Challenges for organizations
It’s not news to anyone that we live in increasingly complex and challenging times. There’s significant pressure on organizations to be innovative, deliver a first-class customer experience (CX), and maintain competitive advantage.
There are also significant barriers to achieving these goals. Common challenges include a lack of clear management support to put process optimization as a core element of the business strategy and the absence of an effective collaboration environment to capture and share insight and drive change.
For organizations wanting to address those challenges and reap the benefits of business process transformation, a new approach is emerging. This approach can be the starting point for any business transformation.
The main challenges to successful process transformation
An IDC White Paper, sponsored by SAP, Business Process Observability: A Collaborative Approach to Transformation Enablement (doc #EUR251308223, November 2023), looks closely at where organizations are with their Business Process Management (BPM) capabilities and where the principal challenges to success are found.
In a time when collaboration is critical to most facets of an efficient and effective enterprise, IDC research revealed that 87.5% of respondents do not have an effective collaboration environment for process change that provides visibility to all process participants in the organization.
IDC White Paper, sponsored by SAP, Business Process Observability: A Collaborative Approach to Transformation Enablement (doc #EUR251308223, November 2023)
Tapping into the collective wisdom and brainpower of the crowd is becoming commonplace, as a way of generating ideas and optimizing processes. Yet the IDC White Paper also found that 88.1% of respondents do not have clear management support to take action to change or improve business processes based on insights from process analysis. This is vital to success, as is management support when putting process optimization as a core element of the business strategy. Without top-down backing, any process transformation will be difficult.
Furthermore, 28.1% of respondents’ organizations said they cannot easily understand the potential business impacts of process changes. Given that the objective of process transformation is business improvement, whether adding value to customers, saving costs, or boosting operational efficiencies, this is a worrying finding.
What's the key to addressing those challenges?
Generally, people are aware of these challenges and are aiming to address them. 61.5% of respondents in the IDC report continue to invest in process monitoring and measurement, which was more than any other investment area. People know that to improve processes, you need a deep understanding of how they work, and that understanding comes from improved collaboration and multiple information sources.
Any organization that prioritizes integrating different data sources to analyze processes gives itself a good chance to succeed. However, monitoring the health and performance of business processes is not enough. Organizations require a more comprehensive view of their processes, and to be able to review process performance and take action to change them when required. However, according to the IDC White Paper only 29.8% benchmark the health and performance of their processes against industry best practices.
Business process observability
Fortunately, there is a new approach emerging – business process observability – that enables organizations to achieve complex business and technology transformations faster and at scale. A process is observable if people understand how it operates, where outcomes are known, and how actions can be taken to improve those outcomes.
Achieving business process observability requires five core elements: data completeness, data quality, data access for all relevant stakeholders, the right metrics, and the ability to put them into the right context. This is not straightforward, but doing so allows stakeholders to analyze problems faster, prioritize and act, and drive innovation across the business.
To learn more about process observability and how it can help address some of the biggest challenges organizations are facing, please download the IDC White Paper “Business Process Observability: A Collaborative Approach to Transformation Enablement.”