How to drive effective EBPA through your organization
In organizational design, client facing divisions are depicted as vertical structures, with support teams depicted horizontally. When analyzing business processes, attention should be given to the end-to-end process, ensuring all task level activity is identified and analyzed for inefficiencies. Furthermore, all teams involved in the process should be approached to ensure a firm understanding of concerns that impact it.
The operating model should be the first point of call when deciding which processes to analyze; a scattered approach may create more problems than the exercise solves. Initially, the organization’s business architect assesses the maturity of each capability within the operating model and links them to the organizational strategy. By implication the overall results of this capability maturity assessment act as a stimulus for business process analysis within both vertical and horizontal teams. Process analysts will be required to address all architectural aspects of the process looking for efficiency gains throughout the support functions.
Architectural Component Catalogues
- Strategy and planning – strategy, objectives and key performance areas
- Products and services – product, service and cost attributes
- Organization – locations, business units, capabilities and roles
- Process – process, sub-process, activities and tasks
- Risk – regulatory, statutory, operational, technical, sovereign, consolidation, etc...
- Data and information – structured and unstructured data
- Technology – platforms, applications and infrastructure
Enterprise Business Process Analysis – Methodology
Firstly, by utilizing the capability model maturity exercise we can assess the C-suite executive’s thoughts on the current capabilities. When complemented by the business architecture review of inefficiencies, we have a starting platform to guide the process analysis review. The process analysis should address cost, time and human effort.
The first overview would be to ascertain the workforce and technology used in the organizational division and harvest any costing data in respect of both. The business architect will require an average people cost from human resources, and license and maintenance costs for applications. These figures may differ from location to location, so it is important to review each location separately. The second analysis would be to ascertain the products and services that utilize the capabilities, as well as the business units and location they are being offered from.
Initiating discussions with the product and service owners in each location will highlight areas of concern and provide valuable support for solutions. Once these areas of concern have been identified, we can now refer to the activity diagrams which depict process tasks and determine if they are automated or manual.
The manual tasks are candidates for automation and the number of people performing the task should be evaluated for skills reassignment. The cost of resources should then be offset against the potential cost of automation – although this becomes complex when specific locations may not have the turnover to justify automation efforts, as it should still be considered as part of organizational standardization efforts.
Data storage and office space would then complete the costing overview, this analysis provides a baseline for DevOps, and program and project progress reporting. All harvested information should be uploaded to the repository as attributes to the relevant architectural objects, and linked to underlying support objects.
The third component of the analysis will require discussions with various business owners:
Strategy and planning: Key performance indicators (link to appropriate key performance areas)
Sales: Discussion on bricks versus clicks (percentage of transactions handled by outlets vs apps)
HR: Skills analysis, learning and development, re-assignment
Risk: Operational risk, regulatory risk
Marketing: Campaigns, advertising (radio, TV, social media)
Technology: API and RPA opportunities for automation
PMO: Current book of work (link projects to your area of interest, and review their impact) the gap between organizational need and current BoW will form the basis for your business case for funding.
External Partnerships: Leveraging start-ups or other providers to gain an advantage or enhance current skills base or skills shortages.
The result of these discussions will give an indication of how revenue can be generated to offset costs, as well as demonstrate how both processes and customer experience can be enhanced.
Ultimately, it is clear that we can only complete a process analysis by addressing business needs from all architectural domains, ensuring funding is spent in an all-encompassing approach, meeting business needs in a cost effective manner.