Strategy - Change, with Purpose

Dedicated to the issues of organisational strategy this part of the BPTGroup website offers the opportunity to explore a subject about which much is written but little is effectively communicated. 8 Omega was designed to address all facets of change, and strategy (so conspicuously missing from the core dynamics of earlier initiatives) is a key stream in business process transformation.

“The term Business Process Management refers to the understanding, designing, executing and optimization of enterprise wide business activities that incorporate people, processes, systems and strategy.”

David Lyneham-Brown
BPMG 3rd Annual Conference -1995

In seeking to transform business processes the issue of strategy raises a number of specific questions:

  • Does the organisation have a strategy?
  • Is that strategy the result of a planned, active process or is the organisation in a default situation?
  • Does the strategy actively recognise the need to become process-centric both operationally and organisationally?
  • Has the organisation committed to the budgets and resources necessary to achieve its process objectives?
  • Is there a cohesive strategy for change itself, a framework for delivering and sustaining a change culture and a project-based, organisation-specific methodology for effective design and implementation?
  • Is the organisation capable of the communication with, and commitment to, its staff as the delivers of the results of process innovation to its clients and customers?

…… and so it goes on

Moving from functional silos to process-centricity requires innovative thinking and action of a high order. The more radical organisational change is, as measured by the degrees of transition from its current structure, management ethos and business technologies, the greater the likelihood that innovation efforts will fail. And yet, the less that an organisation seeks to innovate its processes and itself the greater the likelihood of failing all of its stakeholders. Do organisations have an option?

Adapting, integrating, and re-configuring internal and external organizational skills, resources, structures and functional competencies towards a process-driven dynamic means addressing:

  • Positions - systems of innovation, marketplace rivalry, stakeholder requirements
  • Pathways – marketplace dynamics, core competencies and technological trajectories
  • Processes – design, implementation, education, organization and control
  • People – motivation, innovatory skills, strategic buy-in