Standardization and Harmonization of Business Processes - Enabling Agile Customer Service in a Digital World

Abstract

Complex market conditions combined with digitally empowered consumers present a challenging commercial environment. Most business leaders understand that the answer is innovation and agility but the question is how this is achieved. Creating a Next Generation Enterprise suited to this new “normal” is about understanding and managing processes. When processes are aligned and good practices are applied, efficiencies are created freeing people to innovate. This generates a nimbler organization, which is able to adapt to evolving market conditions more quickly.

Much has been written about the importance of standardization and harmonization in achieving this alignment and efficiency of business processes. They consistently highlight the human dimension of process as being the key challenge. In the authors experience, applying five key enablers of Business Process Management (BPM) can have a dramatic impact in improving the effectiveness of standardization and harmonization in process change programs.

Process Governance: Using segmentation of business processes to understand their characteristics and provide the basis for choosing the most appropriate responsibility (and empowerment) to standardize and harmonize the processes appropriately.

Process Knowledge Management: Establishing a process repository, which is both accessible and driven by users, is crucial in breaking down the barriers, which so often exist between process management teams and the rest of an organization. It makes standardization and harmonization tangible.

People Engagement: Creating a shared sense of ownership for the business processes and their results and engaging the whole stakeholder community in sharing the responsibility for standardization and harmonization.

Tools and Technology: Leveraging Technology as a powerful driver of standardization with the automation of parts of the business process. Using tools that have been used very successfully in B2C to improve the pace and effectiveness of people engagement within the organization.

Metrics and Monitoring: Finally, measuring success of standardization and harmonization initiatives is important but needs to be tightly linked to the business strategy with the most relevant metrics being defined to focus behavioral change and make it more manageable.

These BPM enablers have been shown to have a profound impact on achieving standardization and harmonization as elaborated in this paper and with reference to case examples.

Full text

Process Standardization &
Harmonization
Enabling Agile Customer Service in a
Digital World
By Peter Franz and Mathias Kirchmer

© B P M - D i s c i p l i n e A s s e t s , L . P . P a g e 2 | 20
BPM-D Paper - London, Philadelphia, March 2016
Process Standardization & Harmonization
Enabling Agile Customer Service in a Digital World
By Peter Franz and Mathias Kirchmer

© B P M - D i s c i p l i n e A s s e t s , L . P . P a g e 3 | 20
Abstract
Complex market conditions combined with digitally empowered consumers
present a challenging commercial environment. Most business leaders
understand that the answer is innovation and agility but the question is how this
is achieved. Creating a Next Generation Enterprise suited to this new “normal” is
about understanding and managing processes. When processes are aligned
and good practices are applied, efficiencies are created freeing people to
innovate. This generates a nimbler organization, which is able to adapt to
evolving market conditions more quickly.
Much has been written about the importance of standardization and
harmonization in achieving this alignment and efficiency of business processes.
They consistently highlight the human dimension of process as being the key
challenge. In the authors experience, applying five key enablers of Business
Process Management (BPM) can have a dramatic impact in improving the
effectiveness of standardization and harmonization in process change
programmes.
Process Governance: Using segmentation of business processes to
understand their characteristics and provide the basis for choosing the most
appropriate responsibility (and empowerment) to standardize and harmonize the
processes appropriately.
Process Knowledge Management: Establishing a process repository, which is
both accessible and driven by users, is crucial in breaking down the barriers,
which so often exist between process management teams and the rest of an
organization. It makes standardization and harmonization tangible.
People Engagement: Creating a shared sense of ownership for the business
processes and their results and engaging the whole stakeholder community in
sharing the responsibility for standardization and harmonization.
Tools and Technology: Leveraging Technology as a powerful driver of
standardization with the automation of parts of the business process. Using tools
that have been used very successfully to improve the pace and effectiveness of
people engagement within the organization.
Metrics and Monitoring: Finally, measuring success of standardization and
harmonization initiatives is important but needs to be tightly linked to the

