1. SMART ORGANIZATION
Business value is created by making faster
and better informed business decisions.
This document is of relevance to any
managerial position interested in
perfecting efficiency of the organization.
Primoz Gorjup, March 11, 2013 1
WHAT IS SMART ORGANIZATION? WHY DOES IT MATTER?
Smart Organization is a set of Business Process
Management concepts and solutions enabling
more efficient business decision-making.
Smart Organization is a next stage in developing an
organization capable of making faster and better informed
decisions on all levels, from top management to frontend
workers.
Smart Organization solutions integrate corporate IT and SOA
systems with reasoning-technologies of semantical analysis,
machine learning and ontological knowledge management.
A goal is to develop a corporate IT system capable of
assissting staff in more efficient decision-making while a long
term vision is an AI-like business system capable of self-
learning and autonomous adaptation of business processes
according to the requirements of a decision at hand.
Figure 1: Decision-making process
Smart Organization is proposed as a potential
response to business trends and challenges that
will be shaping the future:
 Shift of global power – with the rising power of
BRIC countries business environment is becoming
ever more competitive
[1]
 Cost efficiency – market pressures to reduce costs
and prices through complete supply chain will
continue in the following years
 Customer centricity – customers and their word of
mouth is as important as ever
 Extending enterprise networks – growing
importance of extended enterprise networks and
their integration is important source of innovation,
knowledge creation and also of increasing business
complexity
[2]
 Big data analytics – big data and its potential for
identifying patterns and valuable hidden
information has firmly established as a big topic
[3]
 Intelligent BPM – the ability to react extremely
agile is among the most important goals of
intelligent BPM, as is closing the gap between IT
and other departments
[4]
 Process agility – intensified demands for ability to
continuously improve and quickly adapt business
processes
 Process integration – integration of business
processes through entire value chain will continue
to be a relevant source of competitive advantage
1) Define the
problem
2) Specify context of
the problem
3) Identify and
evaluate possible
solutions
4) Make a decision

2. SMART ORGANIZATION
Business value is created by making faster
and better informed business decisions.
This document is of relevance to any
managerial position interested in
perfecting efficiency of the organization.
Primoz Gorjup, March 11, 2013 2
BENEFITS OF SMART ORGANIZATION VALUE OF SMART ORGANIZATION
Smart Organization is primarily supporting more
efficient implementation of business goals
therefore increasing productivity. Key benefits
are:
 Faster and more informed business decisions
 Communication quality and information exchange
are improved in speed and relevance
 Improved satisfaction of customers and employees
 Increased transparency, less required time for
effective employee trainings and easier company-
wide implementation of best practices
 Faster acquisition of decision-relevant information
and less required time for analyzing data
 Better quality of task implementation and reduced
risk levels
 Improved supervision and management of
exceptions
 Improved compliance with industry standards and
requirements
 Improved capability of managing increased
complexity
 Improved agility and entrepreneurial capacity of the
organization
Achieve more with less.
Have satisfied customers and stakeholders.
Reduce costs and increase revenue.
Smart Organization is not a single solution and
similarly to Business Process Management
(BPM) it does not yield a single ROI. Smart
Organization as an extension of BPM is
estimated to provide comparable value to other
BPM projects:
 Best-in-Class companies achieved a weighted
average 41% year over year increase in process
efficiency – measured as a reduction in manual
steps in key business processes – five times the
increase of all other companies. Best-in-Class
companies drove a weighted average 26% year
over year reduction in operating costs compared
with a 15% increase in Laggard companies. Best-in-
Class companies achieved a weighted average 41%
year over year improvement in customer
responsiveness – four times the improvement of
the industry average.
[5]
 A good rule of thumb based on hundreds of case
studies is to anticipate productivity savings of 30%
to 50% for clerical and other back-office processes
and 20% to 25% for knowledge worker
processes.
[6]
 More than half of respondents who conducted a
return on investment (ROI) study achieved a
positive ROI in three years or less, and 70% of
those same individuals cited direct cost savings as
a benefit.
[7]

3. SMART ORGANIZATION
Business value is created by making faster
and better informed business decisions.
This document is of relevance to any
managerial position interested in
perfecting efficiency of the organization.
Primoz Gorjup, March 11, 2013 3
SHOULD SMART ORGANIZATION BECOME
A STRATEGIC PRIORITY?
REQUIREMENTS FOR IMPLEMENTING THE
VALUE
A decisive competitive advantage is paramount in
securing future market opportunities and Smart
Organization has potential to provide such
advantage.
With increasing processing power of computers, exponential
growth of available business data and already available
reasoning-technologies it is natural to expect important
progress in this domain and therefore prepare the business
for exploiting vast future opportunities by starting early work
on systems enabling super-efficient decision-making.
Smart Organization can help secure a firm competitive
position but only if it is one of the strategic priorities
supported by strong commitment from the management.
Smart Organization is a set of organizational
changes and innovations and in interest of
successful implementation critical success
factors[8]
need to be in place:
 Commitment of the management
 Defined and shared vision
 Passionate champion
 Dedicated team and resources
 Integrated mix of business and IT knowledge
 Formalized program
 Formalized, informatized, integrated, measured
and automated business processes
CONTACT INFORMATION REFERENCES
For any additional information regarding options
in implementing Smart Organization please
contact:
Primoz Gorjup
+386 31 815 915
primoz.gorjup@gmail.com
[1] J.A. “Global trends for 2013.” The Economist. Nov 26, 2012.
Web. Mar 4, 2013.
[2] Nedeltchev, P. “The new opportunities of enterprise
networking.” Cisco Systems. February 2012. Web. 5/3/13.
[3] Gartner Press Release. “Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Strategic
Technology Trends for 2013.” Gartner. Oct 23 2012. Web. Feb 15,
2013.
[4] Hill, J. and Rock, G. »BPM Outlook: Gartner Outlines 2013
Trends.« Gartner and BPMInstitute.org. February 26, 2013. Web.
March 5, 2013.
[5] Lock, M. “BPM and Beyond.” Aberdeen Group. Nov 2008. Web.
Dec 18, 2012.
[6] Richardson, C. et al. “The ROI Of BPM Suites.” Forrester. Aug 22
2011. Web. Feb 14, 2013.
[7] Frappaolo, C. and Keldsen, D. “Business Process Management
(BPM).” AIIM Market Intelligence. Q3 2008. Web. Dec 18, 2012.
[8] Govindarajan V. “Innovation's Nine Critical Success Factors.”
HBR Blog Network. July 5, 2011. Web. Mar 5 2013