Establishing a BPM Center of Excellence

Tom Dwyer

Are there two basic models for establishing a COE - one focused on ensuring that the business policy toward process improvement is followed, and one focused on ensuring that the process discipline and technology is consistently used and deployed? Does a company eventually need both? Where should the COE reside? within IT reporting to the CIO? within the business reporting to the Chief Process Officer who reports to the CEO?

Steve Nimmo

The success of an organization's BPM Program lies in its ability to manage all components of the program. The BPM Center of Excellence (COE) is the heart of the program and handles the management function. The COE leverages cross functional teams versed on multiple approaches of process management and system capabilities. The purpose of the COE is to focus on two responsibilities; 1) The primary responsibility of the COE is to provide BPM support to the organization in the form of resources and expertise to enable the organization to deliver BPM initiatives; and 2) Define and maintain the BPM methodology ensuring that there is consistency in BPM delivery.

The reporting location of the COE is an interesting question. There are success stories of both scenarios working. The common item of the success stories is an executive team that is committed to BPM. The executive team needs to determine who their "Process Champion" is and build the COE around that individual, regardless if it business or IT.

Steve Nimmo
Business Process Management Champion
stevenimmo@comcast.net
http://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenimmo

Enabling Business through Process – In Less Time

Frank Millar

Steve makes several good points. I'm going to try and add a bit by looking at the narrower variable that is scale (size of the business).

In the Fortune 50 -world, there's a lot to be said for establishing an EA/BA/BPM COE that addresses the technical side of these issues and is a resource for the entire enterprise. That must be done with a firm grip on the reality that the business silos will frequently ignore this COE as resource. (A straightforward reason for ignoring can be as simple as customer mandate; just as frequently, politics can get in the way.)

It seems hard to argue with the conclusion that the 'real' side of BPM is most effective when those activities are fully immersed in-, and reporting to-, the business silo. These business resources supporting BPM are rarely referred to as a "COE" (again, politics-driven). The BPM activity, in this case, uses the (technical) COE as a supplier.

In small organizations (as little as $50M in sales), evidence suggests that one manager/executive (at best) might facilitate BPM-related success in both the business and IT silos. In-house IT in that environment is limited to cost reduction and performance optimization (commodity-related activities), while investment/strategic technology can end up segregated to part time resources. Nearly all related resources in such an environment are out-sourced and the concept of a COE has little meaning even if the organizations and functionalities are familiar.

The greatest relevance for this topic lies in the sea of opportunities in between these two extremes of business size and I refer the reader to Steve's input above.

Lastly: Expanding on what Steve implies regarding reporting, important criteria determining success of a COE and its interface with the business can be the personality and aptitude of the 'champion' assigned. Along with carefully positioning that person 'between' IT and the business, identifying criteria for what qualifies someone as the 'right' person might be a good topic for another discussion (without dismissing the possibility that this function be can be served by a complement of partners)!

Frank Millar
Millar Consultants, LLC

[Updated on 6/1/2010 4:17 PM]

[Updated on 6/1/2010 4:18 PM]

Leonard Edwin

Hi Frank,
I strongly agree that the function of the 'COE' is to provide a 'nucleus' of expert guidance and standardization for delivering 'excelence' in everything the organization does, or, in specific subject/operational areas of service.

Process excellence is part of this service within the business, and should be considered a 'function' providing (process engineering) services to the business as a whole (all LOBs, Operations and IT).

Therefore, the COE as a busines function reports to the CEO and becomes the governance and enabling 'body' to direct the organization towards standardization and efficiency in its operations, procedures and practices.

Frank Castellucci

@Tom

The questions you are asking seem more oriented towards BPM Governance than BPM CoE. Given that the semantics implied is governance (your description has Police or Watchdog written all over it) I don't believe the answer is an "either / or".

Assumption: If the business leaders (C-Level) are driving the BPM initiative/program then the BPM Governance owner would have a direct reporting line to the CEO.

Assumption: If the BPM initiative is narrowly defined and focused on IT or any other C-Level domain (e.g. CFO, COO, etc.) then you would expect it (ownership) would be the province of that lead. How provincial !!!! <grin>.

A CoE, on the other hand, is a more about awareness, training, collaboration and best practices that may or may not be part of the BPM Governance ownership.

Frank V. Castellucci
http://www.axiom1inc.com

[Updated on 7/9/2010 7:27 AM]