© B P M - D i s c i p l i n e A s s e t s , L . P . P a g e 4 | 20
business strategy with the most relevant metrics being defined to focus
behavioural change and make it more manageable.
These BPM enablers have been shown to have a profound impact on achieving
standardization and harmonization as elaborated in this paper and with
reference to case examples.
Keywords
Adoption, Alignment, BPM, BPM-Discipline, Change Management, Chief Process Officer,
Cloud, Compliance, Customer-centric, Execution, Digitalization, Governance, Harmonization,
Innovation, Globalization, Modelling, Process Design, Process Implementation, Social BPM,
Standardization, Strategy.
Content
1. Business Conditions: the perfect storm
2. The Process Implementation Challenge
3. Adopting Standard Business Processes – Fast at low risk
4. Process Governance – Enable appropriate empowerment
5. Process Knowledge Management – Enable suitable transparency
6. People Engagement – Enable joint success
7. Tools and Technology – Enable speed and effectiveness
8. Metrics and Monitoring – Enable actionable feedback
9. The Way Forward
10. References

© B P M - D i s c i p l i n e A s s e t s , L . P . P a g e 5 | 20
1. Business Conditions: the perfect storm
Businesses are currently facing a perfect storm of, amongst others, rapid digital
change, empowered customers and globalization. Digitalization means most
organizations need to operate in virtual and real worlds and if we are to believe
Gartner (Hill, 2014) these two worlds will merge in the near future. People,
things and business will soon become so interconnected that it will be hard to
tell where one ends and the other begins.
Organizations are in global competition - whether they intend it or not - as
consumers use the internet to access, compare and purchase from businesses
all over the world. Armed with the power of social media, customers are quick to
react if a product or service fails to meet expectations. As a consequence,
organizations need to respond more nimbly than ever to avoid an individual
complaint turning into a global crisis.
Meanwhile, game-changing digitalization is shifting the information technology
landscape. Consumer demands, swift technological development and
unprecedented internet growth are stimulating further proliferation of
digitalization. Currently there are around 10 billion people, processes and things
connected to the internet but the proliferation of mobile technology is expected
to increase that to 50 billion by 2020. The cloud will be at the heart of the growth
of this “Internet of Everything”.
With this impending commercial metamorphosis sounds alarming, there’s no
need to panic. Although the questions may be around global digitalization, the
answer is about process. To thrive in this gale force wind of change, business
leaders need to acquire a better understanding of the processes within their
organizations so that they can identify priorities and make more informed
decisions. They need to create agility where it matters by rapidly adopting new
practices in some areas while aligning routine processes to improve efficiency
and compliance in others. In BPM-D terms, they need to become a Next
Generation Enterprise (Kirchmer, Franz, 2014-3).
In a recent research project that BPM-D conducted with Widener University and
the Universidad de Chile we investigated the relationship between digitalization
and BPM and received feedback from over 200 executives across a wide range
of industries globally. The results of this are being documented in a following
paper but 63% of respondents who are engaged in more mature digitalization
have improved their BPM capability alongside this in the past two years. This is

