015.

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About the Author

Richard MilamRichard Milam, Founder and CEO of EnableSoft Incorporated (www.enablesoft.com). EnableSoft, is engaged in offering game changing software products and services to the business and financial services industry, healthcare and a dozen other markets. EnableSoft serves over 500 corporate clients worldwide. Prior to founding EnableSoft in 1995, Richard was a partner and served as Senior Vice President of FiTech PLUSmark, Inc. Richard designed and implemented a business plan to offer bank merger data conversion services which resulted in the successful merger of over 50 financial institutions.

Macro Maps Help You Align Processes and Strategy

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StrategyDriven Process Management Article | Macro Maps Help You Align Processes and StrategyWhen organizations first start doing process improvement they use a myriad of ways to decide which processes to improve first, such as:

  1. IT bought some software and needs to install it, so let’s look at the current process first.
  2. A leader raised his hand and said, “I’d like to start with this one.”
  3. A department wants to improve the process because it would help in a key initiative.
  4. An ‘easy’ process is chosen to start on.

But after a number of processes are selected with this ‘whoever is interested’ approach, leaders and process Improvement practitioners see that it would make sense to select processes that are underperforming, would provide increases in market share and revenue, or would directly support key strategic initiatives. In order to do that, you need to have an understanding of core process in the company now. A Macro Map can help.

A Macro Map is a graphical rendering of an organization as a portfolio of processes. (Many thanks to my colleague Jerry Talley for initially developing this concept of a Macro Map. [www.jlTalley.com] He and I have been using it and improving it ever since.) Here’s an example:

Student Services Macro Map

In this example, the core processes (ones that produce the key outputs of the organization) are highlighted in one section, support processes in another section, and customers in the third section.

How do you Build a Macro Map?

I suggest starting with a small group of executives/managers who know the work of the department or division. (If you are doing this for the whole enterprise, you will need to build it by groups and then form the total picture, making sure to show the cross functional processes.) Build the first draft of the macro map with them, and then take it to staff and have them verify it and add to it. Below are some specifics to help you with the method.

With the managers:

  • Begin with listing the customers – the people who receive or use the output.
  • Then list the core products or services delivered by the department.
  • Now identify the processes that produce the core products.
  • Then identify the processes that support the delivery of the core products. Examples of these could be planning, scheduling staff, research, securing resources.

Then take the map in graphic form to a representative staff group.

  • Explain how you built the first draft of the map with the managers, and what its components are.
  • Start with the core processes and ask them if anything is missing or needs revision.
  • Then go to the support processes.
  • Ask them if they can see the components of their job in different place on the Macro Map. What components of their job are missing?
  • Keep adding and revising the map as suggestions are made.

How the Macro Map is Used

  • The Macro Map provides a list of the portfolio of processes for the department or organization. This enables anyone to compare the voice shouting the loudest for a process selection to be compared to the whole portfolio. START HERE
  • These processes are categorized, so it’s easy to see which are the core ones supporting customer deliverables, and what other types of processes there are. (This helps to make it clear which ones are the most important to the customers.)
  • Add quantitative data to the Macro Map. The Macro Map below is the same one as shown at the top, but now it has data showing number of hours worked on each process and the customer satisfaction ranking. It is obvious which ones demand the most employee time. And for this organization, where the goal was to streamline processes, reduce workload, and not hire additional employees, it was obvious which ones to work on first.

Student Services Macro Map with Data

Some organizations create a Business Architecture graphic to show how business strategy, functions, processes, technology and data relate. The Macro Map is simpler than that and focuses on processes and customers. When you add baseline data to a Macro Map, you visualize the criteria that the organization has chosen to use to prioritize their projects. In the example for Student Services it was employee hours and customer ratings. Those might now have been my choice, but the organization had these metrics and they worked fine. When doing the first Macro Maps I like to keep the measurement simple – not requiring weeks to gather. Other measurement criteria could include costs, throughput, comparisons against competitors, variability, market share, risk, or alignment with the strategy. Quantitative measurement values point to the top three to five processes, but leaders need to consider some other parameters – namely time to complete, complexity, cost, etc. that could influence the choice of one project or another.

