Business Process Management (BPM) is known for its ability to automate repeatable processes, create greater visibility of an end-to-end process, and enhance process agility. The end result is improved business performance, which translates into providing greater value for customers and stakeholders. Where the challenge lies, however, is implementing BPM enterprise-wide. In this interview, John Jarrett, Director of Business Process Management at AGF Trust, a premier Canadian-based investment solutions firm, discusses the benefits of deploying BPM across an organisation and reveals how to take the first steps in creating an enterprise-wide strategy.

1. Business Process Management (BPM) is known for its ability to automate repeatable processes, create
greater visibility of an end-to-end process, and enhance process agility. The end result is improved
business performance, which translates into providing greater value for customers and stakeholders.
Where the challenge lies, however, is implementing BPM enterprise-wide.
In this interview, John Jarrett, Director of Business Process Management at AGF Trust, a premier
Canadian-based investment solutions firm, discusses the benefits of deploying BPM across an
organisation and reveals how to take the first steps in creating an enterprise-wide strategy.
How can BPM produce innovation and agility within an organisation? Where can BPM have the
most impact from a business value standpoint?
Business Process Management technology and methodology can improve the execution and work-
quality of virtually any department within an organisation. An important difference between BPM and
previous process improvement methodologies like Business Process Reengineering is that BPM does
not require a “build from the ground up” approach. By improving the visibility into already existing
processes, BPM can uncover areas for innovation that may be unseen or lying dormant.
Process areas that are ripe for optimisation benefits of BPM are typically those with numerous process
steps, excessive hand-offs between people and systems or large numbers of exceptions — also in
areas where there are crucial human decision-points requiring real-time access to data. BPM not only
generates an automation boost to straight-through processing, but it can also deliver the biggest
business value impact in areas that involve ad-hoc and unstructured processes.
Companies often want to start small with BPM by targeting low-hanging fruit around activities such as
employee on-boarding or automated expense management to score a BPM “quick win” that
demonstrates value. However, ultimately mission-critical processes are the ones that deliver the biggest
benefits to the organisation. A mission-critical process that can be treated like an end-to-end “case
scenario,” such as the origination and servicing of a bank loan, is a prime BPM project candidate.
How does BPM tie in with Process Excellence/Lean Six Sigma? What, if any, synergies are there
between BPM and Process Excellence/Lean Six Sigma and how can they best be leveraged as
part of an overall Process Excellence strategy?
I think that there are several key ties between BPM and Process Excellence. One of my mantras is that
“you cannot successfully figure out where you need to go if you do not know where you have been.”
BPM provides the foundation to help determine where you need to go. BPM will help to uncover the
concrete and repeatable processes that can then be monitored, measured, and improved upon. Or, if
the BPM platform is tied into a reporting database, then it can also provide reliable metrics for various
processes, which may then be analysed for further improvement opportunities.
Without BPM, an organisation may have processes that are documented, but for various reasons are
not actually followed according to the way they were documented. In this case, studying these
processes for improvement opportunities will be a hit and miss affair.
Also, often reengineering efforts are based on a review of metrics to identify process improvement
opportunities. However, it’s important to consider first whether those metrics are the right metrics, as the
metrics could potentially be just as flawed as the processes being targeted for improvement. It is
therefore risky to base process improvement decisions on a flawed set of metrics as it could deliver
unexpected results. Here the linkage between BPM and Six Sigma is that metrics driven from
standardised, repeatable processes through BPM will provide a better set of measures to feed into a Six
Sigma type of analysis of the problem.

2. For many institutions, there are even bigger tie-ins to corporate governance, compliance, and risk
management, all of which are critical due to their importance to overall organisational well-being. A
company may have a wonderfully detailed set of policies, procedures, and processes. However, if
managers and front-line employees do not understand them, do not follow them, or misinterpret them,
they will not have served their purpose. With BPM, the business can create a process which is both the
“approved” and the “actual” organisational workflow process. The process could then have key activities
embedded right into the platform such as escalations to certain authority levels, access levels to work on
something at a given step, and/or have built in quality controls where required. Thus, BPM provides both
the discipline and governance so that the policy, processes and procedures are actually being followed.