© B P M - D i s c i p l i n e A s s e t s , L . P . P a g e 6 | 20
another indicator of the importance of process management as an enabler of
this dynamic and fast moving environment.
In this dynamic world it is not enough to merely improve processes. The BPM-
Discipline also needs to deliver standardization and harmonization to enable
consistent, innovative and agile customer service around the world. In the next
section we recognize the importance of standardization and harmonization as
one of the prerequisites to delivering change fast and effectively. In the later
sections we show how using key elements of the Business Process
Management Discipline (BPM-D) has been shown to significantly enhance the
effectiveness and pace of achieving standardization and harmonization.
2. The Process Implementation Challenge
The authors have worked with many organizations and often find that they know
what they should be doing; it’s the approach of getting these ideas in to action,
which provides the greatest challenge. The challenge is strategy execution;
building a management discipline which will not just implement the strategy but
will sustain it in the short and long term as well. (Kirchmer, Franz, 2012).
Throughout this paper we
will use a case example to
bring the concepts to life.
This is included as notes
in side boxes (as shown
on the right here) and
describe the company,
their standardization and
harmonization challenge
and how the BPM
enablers made a
pragmatic difference to
their efforts.
Many companies like this face common challenges. They know they need to
adapt to their specific markets and they understand the kind of change required.
Logistics Company - Context
We recently worked with a global logistics company, which
provides maritime, cargo and supply chain solutions to operators
who span all geographies market segments. It acts as an agent
for 2500 customers in over 300 offices around the world. When
we began working with this organization they were successfully
offering a unique service in each local market place. However,
they were also facing a step change in the global market. Growth
had slowed in recent years and their solution was to develop a
differentiating new customer service model. However, the
rollout of the new standard process in a harmonised way was
progressing painfully slowly. They had a creative idea but, in a
dynamic market place, they were failing to put it into practice.

© B P M - D i s c i p l i n e A s s e t s , L . P . P a g e 7 | 20
Their problem is implementing the change at the customer interface in a
consistent standardized way.
They had well engineered process
flow diagrams, but they had failed
to adequately understand that
process is either implemented
through technology and/or by
changing what people do.
The answer, as seen by many
organizations, is process
standardization and harmonization.
Here are definitions of these terms
and our application of these to a
process context.
Standardization as defined in the
Business Dictionary (Business
Dictionary, 2016) is: Formulation,
publication, and implementation of
guidelines, rules, and specifications
for common and repeated use, aimed at achieving optimum degree of order or
uniformity in a given context, discipline, or field.
Stated simply, standardization is the creation of a single, common set of
business processes that should be used across the organization. Standard
business processes make it easier for the different parts of the organization to
work together to share best practice and create synergies; it cuts down
organizational barriers and makes it easier to implement changes in these
processes to adapt to ever-changing market conditions. This could be achieved,
for example, through the automation of the business processes using a single
technical system and through defining standard manual procedures that need to
be implemented around the technology.
Harmonization is defined in the Business Dictionary (Business Dictionary, 2016)
as: Adjustment of differences and inconsistencies among different
measurements, methods, procedures, schedules, specifications, or systems to
make them uniform or mutually compatible.
Logistics Company – The Challenge
In this company, the leadership team had established a
new and differentiating standardised application
system and related processes. They needed to
persuade people, working in hundreds of locations,
that a new solution would deliver great value and that
it was essential for everyone globally to be delivering
the service in a consistent way.
This standard approach would make it easier to
implement new and differentiated, knowledge-based
services as these could be channeled through the
standard process at speed.
This approach would enable this organization to add
value by adopting more customer-centric services.
However, the rollout of the new standard process was
progressing painfully slowly.

© B P M - D i s c i p l i n e A s s e t s , L . P . P a g e 8 | 20
Harmonization in a process context is minimising the variation from the adoption
of standardized processes across the organization. The various parts of the
organization seek to adopt the standard processes minimising local or product
related variation and jointly focusing on maximising the overall organizational
value rather than sub-optimising within specific organizational entities.
There is much being done in the quest to achieve both standardization and
harmonization. Most notably standardization can be enabled through
rationalization of the application portfolio and moving all parts of the organization
onto the same standard applications thus automating parts of the business
process. This is discussed in more detail in section 7 below. With standards in
place for the application portfolio comes the second, more challenging step of
getting people to work appropriately with the systems and adopt the
standardized business processes.
3. Adopting Standardized Processes – fast at lower risk
There are many factors that influence the adoption of standardized business
processes. Much research has been conducted and papers written on change
management in general and how this can enhance the adoption of business
processes during improvement initiatives. Our experience shows that, in the
fast moving digital environment, change management should be integrated into
the day-to-day business of people. It needs to become a component of the
overarching BPM-Discipline which provides different enablers of standardization
and harmonization.
Any action to improve business process adoption should properly address key
people oriented factors to be successful. This is where traditional process
engineering and change management need close alignment in a very practical
way to address the people engagement needs. Effective process management
combines these two approaches focusing on delivering the expected value
outcomes. This is shown schematically in figure 1 below:
Figure 1: Alignment of Process Engineering with Change Management.