The macro map is a wonderful info graphic to display and categorize all the processes. It also gets executives and employees engaged in thinking about the big picture by process, and helps each one relate it to their own work. And it doesn’t take that long to build. Try it!

About the Author

Shelley SweetShelley Sweet, the Founder and President of I4 Process, and author of The BPI Blueprint, is a highly respected BPM Practitioner. She provides consultation, workshops and training programs for clients ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies, educational institutions, and government organizations. Her programs are based on a unique 3-PEAT method of modeling processes and analyzing data that accelerates operational improvements, and builds leaders and employees who sustain operational excellence. Want to learn more about BPM metrics? Email Shelley at: [email protected]

Do Your Business Process Metrics Measure Up?

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  1. Are we doing things right?
  2. Are we doing the right things?

Peter Fingar, co-author of Business Process Management: The Third Wave, then asks these measurement corollaries in his 2013 article “How Do Your BPM Metrics Measure Up?”

  1. Are we measuring things right?
  2. Are we measuring the right things?

But what are these right measurements? John Dixon, Gartner analyst, articulates seven best practices:

  1. Focus on Outcomes – Measure the results, not the completion of steps or milestones to get there.
  2. Limit the Number of Measures – Not fifteen, but just a few.
  3. Set Clear, Specific Goals – The leaders must have clear goals and they need to articulate them.
  4. Link Metrics to Strategy – The metrics need to show how work impacts the company’s strategy.
  5. Measure Current Performance – Know how you are doing today, so you can see if anything changes in the future.
  6. Look Ahead, Not Just Back – Metrics are not just to see what happened historically. Metrics should cause action today.
  7. Make Metrics Visible and Accessible – Having workers, managers, supervisors, and executives see metrics helps employees make decisions and take action. If only executives see them on a monthly dashboard, it is too infrequent, too late, and too inaccessible.

And the next question is – How do you really do all this? Below are examples of TIPS from my 20 years of practice to select measurements that are meaningful and have an impact on results:

  1. Focus on Outcomes – Select measures that track the outcomes of the process from a product standpoint and customer standpoint. These should be results that provide value to the customer.
  2. Limit the Number of Measures – I say limit it to two or three. Start with that number and use them.
  3. Set Clear, Specific Goals – Starting a BPM Project successfully means creating a Project Charter with the Process Owner, Executive Sponsor, Project Lead and Team Facilitator. And in that charter are specific Improvement Targets; for each Improvement Target there needs to be one metric.
  4. Link Metrics to Strategy – It’s not only the metrics that should link to the strategy. The Improvement Targets need to be aligned with the strategy. So you need to discuss that with the Process Owner and Executive Sponsor.
  5. Measure Current Performance – This starts with gathering baseline data for the metrics designated for each Improvement Target.
  6. Look Ahead, Not Just Back – All metrics must drive decisions and action. If you measure something and don’t do anything with the measure, it’s no good. So think carefully about what action you will take with any metric, and discard it if no action is identified.
  7. Make Metrics Visible and Accessible – Metrics should be visible on the shop floor, or on the wall, or if on the desktop with mechanisms to have alerts about changes or concerns. A file on the desktop is not visible enough unless it is naturally accessed frequently.

About the Author

Shelley SweetShelley Sweet, the Founder and President of I4 Process, and author of The BPI Blueprint, is a highly respected BPM Practitioner. She provides consultation, workshops and training programs for clients ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies, educational institutions, and government organizations. Her programs are based on a unique 3-PEAT method of modeling processes and analyzing data that accelerates operational improvements, and builds leaders and employees who sustain operational excellence. Want to learn more about BPM metrics? Email Shelley at: [email protected]