Human nature, rather than the complexity of implementing
technology, is the biggest barrier to companies adopting successful
business process management strategies.
Analyst Forrester Group says too many organisations believe they
can implement business process management (BPM) with "nothing more
than a comprehensive set of tools and a good return on investment
story".
Forrester warned that failure to also effectively address
cultural resistance and "organisational desire" can lead to even
the best-intentioned BPM projects failing.
Forrester analyst Ken Vollmer said, "Cultural resistance tends
to be a ‘bottom-up’ phenomenon that occurs when people working in
individual work groups sabotage improvement efforts due to
resistance to change driven by fear of potential job losses."
Vollmer said that "organisational desire" can play an equally
damaging part in curtailing successful BPM projects.
"Organisational desire is a ‘top-down’ organisational attribute
that relates to the willingness of the senior management team to
forcefully drive process improvement efforts throughout the
organisation, in the face of resistance to loss of management
authority within the operating units," he said.
To overcome cultural resistance, Forrester recommended companies
embarking on a BPM project should consider forming a process
improvement team made up of key individuals from each of the
functional areas involved in the process.
The team should be chartered with analysing process bottlenecks,
evaluating possible remedies, and implementing corrective
action.
This approach, says Forrester, fosters teamwork between the
functional groups, and results in a situation where the people with
the deepest working knowledge of the process are the ones that end
up "selling" the improvements to the rest of the organisation.
Cultural resistance then gradually fades into the background,
said Forrester.
To tackle organisational desire, Forrester suggested that BPM
project efforts should start with a strong senior management
commitment that is clear, concise, and highly visible to the entire
organisation.
This should address concerns certain managers may have about
their own positions in the organisation.