In this dream, the company’s business processes are integrated and no longer hampered by organizational silos. Next generation BI platforms are finally realizing the returns outlined in the business case. In addition, you have successfully spread the benefits of BI to a wider audience of users and business operations owners. Decision-makers have access to actionable information and are able to perform real-time diagnostics of why key performance indicators are met or missed. Executives are no longer waiting for senior analysts to explain problems noted in last month’s performance dashboards. Instead, line managers now have access to the intelligence needed to identify problems in real time, as well as the information needed to act on the problems.
In your dream, contemplate the success of your BI program and the benefits gained by empowering process owners to be accountable and understand the information their business processes generate. Process owners have been able to drive costs down while also adding more value to the information management function. You have successfully achieved the benefits and the promise of process-oriented BI!
Then you wake up.
You are wondering if you will develop the business process management and BI capabilities needed to make process-oriented BI a reality. You also wake up to the reality of delivering on the promises made when the initial BI platform was implemented. The goal was to expand upon the value of the company’s information. Significant investments were made in the existing BI platform, but you have not seen a measurable return. Business process owners are frustrated at the pace and quality of BI delivery. There has been success in delivering solutions and applications to support strategic BI and analytical BI capabilities, but operational BI initiatives are still lagging. In addition, the ability to extract real-time, actionable information from business processes is lacking.
The Journey to Process-Oriented BI
Process-oriented BI is the marrying of BPM and BI capabilities to provide full transparency into business processes. Process-oriented BI provides the business context for measures, metrics and information to optimize business processes proactively based on near real-time, actionable information. It provides the insight needed to streamline processes and reduce costs, as well as the business context for variances on the executive dashboard.
Defining process-oriented BI is simple. Providing the roadmap for how to achieve process-oriented BI is more complex and requires careful planning and continuous navigation while en route. The journey to process-oriented BI has no clear road signs and no GPS to assist with the trip. To achieve and maintain successful execution of process-oriented BI, several key factors must be considered:
- End-to-end business process knowledge;
- Continuous improvement mindset;
- BI capabilities of operations;
- Data governance discipline; and
- Data latency reduction.
These factors should be treated as directional signals along the road. Depending on where you are on your journey, these factors will tell you where you need to go next.
End-to-End Business Process Knowledge
End-to-end business process knowledge is critical. Without a detailed understanding of the end-to-end process, it is impossible to define the appropriate measures that govern the process and link the operational measures to the strategic KPIs they impact. You cannot measure what you do not know. Knowing what, how, why and who is essential, as is having knowledge of the data, the event and the workflow that drive business processes. It is also critical to intricately understand the handoffs between upstream and downstream processes. This should be obvious, but experience has shown that documentation of operational processes typically falls short, provides inadequate detail or is outdated. Knowledge of processes is power. The better you identify the measures that should govern your processes, the faster you will achieve process-oriented BI.
Continuous Improvement Mindset
Process-oriented BI enables ongoing performance improvement. In standard business process re-engineering projects, one of the culminating tasks is typically “Establish a continuous improvement program.” Process-oriented BI finally brings that task to completion. To achieve continuous improvement, it is necessary to drive analytics to the operational level and push accountability of analytics to the business owners. The individuals responsible for performing operational processes must own the responsibility of measuring their tasks and interpreting their analytics. A culture of continuous improvement must be established to encourage individuals at the operational level to own their operational analytics and drive the changes needed to achieve expected efficiencies.
BI Capabilities of Operations
To truly embed BI in business processes and provide transparency and actionable information, BI programs must cater to operational users and provide user-friendly BI capabilities. Operational users are not analysts, but they understand the data better than outside analysts do. They just require different types of tools to facilitate navigation of their information. Operational owners need user-friendly reporting and analysis tools that can guide them through their information in an orderly manner so they can assess problems and issues without getting lost in the data. They also need the ability to easily create their own reports so they can replicate the questions, queries and searches they want to standardize. In addition to providing a more user-friendly tool, integrating operational analysts into operations is another way to build the necessary BI skills of operational owners.
On the journey to achieving process-oriented BI, common challenges include the limitations of traditional BI platforms and the organizational positioning of the analytical function. Traditional BI platforms focus on the requirements of a small population of BI users: typically analysts and executives. BI platforms should be expanded to include the functional and informational requirements of process owners. Organizationally, analytical functions need to be integrated into the business processes – not just serving as monitoring capabilities, but also helping to interpret, identify and translate process-driven data.
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