The document discusses aligning a business process strategy with enterprise goals. It emphasizes defining the business model, value propositions for customers, and key business processes. A business process strategy should link processes, customer value, and shareholder objectives through a strategy map and balanced scorecard. Metrics should track goals from the perspectives of shareholders, customers, and business processes. Developing this alignment through deliverables like a strategy map is important before implementing new technology like BPM solutions to ensure the investment pays off and meets enterprise objectives.

1. IS YOUR BUSINESS
PROCESS
STRATEGY
ALIGNED WITH
THE ENTERPRISE
GOALS?
8/20/2015 Author: Shankar Ranganathan

2. Is your Business Process Strategy aligned with the Enterprise goals?
Page 1
Is your Business Process Strategy
aligned with the Enterprise goals?
Overview
More and more organizations are leaping into the bandwagon of implementing BPM solutions, with the dream
of transforming their business to the next level. But technology is the first thing that comes into everyone’s mind
when investigating about BPM - Which vendor do we need to go with? This approach is wrong. Have you
heard the saying, “Garbage in-Garbage out”? The same applies here. Your BPM investment would not pay
back, if your Business Process Strategy is not aligned with your enterprise goals.
Make no mistake - you need to have the right BPM solution stack in place, to implement a well thought
Business process strategy. This article will elucidate what Business Process Strategy is all about and what it is
expected to deliver, so that you can make sure that it is aligned to your enterprise goals. When I say
enterprise goals, I mean the shareholder objectives and the value propositions expected by the consumer.
Why Business Process Strategy is important?
Shareholder Objectives
Consumer Value
Propositions
Business Processes
Strategic Assets
(People, Technology …)
Cost
Revenue
Delivers
Enablers

3. Is your Business Process Strategy aligned with the Enterprise goals?
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As you can see from the above diagram, the strategic assets of the organization such as people, technology
and other assets, enable the business processes to create value to the consumers and shareholders. The core
business processes of the organization deliver the value propositions expected by the consumers, which in
turn will increase the ROIC of the BPM initiative.
Steps in formulating Business Process Strategy aligned to Enterprise
Strategy:
1. Define your current Business Model as proposed by Alex Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur:
The business model would help identify the following:
 Customers
 Suppliers
 Core business processes' that directly impacts each of your customer segment.
 As-is Value propositions of each customer segment
 Revenue
 Costs
2. Perform competitive analysis to understand competitors' value propositions.
3. Perform gap analysis between your organization and your competitors' value propositions.
4. Define your To-be value propositions by utilizing design thinking tools like Journey Maps to map the
process from the consumer perspective. The value proposition is the expected outcome of a business process.
Journey maps will help you identify the value propositions that are critical to improve your consumer
touchpoints.
5. Determine resources- includes people and technology to deliver the value propositions.
6. Develop the Kaplan & Norton strategy map to articulate the linkages and alignment between processes,
consumer value propositions and shareholder objectives. Also, the strategy map is a good way to articulate
what kind of skills and technologies are needed to deliver the value propositions. Define KPIs from the
perspective of shareholders, consumers and business processes.
7. Get consensus on the strategy map from the senior leaders.
8. Build a balanced scorecard and define actionable metrics from shareholder, customer and process
perspective to track the KPI's defined in Step 5.
9. Get consensus from all the senior leaders in the organization on the balanced scorecard.

4. Is your Business Process Strategy aligned with the Enterprise goals?
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In summary, a deliverable like business strategy map based on balanced scorecard framework is the first and
the foremost deliverable that the business team needs to complete before approaching IT. IT leaders must
come up with the technology strategy that aligns with the business strategy to deliver the expected business
outcomes.
About Author: Shankar Ranganathan, is working as a business process engineer in the Group Innovation
segment of Humana. He has 17 years of rich experience- business process improvement initiatives including
strategic alignment and IT implementations. Shankar has a Bachelor Degree in Mathematics and Master’s
degree in Computer Science from University of Madras, and an MBA from Kellogg School of Management. He
is also exposed to Lean, Six sigma, ITIL and Agile methodologies and practices.
Email: kyrshankar@gmail.com
Linked-in ID: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ranganathanshankar