© B P M - D i s c i p l i n e A s s e t s , L . P . P a g e 9 | 20
This paper does not seek to normalize the multiple models or approaches to
Change Management and therefore use one of the accepted 3-step approaches
of: Information, Communication and Training (Kirchmer, 2011). The ingredients
to success of process adoption lie in an understanding of how good process
management can feed and enable a collaborative approach to change
management.
In the book “Value-Driven Business Process Management” (Franz & Kirchmer,
2012) the authors describe the Process of Process Management that underpins
a pragmatic and effective BPM-Discipline. Further and more current writings
detail this framework and describe how it works (Kirchmer, Franz, 2015). This
process framework is shown in Figure 2 below. It is based on numerous
engagements to deliver real value from BPM as a management discipline. There
are in the author’s experience five important components of this discipline that
are essential to enabling the people adoption during a process standardization
and harmonization initiative. These enablers are highlighted in Figure 2 below
and then described in more detail in the following sections:
Figure 2: Five essential enablers of Process standardization and harmonization
in the BPM-D Process Framework
4. Process Governance – Enable appropriate empowerment
In our fast moving digital environment, understanding who is responsible for and
thus empowered to change business processes, is now more than ever a critical
prerequisite for standardization and harmonization success. We refer to this in
the BPM-Discipline framework as Process Governance.

© B P M - D i s c i p l i n e A s s e t s , L . P . P a g e 10 | 20
In a world, which is constantly changing, knowing what doesn’t need to change
is helpful. Extensive research (Kirchmer, Franz, 2014-3) has proved that an
organization competes through less than 20 per cent of its business processes.
This leaves 80 per cent for which it is sufficient to achieve an industry average.
The 20 percent tend to be the ones which offer more opportunity to drive
innovation, increase agility and adapt to the needs of particular customers. The
remaining 80 per cent are usually made up of routine processes which operate
using a common industry practice e.g. payment processes, payroll, procurement
of office material or credit checks.
An organization may have hundreds of sub-processes. Sorting them,
understanding their characteristics and finally segmenting them into the 80/20
structure can be a daunting prospect (Kirchmer, Franz, 2014-3). In the authors’
experience, this is therefore usually not given the attention it deserves. Process
management - using our patent-pending BPM-Discipline Framework -
systematically enables the strategy-based analysis of processes, which in turn
allows them to be prioritized and segmented.
The essence of the approach starts by drawing the link between business
strategy and the high impact/ low maturity business processes using a Process
Impact Assessment Matrix (PIAM). It then looks at the high impact sub-
processes from two dimensions: Strategic Importance and Uniformity as outlined
in the book “Value-Driven BPM” (Franz, Kirchmer, 2012). These are shown in
the matrix in Figure 3 below. Some processes neatly fit into one of the four
quadrants as the examples show in each of these.
Figure 3 – Process Segmentation Model (Franz, Kirchmer, 2012)

