Alex Popov of Process2go explains how BPM has come of age in the mobile telecom sector

1. Making BPM deliver:
How the UK’s mobile
operators do it
alex popov
process2go limited
instant process transformation
©September 2007

2. Introduction
Telecoms Business Process Management 2007

3. Agenda
• Brief history & current trends: promises fulfilled and not
• How do we measure success and what is it?
• How can we be more successful:
– Process office structure: function over process?
– Process modelling: what, when and why we model?
– Process practitioner's toolkit: sledge-hammer to a nut?
– Modelling Tools: whose needs first – analysts’ or process
owners’?
Telecoms Business Process Management 2007

4. Brief History & Trends
• BPM is now an established discipline
• We’ve come a long way over the last decade
• In the UK mobile market today, BPM is called upon
primarily to contribute to bottom line through operational
efficiency and regulatory compliance. BPM’s role in top-
line growth is yet to be proven and accepted.
Telecoms Business Process Management 2007

5. Brief History & Trends
Top-Line Growth Bottom Line Contribution
• Product Lifecycle • Fire-fighting projects
Management
• Process as a USP • Regulatory Compliance
• Process Model as • Best Practice
an asset alignment
Telecoms Business Process Management 2007

6. Promises we’ve made
• Remove silos and stovepipes
• Align process to strategy to
deliver competitive advantage
• Cheaper and / or more efficient
processes
• Flexible and adaptive operation
• Alignment of process, function
and technology
• Customer delight and increased
profitability
Telecoms Business Process Management 2007

7. Measure of success
• Typically, existing financial, budgeting and reward
systems do not recognise the costs nor value the
contribution of any process to the bottom-line of the
organisation
• Traditionally, Costs, Revenues (and budgets) are
allocated by function
• In a project-driven (read “fire and forget”) mode of
operation, it is far easier to assign benefits to a
technology project
• In employee performance management, there’s little
ownership for results that an employee / manager are
not directly accountable for
Telecoms Business Process Management 2007

8. What is Success?
• Executive understands which processes are the
company’s key differentiator in the market and protects
their IPR; only the company’s brand is worth more
• The economic value of each process is understood and
constantly evaluated
• When one process changes, the process owners agree
the allowable impact on other processes
• Low value processes are off-shored or outsourced
• Often, IT systems are aligned to business processes
(and not the other way around)
Telecoms Business Process Management 2007

9. How to get there
• What can we do to make BPM deliver:
– Process office structure: function over process?
– Process modelling: what, when and why we model?
– Process practitioner's toolkit: sledge-hammer to a nut?
– Modelling Tools: whose needs first – analysts’ or process
owners’?
Telecoms Business Process Management 2007

10. Process Office
• UK mobile operators each have a
central ‘Process Team’…
• Who lament the fact that
organisation is not aligned to
process!
• It’s time to align process
organisation (people) to the
process of process transformation
Telecoms Business Process Management 2007

11. Process Modelling
• Enterprise Process Architecture
– be all and end all?
• We are now learning to take the
unforgiving reality into
consideration:
- grappling with the question
of how detailed the
Enterprise Model should be
- how to keep it up-to-date at
Corporate Market
Strategy Services
an acceptable cost
Manage Manage
Product Publishing
Manage Manage
Manage
- how to extend its uses
Money Customer
beyond the designer /
Engineering
and
Operations
Manage
Finances
Manage
Channels
analyst community
Support Services
Telecoms Business Process Management 2007

12. Methodologies / Toolkit
• Don’t use a sledge-hammer to crack a nut
• Challenge organisation’s view of their
process maturity before carefully picking
your tools (and your language!) to match
their maturity / capability
• Consider the objectives of your initiative in
your tool selection
• Do not re-invent the wheel – use best
practice models (eTOM, ITIL)
Telecoms Business Process Management 2007

13. Software Tools
• The market is brimming with BPM software tools and
their feature set keeps growing
• However, at the core of each tool is the modelling
capability and this is where we don’t seem to make much
progress
• The tools are still geared to the analyst rather than a
process owner – hampering any transfer of ownership
from one to the other
Telecoms Business Process Management 2007

14. Conclusions
• Capture and hold the attention of the CxO/boardroom
• Recognise true financial value of process, and value it
as an asset
• Do as we preach and break the functional straight-
jacket of a ‘process department’
• Avoid waste – model what’s important, not everything
we do
• Recognise the environment – match your approach to
both organisation’s process maturity and the task at
hand
• Get the tools we deserve – don’t choose your tools from
what’s available, push the vendors to deliver what you
need
Telecoms Business Process Management 2007

15. Questions
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apopov@process2go.com
instant process transformation
Telecoms Business Process Management 2007