By: Frank Buytendijk, chief marketing officer
B-Eye-Network is a thought leadership website with articles and blogs of experts in the field of IT, and mainly specialized in business intelligence and performance management. I am proud to announce I have a channel there, amidst other experts such as James Taylor, Rick van der Lans, Claudia Imhoff, Bill Inmon and others. On this channel I will post the research on IT philosophy, leading up to my next book. The channel is called The channel is called The Machiavellian CIO - Strategy, Analytics, Philosophy and More.
Please visit and follow my channel!
frank
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Best Wishes
Be Informed wishes you a wonderful MMXI (2011).
"eMbrace coMpleXIty, simplify your organization"
"eMbrace coMpleXIty, simplify your organization"
Monday, December 20, 2010
Transformational Technology
by: Frank Buytendijk, chief marketing officer
In my first job, I was an implementation consultant of OLAP systems. OLAP stands for On-Line Analytical Processing, and it describes a type of data access that is multidimensional of nature. Instead of storing data in columns and in rows, like in a relational database, it is stored based on pointers to coordinates, such as product, customer, region, time, and so forth.
OLAP, at that time, was transformational technology. It revolutionized management information systems. Queries would take less than a second, instead of often minutes. Furthermore, reporting became a dynamic and interactive process. Lastly, these type of systems were often set up and maintained by power users, not by database administrators.
This was a true transformation, a radical new approach. This technology, new to most companies back then, didn't bring 10% performance improvement, it was a hundred times faster. It didn't save 15% on implementation time, it was 5 times faster to implement. It wasn't 20% cheaper, it was 10 times cheaper.
My job, as a consultant and in pre-sales, was to evangelize this radical new approach, that was totally different from what was considered best practice then. Now OLAP is a completely accepted and mainstream technology.
At Be Informed, I feel it is like being in my first job, evangelizing a complete new approach towards business processes. Don't describe processes using elaborate process flows catching every exception, but by accepting every transaction is an exception, only model the activities and their relationships. No programming or code generation, just visual modeling. Making a process dynamic and interactive, instead of having the business rules cast in stone. Putting the business user in charge of the business rules, instead of a BPM specialist.
Again, this is transformational technology. Ten times faster to implement than most other business applications., while at the same time not being bound by just a few parameters. Being able to give the users freedom to treat transactions any way they see fit, while at the same time increasing control over the overall process with all its exceptions. Being able to change business rules on the spot, immediately affecting the system, while at the same time offer extremely high transaction processing performance. Not a 7% reduction in TCO, but 70% improvement.
Again, it is our task to evangelize this very different approach. To teach there are other, more creative and effective ways, to manage business processes. And in a few years from now? I guess the Be Informed approach will be pretty mainstream and accepted in the marketplace.
frank
In my first job, I was an implementation consultant of OLAP systems. OLAP stands for On-Line Analytical Processing, and it describes a type of data access that is multidimensional of nature. Instead of storing data in columns and in rows, like in a relational database, it is stored based on pointers to coordinates, such as product, customer, region, time, and so forth.
OLAP, at that time, was transformational technology. It revolutionized management information systems. Queries would take less than a second, instead of often minutes. Furthermore, reporting became a dynamic and interactive process. Lastly, these type of systems were often set up and maintained by power users, not by database administrators.
This was a true transformation, a radical new approach. This technology, new to most companies back then, didn't bring 10% performance improvement, it was a hundred times faster. It didn't save 15% on implementation time, it was 5 times faster to implement. It wasn't 20% cheaper, it was 10 times cheaper.
My job, as a consultant and in pre-sales, was to evangelize this radical new approach, that was totally different from what was considered best practice then. Now OLAP is a completely accepted and mainstream technology.
At Be Informed, I feel it is like being in my first job, evangelizing a complete new approach towards business processes. Don't describe processes using elaborate process flows catching every exception, but by accepting every transaction is an exception, only model the activities and their relationships. No programming or code generation, just visual modeling. Making a process dynamic and interactive, instead of having the business rules cast in stone. Putting the business user in charge of the business rules, instead of a BPM specialist.
