Abstract Business Problems and BPM

The principles of Business Process Management (BPM) can lend themselves beautifully to solve abstract business problems. The methodical rigor it propounds can help in providing good objectivity and quantification to an abstract and subjective problem, provided. As an example, let us consider a case of a company having very low employee motivation resulting in high employee turnover and poor performance issues without having much clarity on the reasons for the low motivation. The essential method of applying BPM principles is briefly outlined here.

Step 1: Define the problem statement: Objectively address the problem of low employee motivation using the principles of BPM

Step 2: Identify the business processes impacting employee motivation. e.g.

• Training and development (adequate, timely, regular)
• Remuneration (as per industry standards, performance based)
• Career roadmap (clarity)
• Performance appraisal (transparent, interactive, fair)

Step 3: Gather objective responses from the target employees on how good or bad are the processes and actitivies being performed by the designated roles. Analyze each individual impacting process, its activities, evaluation factors and and their current state.

As an example, if we consider the training and development process, its evaluation factors and their current state findings could be on the lines of something like:

• Regularity (irregular, no clarity in training program schedule)
• Appropriateness (lack of appropriate training that is relevant to job)
• Adequacy (Inadequate in both volume and expertise levels)
• Timeliness (Not conducted when required for the job)
• Formal / Informal (Informal trainings that lack professional expertise)
• Mentoring (lack of mentoring and guidance)

Step 4: Carry out appropriate checks against each finding. Some BPM driven analytical questions that could be asked for the training and development area could be:

• Is there a formal updated process laid down for appropriate training and development of employees for each component?
• If no, it implies a high amount of arbitrary decisions being taken in that area. There is a starightforward need to define the organization wide processes
• If yes, then further investigate to what extent the process has been followed at an individual activity level.
• Identify each occurence of deviation versus adherence to the process, its individual activities and the roles and then aggregate the results. This would help in isolating that activity - role combination which is not performing as per the process standards.
• Collate the resulting data for further cause - effect analysis. Graphs, charts may be used for visual analysis as well.
• Applying proper weightages to each area can also help rate a process using a numerical score.

Step 5: Repeat the actions for all processes, activities and evaluation factors and then identify the process - activity - role shortfalls.

Step 6: Study and synthesize the findings from each process area and take corrective action. Corrective action may also include designing improved / new processes.

The data collection can be easily done by asking the target employees to respond anonymously to a comprehensive questionaire and obtaining objective feedback on how well were the process and its activities followed for each of the evaluation factor. Modern IT tools are readily available to do the analytical number crunching part.

Thus, the focus on and use of business processes and activities helps to build objectivity in an otherwise subective area. The method may seem to be tedious, but can work very effectively in generating objective data. What remains upto the business manager is the initiative to conduct such an analysis and take appropriate corrective actions. :)