Developing and Implementing Process Models and Repositories

Value-driven business process management is a critical management discipline for driving efficiency and innovation, as well as achieving the organization’s strategic objectives.

Implementing value-focused business process management and aligning it to the strategic imperatives of the organization often achieves the best impact that drives business results.

Companies use process models to design, communicate to and educate employees about how business strategies are to be executed.

These process models provide an organized and formal description of business processes.

On the other hand, repositories play the crucial role of storing and managing process models in a structured form that makes it easier to retrieve and use the right process content.

One benefit of implementing well-structured process repositories is that they provide transparency across the various business units over what to do and this is essential for value creation.

For example, they play a critical role when rolling out strategic changes such as business transformations or translating a new operating model into executable steps, defining measurement points for KPIs, supporting innovation around new process, and enhancing compliance.

When developing and implementing process models and repositories, it is therefore imperative that management understand their drivers and how they impact process execution.

These drivers include changes in the business environment, changing technology and changing socio-economic environment.

By modelling and documenting the different business processes within the organization, management are able to identify points of inefficiencies and address them since the process repository plays an important role of integrating information about which processes have delivered value before and those that have not.

These visual capabilities of a process repository assist managers to make real time decisions that drive improved efficiency and new outcomes.

Creating a repository in order to drive value and improve business performance requires management to understand why the repository is being created.

Failure to do so will result in management getting substandard results. In order to create an effective and value-driven repository strategy, the following components are essential:

• Business Case: Before starting out, it is important that value outcomes of the model are clearly defined and understood. Examples of value outcomes include facilitating process improvement, improving risk management, enabling compliance, consolidating applications or driving process-focused system consolidation.
• Content: The content of the repository must be both valid and useful. Having the right content will help management execute the defined objectives. For instance, suppose enhancing enterprise risk management is one of the defined objectives, the content will depend on this objective. In order to make sure that the content of the repository is both valid and useful, management will need to study the different risks with the potential of affecting process execution, their impact and how to reduce or mitigate them.
• Format: This relates to the way the content in the repository is described. Documenting a process completely in text format usually makes the process document long and less appealing. On the contrary, making use of graphical models makes it much easier to understand process relationships.
• Governance: A specific individual or department of the organization must be in charge of controlling the development and maintenance of the repository. The appointed person or department must be able to make decisions about which processes need priority, who owns the processes, measures of success of the repository, modifications of the repository, quality assurance of the repository, process changes and etc.
• Usability and Tools: This involves making decisions about what software to use for the repository. It is important that management first define what they want to do and then select the best software tool to use. Before investing in a software tool, management must first determine which repository is best for the organization; how the tool will be technically managed; how the tool will be deployed into the organization; whether the tool can be extended or adapted to meet the organization’s needs as well as whether the tool supports a particular methodology that the organization wants to use or does not want to use.

By applying a value-driven approach when building and using process models, organizations are best positioned to reap positive impacting results from process repositories.

Management will be able to get clarity on how process models are used and also how they can become business assets that drive value.