Again, this is transformational technology. Ten times faster to implement than most other business applications., while at the same time not being bound by just a few parameters. Being able to give the users freedom to treat transactions any way they see fit, while at the same time increasing control over the overall process with all its exceptions. Being able to change business rules on the spot, immediately affecting the system, while at the same time offer extremely high transaction processing performance. Not a 7% reduction in TCO, but 70% improvement.
Again, it is our task to evangelize this very different approach. To teach there are other, more creative and effective ways, to manage business processes. And in a few years from now? I guess the Be Informed approach will be pretty mainstream and accepted in the marketplace.
frank
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Can a process be ethical?
By: Frank Buytendijk, chief marketing officer
Ethics is the philosophical discipline that studies morality. Morality is about what is fundamentally right and wrong, towards yourself as well as to others. I wonder how often 'what is right and what is wrong' is being asked in organizations. It should play an important role in strategic decision-making, particularly in these days, as making ethical mistakes can lead to serious consequences. Most organizations have a code of conduct all employees need to sign. 'Doing the right thing' has become more important than risk management alone.
Many have discussed the idea of what constitutes an ethical organization, or ethical targets and performance indicators. If aggressive cost saving targets leave a procurement officer no choice but to work with suppliers that use environmentally unfriendly materials or even use child labor, that is clearly unethical.
But I have never heard of ethical considerations when designing a process. On the philosophical level, for me, a process is a promise. A process promises that if you use it, the outcome will be timely, predictable, and correct. Processes are often obligatory. You have to use it. If the process itself cannot live up to the promise (because it is for instance too slow), it creates frustration, anger, and in the end lethargy. And it drives people to think of ways to circumvent it. Unethical behavior, yes, but driven by an unethical process.
Considering what is right and what is wrong, ethics in other words, shouldn't only be a strategic discussion, they should be part of every business case, or systems implementation.
frank
Ethics is the philosophical discipline that studies morality. Morality is about what is fundamentally right and wrong, towards yourself as well as to others. I wonder how often 'what is right and what is wrong' is being asked in organizations. It should play an important role in strategic decision-making, particularly in these days, as making ethical mistakes can lead to serious consequences. Most organizations have a code of conduct all employees need to sign. 'Doing the right thing' has become more important than risk management alone.
Many have discussed the idea of what constitutes an ethical organization, or ethical targets and performance indicators. If aggressive cost saving targets leave a procurement officer no choice but to work with suppliers that use environmentally unfriendly materials or even use child labor, that is clearly unethical.
But I have never heard of ethical considerations when designing a process. On the philosophical level, for me, a process is a promise. A process promises that if you use it, the outcome will be timely, predictable, and correct. Processes are often obligatory. You have to use it. If the process itself cannot live up to the promise (because it is for instance too slow), it creates frustration, anger, and in the end lethargy. And it drives people to think of ways to circumvent it. Unethical behavior, yes, but driven by an unethical process.
Considering what is right and what is wrong, ethics in other words, shouldn't only be a strategic discussion, they should be part of every business case, or systems implementation.
frank
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
What makes Sammy run?
By: Frank Buytendijk, chief marketing officer
The world of business processes is new to me. I've spent most of my career in the world of data, "business intelligence" to be precise. However, it strikes me that both worlds suffer from the same issue: the lack of a human perspective.
As much as the world of data is dominated by data analysis, performance indicators and reporting, the world of process is full of workflows, business process optimization and business rules. How to tell a story or how to relate to all the beautiful concepts if it is hard to see what this means from a people point of view? How new business processes or new systems affect the behavior of people?
One of the most important lessons I took from the research for my book Performance Leadership is that human behavior is not a "soft factor", in fact it is the most tangible performance driver of all. People do things or they don't. I can't describe "productivity" more concise than that.