© B P M - D i s c i p l i n e A s s e t s , L . P . P a g e 11 | 20
The titles (coloured in red) in each quadrant suggest the most appropriate
management approach typically assigned to processes in each quadrant. For
the purposes of this paper, those items higher on this chart require the most
strategic agility.
The less strategic or even commodity processes should not be forgotten though.
While a process might be routine it may need significant variation to
accommodate the specific requirements of: the products or services (what); the
market (where); the customer (who); and the time (when). Understanding and
minimising related variations based on real business need, is essential to
achieving the goal of harmonization and standardization. Unwillingness to
change and vested interests can often cloud well thought-through analysis but a
well-structured approach helps to align conflicting points of view.
Segmentation is the starting point for making it absolutely clear who is
empowered to change business processes and/or adapt them to their specific
needs. This provides the basis for a refined process governance required to
establish and maintain the right level of standardization and harmonization of the
business processes. As an example, this would be by establishing the
empowered global and local process owners as one of the elements of this
approach.
A more detailed overview of the governance can be found in the paper: “Chief
Process Officer – The Value Scout.” (Kirchmer, Franz, 2014-1). Here the
governance is outlined using the BPM-D Organization framework as shown (at a
high level) in figure 4 below. This is a reference structure to sustain process
standardization and harmonization by establishing the necessary governance
roles and bodies.
Logistics Company – Segmentation removes change barriers
For the logistics organization, segmentation made it very clear what sub-processes should be retained
locally and where they could benefit from strategic, centralised processes that could be of great value when
leveraged locally. The analysis also highlighted those very routine, back-office processes that could be
executed elsewhere, freeing up time for greater customer engagement.
This realization broke down the human barriers and raised their acceptance of the new, standardised
systems and processes.
In this case, harmonising existing sytandard processes and adopting new ones gave employees the chance
to add in customer knowledge and deliver greater innovation to the client experience. This has significantly
enhanced customer interactions, which has proved critical in this fragmented market and is now leading to
growth.

© B P M - D i s c i p l i n e A s s e t s , L . P . P a g e 12 | 20
Figure 4 – BPM-D Governance Model (Franz, Kirchmer, 2014-1)
5. Process Knowledge Management – Enabling the right transparency
Information about process knowledge may range from simple Power Point
visuals and SharePoint folders to more sophisticated management of
information models using software from vendors such as Signavio or Software
AG (ARIS).
Too often these repositories are created and managed by the company’s
business process experts who design and store thousands of models which are
incomprehensible and inaccessible to the people who need to use them. The
content, format and governance are driven by the process management experts
and not by the expected outcomes. The intent is good but the process engineers
behind the models frequently fail to recognize that information models are only
as good as the outcomes that they trigger.
We look at business modelling from a different perspective. We start from the
usage-scenario as the first of 5 critical aspects of an effective process repository
leverage. These 5 areas are shown in Figure 5 below and explained in more
detail in the book “Value-Driven Business Process Management” (Franz,
Kirchmer, 2012).

© B P M - D i s c i p l i n e A s s e t s , L . P . P a g e 13 | 20
Figure 5 – BPM-D Repository
Success Model
In the book we describe in
much more detail why all of
these aspects are important in
creating a repository that can
be integrated into normal
business practice and thus a
recognized and accessible
reference point for the
standardized business
processes. While all five of
these areas are important, the
most critical, in the context of
standardization and harmonization, is “Usage-Scenarios”. How do normal
business users engage in and consume the process information in a way that
integrates with their normal daily operations, executing a “standard process”. By
understanding and properly addressing this factor, the level of people
engagement in any business change is significantly enhanced. People have to
understand how to apply those models to implement a standard and then
harmonize their individual work processes in regards of the defined standard.
We have already discussed ensuring that process management does not take
place in isolated silos hidden within organizations. Once an organization has
created a process repository which is outcome-driven, the next step is to ensure
these documents are easily available to the people who need them. Creating a
Logistics Company – Shaping Repository
We applied this approach with the global logistics
company implementing a new customer service system.
Their existing process repository was not meeting the
needs of the people who were meant to benefit from it; it
wasn’t based on a clearly shaped usage-case. As a result it
was hardly ever being referenced and ran the risk of not
keeping pace with the real operational practices.
We spent time with the customer service users and their
operating environment. Here we identified when and how
the process and supporting information would be useful to
them. They needed procedural input that was current and
helped them understand how to deal with the diversity of
logistics offering they had. Each major type of service had
specific value-add offerings that could significantly
enhance the relationship and improve the scope of service
the company provided. We defined a simple way to make
this information accessible through their customer enquiry
system and then modelled the format of the information
to meet this need.
Armed with this knowledge we restructured the content
of the process repository to meet this need in such a way
that integrated this with the Process Engineering
requirements. One base of usable information was
created which was relevant, current and available.

