Creating a Business Process Management (BPM) Center of Excellence

  Governance   Lessons Learned   Knowledge Shelf  

Business process management (BPM) is not another three-letter shortcut to promises of improved efficiencies and optimization of business and technological tools, methods, or mantras. BPM is a consolidation of earlier management theories and practices with the addition of the human element in business. Specifically, BPM is the current best method to align functional needs with information technology tools and solutions. To achieve this alignment, BPM blends total quality management (TQM), including Six Sigma, Lean Six Sigma, or the Software Engineering Institute’s Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI®)—or a combination of the quality approaches. The end goal of BPM’s inclusion of quality, regardless of the specific quality methodology or model, is to ensure consistent, repeatable, and reliable business processes are captured, documented, corrected, and executed.

Execution is the benefit and the promise BPM can deliver. The ability to deliver the right resources, at the right time, and in the right way is the essence of a business’s ability to operate. Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan’s Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, (Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan, (2002) Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done. New York: Crown Business.) among other publications, distills execution down to three core processes: people, …

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