Business Process Improvement is on every executive checklist, but I fear far too often, it is just that – an item on a checklist. How can we rethink business process improvement and make it real and tangible? I recently chatted with Sandy Kemsley about her keynote at the ABBYY Technology Summit, and she shared some observations with me.
First, it is not a time for business as usual. The times are disruptive ones. We are in a period of radical business change, enabled by digital platforms, requiring that we think about new business models, new markets, and new competencies. Organizations need to seek innovation, not just incremental process improvements. It is time to rethink processes, not just marginally improve them.
Sandy notes that organizations need to turn their thinking from inside-out to outside-in, and this means understanding – really understanding – customer journeys. Organizations need to commit to mapping customer activities and goals. You need to make your business part of the customer’s process, rather than the other way around. And you need to optimize for the customer’s goals, not (just) internal operational efficiency.
This creates an enormous incentive for organizations to pursue intelligent capture initiatives. These initiatives should include:
A major upside for organizations is by using intelligent capture to pursue long-term digital transformation initiatives, you also get short-term operational benefits such as:
I think you’ll find Sandy’s presentation interesting.