© B P M - D i s c i p l i n e A s s e t s , L . P . P a g e 14 | 20
usage-scenario based access of the procedural information (as described
above) is one such way of achieving this objective.
6. People Engagement – Enable joint success
While the organization focuses on creating and adapting the process standard
the stakeholder community needs to be engaged as broadly as possible to
contribute their best practice thinking. The standard process should not be
owned by any specific individual but rather by the whole relevant process
community.
Community management is the key part of the process of process management
(Kirchmer, Franz, 2015) to ensure good stakeholder engagement. In our private
lives we are increasingly exposed to a series of physical and virtual groups and
communities that we use for input, support and guidance. Using the same
principle in a business context encourages engagement in the improvement of
the standard process through an active exchange in experiences. This is not
one wise old owl (typically the process owner) decreeing what the standard
should be and then imposing it but rather the enriched input from the whole
process community establishing a jointly accepted standard that includes all of
their best practice. The role of the process owner in this context is to facilitate
the active working of this community and to deftly manage the process design
decisions that lead to a common standard.
Success of any community management program is significantly enhanced
through making this a normal part of the day job rather than a parallel and
sometimes cumbersome activities. Learning should be delivered in a very
personalized way linked to their normal desktop activities. Providing feedback
should similarly be accessible through the desktop as closely aligned to the
normal business process as possible. As someone experiences difficulty while
Logistics Company – People Enablement in Action
In this case, modest attempts at people enablement made an early and big impact on adoption of
harmonised business processes. This was enhanced through the use of the Signavio process modelling
tool (described below). Rather than being a back-room and somewhat secretive modelling exercise,
models were published on-line and made available for comment using the collaborative features of the
tool. This alone had a great impact harmonising existing standard processes and adopting new ones
which gave employees the chance to add in customer knowledge and deliver greater innovation to the
client experience. This has significantly enhanced customer interactions, which has proved critical in this
fragmented market and is now leading to growth.

© B P M - D i s c i p l i n e A s s e t s , L . P . P a g e 15 | 20
attempting to perform their normal work, they should be able to capture the
issue and recommendation without attempting to navigate to a new and different
environment. Make it easy and it is much more likely to happen.
We have repeatedly seen that if community management is done well and very
collaboratively that the acceptance of the process improves significantly. As part
of the engagement of people on the processes there needs to be a parallel
avenue for them to raise their organizational and personal concerns and have
these addressed. Harmonization is achieved when each individual accepts the
quality of the common standard and then overcomes main concerns related to
the impact of the new process on them personally.
Engagement of stakeholders in the community should not slow down the
process design. During the implementation of the new standard processes there
needs to be an active channel for continuing input to enhancing the standard
process design and its implementation. They need to feel part of adapting the
processes to resolve errors or omissions.
7. Tools and Technology – enable speed and effectiveness
As described at the beginning of this paper, technology plays an important role
in standardising business processes. With the ever increasing digitalization
many processes are automated through standard application systems. These
systems encapsulate parts of the standard process and enforces those process
components.
However, when looking at any larger organization it has a diversity of business
units and/or regional operations. For many reasons the application portfolio will
have become vast with many applications supporting the same business
function in different parts of the organization. This diversification tends to be
increasing due to the availability of cloud-based application solutions. The
business leadership finds it easier to source their application support directly
through cloud-based point solutions rather than attempting to have these
implemented into the legacy portfolio by IT.
Standardization and harmonization is therefore only achieved with the parallel
optimization and rationalization of the application portfolio. Many of the reasons
for this proliferation are more people oriented. In the same way that people
choose which process standards to adopt and where to do things their own
thought to be better way, they also make decisions about which applications to