In my mind, the most important question that needs to be answered when working on your business processes is "what makes Sammy run?". What motivates people to do a good job?
I started to understand the impact that the Be Informed business process platform can have on an organization when I was reading Dan Pink's "Drive". In this book he describes the three factors that motivate people in performing cognitive tasks (like in business processes). These factor are autonomy, mastery and purpose. Autonomy means that people get to make their own decisions, being able to do the right thing. Mastery means they can become experts in their field, for instance in handling complex claims in an insurance company, or guide complex permit cases in public sector. Lastly, purpose means that people know why they are doing what they do, what customer or citizen value they produce. This is what makes people happy and productive in their work. (Did you notice that salary and bonus are not one of them?)
How stark the contrast with the common business process, where the only mastery that is offered is knowing how to navigate the hundreds of screens in the various systems. Where the purpose is to simply process a number of transactions per day, where autonomy means you get to decide whether you take your lunch break at 12 or 12.30. And the more we talk about business process optimization, the more we forget about the human perspective.
I think what Be Informed truly offers in terms of breakthrough performance is not only 50% less costs, or double the percentage of straight-through transactions, or speeding up the time to change a process from 9 months to 3 days. The true breakthrough performance comes from defining a business process where people get to decide how to go through a business process based on the conversation they have with the customer, or figuring out the correct interpretation of complex regulations. Or figuring out that a process is not something to follow blindly and hope it leads to the right result, but that it starts with the end in mind: what is the desired result, and how do I put together the right steps in order to get to that result.
And if you'd like to translate that into hard-boiled business results: these are the main drivers for cost, quality and speed.
This is what, in my view, Be Informed stands for.
frank
The world of business processes is new to me. I've spent most of my career in the world of data, "business intelligence" to be precise. However, it strikes me that both worlds suffer from the same issue: the lack of a human perspective.
As much as the world of data is dominated by data analysis, performance indicators and reporting, the world of process is full of workflows, business process optimization and business rules. How to tell a story or how to relate to all the beautiful concepts if it is hard to see what this means from a people point of view? How new business processes or new systems affect the behavior of people?
One of the most important lessons I took from the research for my book Performance Leadership is that human behavior is not a "soft factor", in fact it is the most tangible performance driver of all. People do things or they don't. I can't describe "productivity" more concise than that.
In my mind, the most important question that needs to be answered when working on your business processes is "what makes Sammy run?". What motivates people to do a good job?
I started to understand the impact that the Be Informed business process platform can have on an organization when I was reading Dan Pink's "Drive". In this book he describes the three factors that motivate people in performing cognitive tasks (like in business processes). These factor are autonomy, mastery and purpose. Autonomy means that people get to make their own decisions, being able to do the right thing. Mastery means they can become experts in their field, for instance in handling complex claims in an insurance company, or guide complex permit cases in public sector. Lastly, purpose means that people know why they are doing what they do, what customer or citizen value they produce. This is what makes people happy and productive in their work. (Did you notice that salary and bonus are not one of them?)
How stark the contrast with the common business process, where the only mastery that is offered is knowing how to navigate the hundreds of screens in the various systems. Where the purpose is to simply process a number of transactions per day, where autonomy means you get to decide whether you take your lunch break at 12 or 12.30. And the more we talk about business process optimization, the more we forget about the human perspective.
I think what Be Informed truly offers in terms of breakthrough performance is not only 50% less costs, or double the percentage of straight-through transactions, or speeding up the time to change a process from 9 months to 3 days. The true breakthrough performance comes from defining a business process where people get to decide how to go through a business process based on the conversation they have with the customer, or figuring out the correct interpretation of complex regulations. Or figuring out that a process is not something to follow blindly and hope it leads to the right result, but that it starts with the end in mind: what is the desired result, and how do I put together the right steps in order to get to that result.
And if you'd like to translate that into hard-boiled business results: these are the main drivers for cost, quality and speed.
This is what, in my view, Be Informed stands for.
frank
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)