Business Process Optimization

The Problem

Public Sector Information Technology projects have the following challenges:

• Constrained capital investments demand value-driven prioritization and delivery
• The need to manage and create value out of the exponential growth in volume and velocity of data
• The demand for new technology platforms and information sources creates opportunity and risk; and
• The need to simplify and actively manage technology architecture to reduce Total Cost of Ownership and increase agility.

A missed opportunity for many organizations is their inability to systematically generate value from all investments, including ERP.

Many organizations would agree that the expectation of their ERP implementation was to solve 100% of their business problems and achieve 100% of their business case. Typically, in order to maintain budget and schedule, some of the planned functionality and a portion of the business case were “deferred” to a “future” phase. The problem with this approach is that after the system has stabilized, many organizations do not pick up the functionality that was thrown overboard during the chaos of implementation.

Focusing on business outcomes throughout the lifecycle of a project reduces “Value Leakage”. Value Management impacts how we prioritize portfolios and choose projects, how we prioritize and build business capabilities within projects, and how well end-users leverage these investments. During the initial implementation, it is important to prioritize items that get deferred based on relative impact to business value. A business case should be created to support each and every scope change–up or down.

We have also found that the earlier end users are involved, the greater the impact on their usage willingness. Specifically, involving end users in business case creation has a higher impact on usage willingness than involving end users at any other stage. The result is better expected value understanding and better informed decisions on what to build and how to build it.

So, now that your organization has implemented an ERP, what’s next?

Our Solution

We recommend that your organization implement a program of Incremental Renewal – Leverage cost / benefit analyses for process improvements based on customer requests to determine the appropriate projects to fund and then manage those projects efficiently through the use of formal, disciplined, implementation processes.

Process improvements can be (1) incremental changes to existing processes to get closer to best practice processes or (2) implementation of new processes to expand the existing ERP footprint.

The first step is a Business Process Optimization Assessment. This assessment consists of the following key activities:

• Conduct end user workshops to review the organization’s key business processes to determine existing pain points, compare to best practice processes, and make recommendations of opportunities for improvement.
• Review open work orders to create groupings of related items into manageable projects and list as opportunities for improvement.
• Analyze list of improvement opportunities for dependencies, implementation timeline, costs, and quantify the resulting benefits to the organization.
• Develop a roadmap by prioritizing improvement opportunities and laying them out on a timeline with required resources and funding requirements.
• Develop and present the final report and work with the organization on obtaining the approval to proceed and required funding.

The results of the Business Process Optimization Assessment are as follows:

• A list of improvement opportunities with quantified benefits to the organization:
• For each opportunity, an implementation timeline, staffing model, and associated costs:
• A roadmap of prioritized initiatives:

Once the Business Process Optimization Assessment has been completed, each resulting initiative can be implemented as a standalone Project within an ERP Incremental Renewal Program. By implementing as part of a managed Program, the various initiatives can be coordinated and integrated. This means that a single governance organization can oversee the initiatives and enforce tight discipline over project management processes and methodology. This results in reduced risk, controlled costs, and quality delivery.