© B P M - D i s c i p l i n e A s s e t s , L . P . P a g e 16 | 20
use. Therefore, the answer to portfolio reduction and the associated
standardization lies in combining this technology optimization with the enablers
mentioned in the previous 4 sections of this paper.
The appropriate use of newer technologies can also enhance the speed and
effectiveness of the each of the other four enablers (described in the previous
sections). Newer research (Ewenstein, Smith, Sologar, 2015) tells us that
change management practices need to “start catching up”. Many companies
have made great progress in digitalising their customer-facing businesses. The
application of digital tools has untapped potential to promote and accelerate
internal change. The research paper further identifies that digitalising five key
areas in particular make internal change efforts more effective and enduring:
Provide just-in-time feedback; Personalize the experience; Sidestep hierarchy;
Build empathy, community and shared purpose; and Demonstrate progress.
These areas are aligned with the authors’ experience. As an example, social
media tools are an effective way to break down the barriers between process
management decision makers and the people within an organization. Linking
people via internet and cloud-based tools creates transparency and encourages
communication across organizational boundaries. This use of social media to
enable many of the BPM processes, we refer to as “Social BPM” and is likely to
increase as social media tools like online communities, the cloud, subscription
feeds and tagging grow more common-place. All of these enable individual, role-
based engagement of people and the sharing of process related information.
Another example of the enabling technology is the collaborative modelling
software products like Signavio. These are helpful in engaging the people who
are implementing the models to be involved in delivering the process. They offer
appealing and flexible formats which encourage users to comment and give
feedback on a process. This in turn ensures the model remains relevant,
functional and fit for purpose.
Technology is therefore both an enabler of standardization and harmonization
and a key contributor to adding pace and certainty to the internal change efforts
described in the other sections of this paper.

© B P M - D i s c i p l i n e A s s e t s , L . P . P a g e 17 | 20
8. Metrics and Monitoring – enable actionable feedback
“What gets measured gets done” is the accepted approach and this is the case
in enabling the standardization and harmonization of business processes.
However, we caution against an over reliance on metrics and the inevitable
proliferation of performance reporting. Clearly there is a need for some metrics
and KPIs to gauge process performance, but doing too much clouds the focus
and is therefore not actionable.
Standardization of business processes should therefore be combined with a
parallel standardization of the performance metrics. Using the approach to
targeting value described in an earlier paper (Kirchmer, Franz, 2014-2) the high
impact, low maturity processes are identified through a “Process Impact
Assessment”. By describing this prioritized set of processes in terms of their
relationship with the business value-drivers the most important leading
measures can be identified.
The lagging measures, are those formulated to describe the outcomes expected
through achieving each of the key value drivers. This produces a standardized
set of metrics that are aligned to the business strategy and the most important
standard processes that are required to deliver the strategy. A further useful
addition to this set of metrics is a “Standardization Index” which needs to be
carefully constructed to identify how various parts of the organization are
delivering on the promise of both standardization and harmonization.
9. The way forward
The difficulty in achieving process standardization and harmonization is
convincing people to adopt them in a consistent way and to remove
unnecessary variability. In this paper we have identified five of the BPM
components that have been shown most important to accelerate this business
process standardization and harmonization. This in turn enables agile customer
service in a digital world. It highlights how important it is to implement a
pragmatic BPM-Discipline addressing both the ’science’ of robust process
management AND the ‘art’ of engaging and motivating people to change their
behaviour.

