Getting up and running
It's keynote time again, at least for those who already left yesterday evening's party. There are rumors that some are still dancing to the beats in Tempodrom club. Anyway, I'm back and ready to cover the second day at ProcessWorld 2011 for you.
At the beginning, a short movie with impressions of the previous day is shown. I'm always surprised how they manage to process the images that fast and put together a really good clip in just a few hours.
Keynote by Dr. Kirchmer of Accenture
First keynote speaker of today is Dr. Matthias Kirchmer, executive director at Accenture for BPM. If I remember correctly, Dr. Kirchmer is a long-term veteran of the BPM space and he was a member of the research lab founded by Prof. Scheer. Dr. Kirchmer shortly reflects on this long history of BPM and concludes that today holistic BPM is finally possible to implement, because the tools are mature enough.
Dr. Kirchmer is also a teaching professor. This might explain why he initiated several research projects at Accenture to investigate why BPM works for companies and what companies usually achieve by applying BPM. As a result of cooperation with Queensland University of Technology, they came up with what they call the BPM Value Framework. This framework structures the different values BPM delivers. Among the different values, the most important one for most users of BPM is transparency. Besides, the framework distinguishes between an external and internal focus. If taken an external focus, BPM provides the following values:
- quality
- agility
- networking
If BPM is focused on improving internal processes, usually the following values might be achieved:
- compliance
- integration
- efficiency
For example, if we take a look at yesterday's keynote by Kühne & Nagel, they had a clear internal focus to achieve maximum efficiency. I think, this framework is a good tool to explain what BPM might deliver.
For Dr. Kirchmer this framework is the base for something he calls "value-driven BPM". It basically means to clearly state upfront what BPM will deliver so that an investment in BPM can be justified. Value-driven BPM itself is a process, which must be carefully managed. To make this process successful, the following six components must be established:
- strategy
- governance
- modeling & repository
- performance monitoring
- automation
- managed services
Dr. Kirchmer continues talking about the importance of reference models. Here, he is not talking about general purpose reference models, but that models used by Accenture consultants at customers are collected and aligned. They put those models into a central ARIS repository so that every Accenture consultant now has a central place to access this collected knowledge. Dr. Kirchmer highly recommends measuring how often this repository is accessed. For example, before they started integrating all reference models in a central repository, they only measured a few hundred accesses to it. Within 4 years, they were able to boost this number by more than 20 times.
I liked this talk by Dr. Kirchmer, because it put academic findings to use and presented it in a way that the findings are easy to understand for people not involved in any research. I would love to see more BPM researchers follow this approach, because we practitioners are probably missing many important findings of researchers.
Keynote by Alexander Osterwalder
Now, Alexander Osterwalder takes over the stage. He presents the core ideas of his latest book. He starts off with a small exercise for the listeners. He asks them to write down their definition of "business models". It turns out that three participants came up with very different definitions. And that's what Mr. Osterwalder is trying to show: We don't have an agreement on some of the core terms of BPM.
In his view, "business model" is not a good term at all, so he prefers to talk about business model canvas. In this canvas, nine building blocks exist to document what a company is doing:
- offer
- key activities
- key partners
- key resources
- customer relationships
- customer benefits
- cost structure
- revenue streams
- channels
He illustrates the different parts of the business model canvas using the Nespresso brand. He shows how to illustrate the whole "business model" of Nespresso on a single sheet of paper using his "business model canvas". In my view, this is a neat tool to quickly document the strategy of a company or a part of it. For example, I could imagine startups using this to get all investors on board and to discuss with them how the startup intends to approach the market.
Now, Mr. Osterwalder shows how this can be supported with today's tools. For example, the ARIS tools could be used for this purpose. He also showcases a new iPad app, which could be used in a discussion to interactively test different business models. I like this kind of interactive approach, but I wonder how often it is needed, because we don't change our business models every day. Still, a good tool.
Innovation awards 2011
Now, it is time for some glamour, because the innovation awards are given. I like the way the award session is organized. In the past, it has been quite lengthy, but now it is really a fresh presentation, probably benefitting from Mark Jeffries good moderation.
The "process excellence achievement award" is given to the organization making the biggest step forward in terms of BPM. This year, the award is given to Bundesagentur für Arbeit, the German agency for employment.
The "business excellence vision award" is given to The Linde Group. I will cover a presentation of Linde later today.
The "IT to business alignment award" is handed to the organization who managed best in integrating business and IT. This year, the award goes to OmnicomMediaGroup, a German media company.
The "partner innovation award" is handed to the partner, who created most value for its customers using Software AG technology. This year, this award is given to Deloitte.
The following picture shows the winners. Congrats to them!
Note: Check this overview post to get all links to the other live posts from ProcessWorld 2011 in Berlin