If an organisation is looking to implement BPM enterprise-wide, what is the most compelling
internal business case?
If you want to free up business users from mundane tasks that can be automated so that they may focus
on more value-added or complex steps in the process, then you have a good potential case for
exploring BPM. If you want to improve consistency, repeatability, and documentation of your existing
processes then you have a good case for exploring BPM. The goal of enhancing corporate governance,
compliance and risk management also provides a compelling business case. With a good BPM platform,
your people can also be freed up to focus on the work at hand rather than all of the other stuff that
impedes their work. This creates better quality output along with more consistent and repeatable activity
which can improve employee productivity. It also generates other potential benefits such as reduced
cycle or training time.
What are the critical first steps in creating an enterprise-wide BPM strategy? What are the critical
factors of a successful strategy?
I think that it is important to have leaders at the top who are committed to BPM. Their support is critical
in terms of driving organisational engagement, securing funding for various IT and business resources,
and sponsoring the vendor that will be required. They also help to champion the changes that the
organisation may have to go through on its BPM journey.
Establishing a Centre of Excellence (COE) within the organisation is also critical as successful BPM
cannot be accomplished by one area in isolation. Full participation from IT, the business, risk
management, compliance, the vendor and all other areas that have a contribution to make will go a long
way towards integrating BPM across the organisation. It’s important to note that there may be
challenges where BPM can blur the traditional boundaries of functions across various departments.
Bringing all the players to work on BPM together will help ensure that the key components for success
besides just the system components are considered in the development of enterprise-wide BPM.
Another major component related to the COE is to determine ownership and accountabilities for all
aspects of the BPM initiative. The first critical question to ask is who is the leader of the BPM initiative,
that is, will it be an IT-led initiative or business-led? This question needs to be tabled at the very
beginning of the journey plus during the on-boarding stages of the platform, as well post initial rollout.
Apart from a decision around BPM leadership accountability, clear owners also need to be appointed to
engage in the journey from both IT and the business.
Consideration also needs to be given to creating a specific process group in the organisation, or to
empowering an existing one with some independence for process development. Ideally, this process
group should reside outside of both IT and front-line operational groups. This structure ensures that the
process group is well positioned to determine the optimal use of technology versus people resources. It
also provides the opportunity for the organisation to take more global or end-to-end view across the
enterprise versus a narrow focus specific around one or two areas.
Finally, the choice of BPM technology must be aligned to the strategic objectives and business
requirements that will be crucial to the success of your BPM program. It’s important to be clear about
what requirements you are seeking from BPM (e.g., is it ease-of-use, is it workflow management, or is it
content management, etc.) so that you can choose the right vendor to meet your needs.
If a financial services company is looking to implement a BPM platform enterprise-wide, how
should it be phased in within the company? For example, should it start in areas with the most
buy-in for instance? Or in those most urgently underperforming? Or in those where the
opportunity for innovation is ripe?

3. Every organisation is different, so I do not think there is a one-size-fits-all approach that is consistently
the best approach. A good case could probably be made for starting off the platform using any of the
above triggers as the focal point, and in each case there is a tremendous opportunity for success and
hence buy-in over the long run.
Instead, I would come at the problem from a slightly different angle. I would try to carve out an area,
team, or process that is fairly small and self-contained, but which could deliver the high visibility
necessary to champion BPM as the lightening rod of change. I would try to showcase an area, team, or
process which would benefit from BPM; however, the need should not be so great as to drive up
complexity. A small and quick win can help generate buy-in for a larger, more mission-critical BPM
program.
In terms of selecting the right team or area, here are some criteria to consider:
 Focus on the strength of the underlying people in the potential target areas. You want people who
are motivated and who have the right skills to undertake the complexities of going down the BPM
path.
 The group should also have a solid understanding over their work processes and ideally would
have them well documented.
 They should also be able to clearly articulate and decide with some confidence upon their business
requirements. The reason that I share this point is that the group needs to have an end-state vision
in mind, and they need to understand how their people will work with the technology to change the
way in which they operate. There is great risk to the program if these components are not in place.
The risk is that articulated requirements end up not being exactly what was needed or that once
BPM is implemented, the outcome is different than what the business unit had in mind. This can
significantly impact the successful implementation of the BPM platform.