© B P M - D i s c i p l i n e A s s e t s , L . P . P a g e 18 | 20
10. References
Bossidy, Charines, 2011. Execution, The Discipline of getting things done, Doubleday religious
publishing group.
Burlton, 2013. Delivering Business Strategy through Process Management In: Vom Brocke, J.,
Rosemann, M.: Handbook on Business Process Management 2 – Strategic Alignment, Governance,
People and Culture, Springer, Berlin, New York, e.a.
Business Dictionary, 2016, accessed 1 February 2016, http://www.businessdictionary.com.
Ewenstein, Smith, Sologar, 2015. Changing change management, McKinsey & Company Paper.
Franz, Kirchmer, 2012. Value-driven business Process Management – The Value-Switch for Lasting
Competitive Advantage, McGraw-Hill, New York, e.a.
Hill, 2014, The Digital Business Scenario - Building Digital Business Future
Kirchmer, Franz, 2015, The Process of Process Management: Strategy Execution in a Digital World.
BPM-D Paper, London Philadelphia.
Kirchmer, 2014. Value-driven Design and Implementation of Business Processes
–
From Strategy to
Execution at Pace with Certainty. In: BMSD’14 Proceedings, Luxembourg, June 2014.
Kirchmer, Franz, 2014-1. Chief Process Officer – The Value Scout. BPM-D Paper, London
Philadelphia.
Kirchmer, Franz, 2014-2. Targeting Value in the Digital World: Value-driven Design and
Implementation of Business Processes. BPM-D Paper, London Philadelphia.
Kirchmer, Franz, 2014-3. The BPM-Discipline – Enabling the Next Generation Enterprise. BPM-D
Executive Training Documentation, London, Philadelphia.
Kirchmer, 2013. How to create successful IT Projects with Value-driven BPM, In: CIO Magazine
Online, February 2013.
Kirchmer, 2011. High Performance through Process Excellence – From Strategy to Execution with
Business Process Management. Springer, 2nd edition, Berlin, e.a.
Kirchmer, 1999a. Business Process Oriented Implementation of Standard Software – How to achieve
Competitive Advantage Efficiently and Effectively. Springer, 2nd edition, Berline, e.a.
Kirchmer, 1999b. Market- and Product-oriented Definition of Business Processes. In: Elzina, D.J.,
Gulledge, T.R., Lee, C.-Y (editors): Business Engineering, Springer, Norwell.
LEADing, 2014. The Leading Practice Value Reference Content #Lead- ES20007BCPG – A value
Ontology and Value Semantic Description – Views, Stakeholders and Concerns. Version: Lead 3.0.
Leading Practice publication, 2014.
Luzipo, Van Biljon, Herselman, 2015. Business Process Adoption in Organizations: A Case Study from
and Insurance Company in South Africa. Conference Paper May 2015.
Milani, Dumas, Ahmed, Matulevicius, 2015. Modelling Families of Business Process variants: A
decomposition Driven Method. Institute of Computer Science, Universiity of Tartu, Estonia.
Mitchel, Ray., van Ark, 2014.: The Conference Board – CEO Challenge 2014: People and
Performance, Reconnecting with the Customer and Reshaping the Culture of Work. The Conference
Board Whitepaer, New York, e.a. 2014.
Pringles, Gordon. Brand Manners: How to Create the Self-Confident Organization to Live the Brand.
Scheer, 1998. ARIS – Business Process Frameworks, Springer, 2nd edition, Berlin, e.g.
Spanyi. 2003: BPMS a team Sport.
Stary, 2012. S-BPM One – Scientific Research. 4th International Conference, S-BPM ONE 2012,
Vienna, Austria, April 2012, Proceedings.

© B P M - D i s c i p l i n e A s s e t s , L . P . P a g e 19 | 20
Peter Franz
Peter Franz has been working at the forefront of Business Process Management (BPM) for
many years as part of a 30-year career with Accenture. He has a deep understanding of the
application of Business Process Management discipline to drive real business results. His
career includes education and experience in the use of Information Technology and thus
understands the Business / IT interaction from both sides and can help bridge this divide. He is
passionate about BPM and its application to real business challenges.
Dr. Mathias Kirchmer
Dr. Kirchmer has worked successfully as business process management expert in an
international environment across various industries. He held roles as Managing Director at
Accenture and CEO of the Americas at IDS Scheer. Dr. Kirchmer has combined his broad
practical business experience with his extensive academic research. This systematic
integration has led to pioneering management approaches that have proven to be both
sustainable and provide immediate benefits. He is an affiliated faculty member at the University
of Pennsylvania, published six books as well as numerous articles and shares his insights
regularly in presentations around the world.

© B P M - D i s c i p l i n e A s s e t s , L . P . P a g e 20 | 20
www.bpm-d.com