Over the years BPM has become solely focused on IT solutions – mechanizing every task – and has forgotten the intrinsic value of human connections. The heart of a business is the communications, connections and interactions between people – management, employees and customers. No IT solution can replace good communication or replicate the nuance of employees and/or customers interacting with each other that results in creative solutions to better meet the needs of the business, employees and customers. When these human connections are open and flowing, good business practices and processes are defined and implemented within an environment that allows for dynamic change by engaged and empowered people.

I wholeheartedly support good IT solutions. They are essential to good business – but they aren’t the heart of the business. The development and creation of great IT solutions for your business is another area where current BPM often forgets the human connection. If your employees (and often customers) are going to be the users of these solutions and these solutions are meant to make your company more productive and profitable, one would think you would include the people who actually do the work as a critical element of the development phases. The biggest cause of failure for new IT solutions is the failure to involve the user in the process.

BPM, at its best, recognizes this is a balancing act – good IT solutions aren’t going to solve the problems created by poor communication and the resulting organizational stagnation – and you can’t develop a great IT solution without empowered and engaged employees. You start with the basics – a common sense approach to good business practices and process. When you have the basics in place you have created the environment for a vital, productive and profitable company. So, let’s start with a little house cleaning (and that doesn’t mean getting rid of people – that’s the last resort) – it means looking at the day to day business and the processes each person works with to get their job done with a fresh perspective. This is not about flowcharting work flow processes – this is about a willingness to listen to your greatest assets, your employees, and a commitment to make fundamental changes to create innovative solutions that increase efficiency, productivity, morale, customer satisfaction and your bottom line.

Today’s economy demands that you look at your businesses with a fresh perspective and a commitment to rout out inefficiencies, arbitrary rules, counterproductive processes and practices. This economy demands a return to a common sense approach to fixing businesses from the top down and the bottom up. Doing otherwise is a critical failure of will and imagination – a desire to maintain the status quo that creates a culture of stifling the will and imagination of those within your business who hold the keys to the fundamental changes that could move your business to the next level of success.

So where do you start? Management tells you that they’re bringing in a business consultant (collective groan). You’ve been there – sucks time out of your working day and nothing substantial ever changes. But what if that consultant not only listened to what you have to say but went about assuring those changes were made. Feel different now? That’s what I do. I’m a Business Process Management consultant who is passionate about a common sense approach that actually fixes businesses with a focus on people and then process. I believe in radical collaboration to create best practices by empowering and engaging those who are on the front lines and back office with a commitment from management to assure those solutions are implemented.

In the coming weeks I’ll continue to share my thoughts on my vision of BPM and I’ll be starting a series of short case studies – what does your business look like from your customer’s perspective? Most people think of process issues as very dry, boring, tedious stuff – flowcharts and spreadsheets and binders filled with charts. But there’s a very human face on both sides of any process – what does your customer see when you have a process problem? I want to open this up for you to share your experiences as a customer too.