To sum up, find an area that could generate a quick win. Some selection factors would be to assess the
strength and process maturity of the potential candidate teams and weigh them against the lower
complexity process opportunities along with where there is the most potential impact/visibility. I feel
strongly that this approach will provide the greatest opportunity for success in order to get the BPM ball
rolling.
1. What does success look like with the BPM program? It would be great if you could talk about what
quick wins are there to be had and how can momentum be sustained; how can progress of the
program be tracked; and what are the key KPIs that the BPM platform should track.
Success with BPM can take on several forms:
 One form is around cycle time and productivity improvements. For example, suppose you have a
“pre-BPM” process that is very manual and time consuming for users. On top of this, the ramp-up
and training cycle is very long before employees are able to be anywhere near accurate or
productive in their work. If after BPM you are able to significantly cut down these cycle times while
increasing staff productivity, then you have made considerable improvement. Some measures to
try to track here would be training time, individual employee productivity, error rates or other related
quality control factors.
 Another area of success could be on the internal audit and risk management side of the business.
The ability to clearly review a process and to make key adjustments in a timely manner is critical to
a well functioning business. Policies and procedures should also be followed by users in a more
repeatable and consistent manner. Therefore, audit results are great KPIs and indicators of BPM
success.
 Finally, perhaps the quickest and biggest win is simply greater visibility into the work itself.
Managers can view a dashboard of the active processes in their group. They can instantly view
how long tasks have been in flight, what state they are in, and which teams or individuals are
working on them. Other systems may provide a view into some components, but typically, the
manager needs to translate what they see into a mental picture of their pipeline, evaluate how they
think they are doing, and weigh this against team capacity. Doing it the old way can take up much
time and manual effort to obtain a good snap-shot around how the team is functioning. Here, KPIs
may need to be a bit anecdotal with manager feedback before and after in the form of a survey or
observational notes. Otherwise, if Service Level Agreement data or cycle time benchmarks are
available, then these would also be good KPIs to track.

4. How important is the ability to “modify on the fly” and how does this manifest itself in the
solution? How can you ensure that your enterprise-wide BPM platform is equipped to adapt to
the changes to the business, e.g., recent M&A activity?
If an organisation wishes to be nimble, this concept is critical. Even if this is not an immediate need, or if
the organisation is less fluid with its needs, there may be changes required for seasonality, volume or
staffing level fluctuations, or other business drivers, which will fuel the need to make ongoing changes.
The chosen platform should either be flexible enough to support an “advanced” business-user who can
make changes, or it should be something that IT can deliver within a 30 day “maintenance release” type
of cycle. If the system is not able to support business needs, then there is a risk that the business will
find ways to work around it or despite it, which can ultimately undermine the whole concept of BPM.
What other challenges should financial services firm be wary of while implementing an
enterprise-wide BPM platform? How can they get around these challenges?
BPM is not a big bang, but a journey. You are not finished after the initial roll-out, so plan to be in it for
the long-haul. There will be another area of the enterprise to on-board, or the on-boarded areas will
either need changes due to new products, volumes, objectives, or policy changes. Further, they may
simply need additional adjustments to be made as they become more familiar with and learn how to
better leverage the tool. Strongly consider opting for a regular system release cycle that is at least
monthly or quarterly at most. Otherwise, you risk regressing into creative workarounds that undermine
the goals of BPM.
If possible, once an area is targeted to go onto a BPM platform, select some key processes and model
them on this platform as soon as possible so that they can be turned into a compelling demonstration for
the affected team. Once they can see their work in action, their understanding of the system will change
significantly, along with their view on what their requirements really should be. Any feedback received at
this point can either be addressed so that adjustments can be made going forward, or the feedback can
be talked through until there is better alignment (or both!). Without some initial process modelling, you
run the risk of a big delivery that might fail to meet expectations, could miss the mark, or may have to be
completely re-worked. This is a critical change management step that will help ensure better transition to
the new ways of doing things. This is also another reason why the COE concept is so important in
ensuring that those who are impacted by BPM have the opportunity to participate in the design and
become fully immersed in the program.
Interview by Genna Weiss.