One of the things that I tried to illustrate was the transformational nature of business initiatives that put customer outcomes at the heart of every process. I lamented the excessive focus on data and technologies as if they were the silver bullets to cure the current sluggishness of the digital growth in Australia.
The rational of identifying the core processes lies in their strategic contribution in achieving the organization's mission and vision by focusing on the critical business drivers. Data and information are paramount in relevantly serving customers and stakeholders and they play a pivotal role in discovering and executing key business process. It's often said that data is a strategic asset of any organization. True. Very true. Similarly, and I believe more fundamentally, processes are a strategic assets that needs to be managed and supported.
The reason why I believe that processes are more fundamental than data (not more important...) is that as a discipline, a process-based approach offers a perspective that goes beyond functional activities and force everybody in the organization to focus on how the work is actually done by rediscovering the essential nature of the business strategy.
To help frame the discussion, I proposed the following break-down. Business processes must be:
- Customer Centric. Customers are the biggest stakeholders in the process output. This is paramount to define and design business processes.
- Business Driven.The processes are meant to meet the requirements of the business strategy, e.g. faster Time To Market.
- Data Driven. Factual and accurate data is crucial in enabling better customer experience
This break-down also suggests how businesses should go about developing new initiatives that aim at improving customer satisfaction and revenue.
At any rate, this is a topic that I will explore in the upcoming posts.
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