Define to gain power

By: Dick van Mersbergen

The third philosopher I came across at the Be Informed headquarters is the famous Chinese thinker and social philosopher Confucius. His quote reads:

When asked what he would do first if he were in power, Confucius responded:
"Cleansing the definitions of terms we use".

Cleansing the definition of terms we use..? Not many people seeking power would think of that. History shows us many other things considered better to do when in power: to conquer territory or neighboring countries; to eat nothing but cake; to kill all your opponents; to be loved; to indulge yourself with lush banquets; to keep tigers as pets; to possess a golden gun. The list is endless but nothing on redefining stuff. So why would Confucius want that, I thought?

Definitions are key to a proper function of society. As a child of the oldest civilization on earth, Confucius understood that the highest power is the power to define.

Objects vs Relationships
Sadly, it is very hard to create unambiguous and fully understood definitions. Everyone tends to have his own view. This is where both society and businesses process management (BPM) go wrong.

Or should I say Western societies and traditional BPM platforms? Because it is a Western approach to define objects and it is the way traditional BPM suites deal with the complex surrounding world.

A more Eastern style is to focus on the relationships between objects. This is more useful because the definition is co-owned by all the stakeholders involved. Define the relations between objects and you understand the objects better.

Meaningful relationships
In the field of BPM, Be Informed successfully took on a similar approach: creating and describing meaningful relationships between business activities. That is the core of Be Informed’s ontology. It represents nothing less than the language of the business. And he who controls language, controls everything.

With Be Informed, knowledge workers have the power to define. They no longer write endless system requirements, hand these over to the guys in IT and wait anxiously for the results. They define their processes themselves and by doing so they create the system. They are in control.

So we reversed Confucius’ wish: you don’t gain power to define, you define to gain power!

Change you can believe in

By: Rik Hoogenberg, chief executive officer

Be Informed’s case based approach in administrative processes, that are becoming more knowledge-intensive, allows organizations to boost efficiency, agility and customer intimacy. Organizations that do not postpone the inevitable and carefully plan an overhaul of their business processes with Be Informed profit most from these benefits. Yet many IT projects in large organizations fail. How to succeed in changing the way your organization works? It’s simpler than you might think.

First of all, working with Be Informed allows you to change the way you work. Considering that many administrative organizations have organized their work in overcomplicated systems, procedures and applications, this would seem a logical step, right? Then, make sure your transformation is done by people with a ‘can do’, solution oriented approach. This requires critical minds, looking for the simplest solutions. To give you an example; an administrative organization required an ID from citizens to perform certain actions. Many hours of discussions were spent on which type of ID would suffice: passport, drivers licence, or ID card. ID regulations as described in national law proved these discussions to be pointless; use what is needed, instead of what is currently implemented.

An important reason why many IT-projects in large organizations fail, is that traditionally all requirements, functionalities and so forth need to be exhaustively predescribed and, consequently, built. These projects take years, increasing the risk that the eventual outcome will be outdated upon implementation. Simply because too many changes will have taken place: in business, technology, society, et cetera. Also, many organizations fail to benefit from innovative technology by upholding the complicatedness of their systems and processes in new environments. With Be Informed, organizations don’t need to build systems or applications, we model our solutions based on a central business model, using a pragmatic approach that allows business users to see what they get, and reuse what is there already. Working with Be Informed means successful innovation by simplifying systems and processes.

We don’t ask the business users what they want, we interact with them on what they need to do their job. As car manufacturer Henry Ford once said: “If I had asked them what they wanted, they would have said faster horses”.

Within one or two months we present the first application showing the new way of working, discussing functional requirements with business users. This way, enthusiasm for new solutions is gained from the start of the project, which will prove helpful along the way in which an integrated approach, supported by a solution oriented project team consisting of experts from all corners of the organization will guarantee the organizations ability to embrace complexity for years to come.