Successful Workplace

Put the ‘BPM as a Concept’ aside for a bit and look at BPMs tech-related benefits. One of the things at the top of your list is likely to be how it is a Rapid Application Development platform and how it helps you quickly put together process based solutions with much less development effort than […]

The following is guest post by Julie Hunt, a software professional with a career spanning technical to process, sales and go-to-market strategies. Julie shares her thoughts on the her blog Highly Competitive. Julie runs her own consulting business and lives in San Marcos, Texas. For those who work directly with business process management, it’s second […]

I eat a lot of pomegranates these days. These fantastic fruits provide potent antioxidants and have anticancer properties. They also reduce blood pressure and atherosclerotic plaque. Pomegranates are in season and taste delicious. But my wife was starting to hate them. Deseeding Like all things in life, I started out as a pomegranate deseeder novice.  Several months ago, I used to do this by […]

According to some sources, one of the earliest examples of outsourcing was in 1949 when an accountant created a company in New Jersey to take on payroll admin from organisations. That’s over 60 years to get it right….and yet year on year I hear the same issues from clients, I witness the same mistakes over […]

I recently interviewed Matt on his thoughts on BPM, Enterprise Social and where it’s all heading for the future. Matt has been the President, CEO, and Chairman of the Board since founding Appian in 1999. Mr. Calkins also serves on the MicroStrategy Board of Directors. He has a B.A. with honors in Economics from Dartmouth, […]

Recently I was working with an organization which acquired a smaller company with $100 million of  annual sales.  Fast forward one year.  The newly merged business unit was struggling to bring in $30 million in sales. Sales continued to be flat for another two years before they started to grow again and didn’t reach their […]

Just kidding, but I got your attention. Also, full disclosure, I’m from Texas. You may have seen the recent news story on the use of RFID student badges (not implanted microchips) in a school district in San Antonio, Texas. You can read a summary here. Enter Financial Pressures The main driver behind the school district […]

There are three fundamental ways that companies can improve their processes in the coming decade: (1) expand the scope of work managed by a company to include customers, suppliers, and partners; (2) target the increasing amount of knowledge work; and (3) reduce cycle times to durations previously considered impossible (as I discussed in my last […]

The following is a guest post by Mike Gammage, a business process expert with years in the field both selling solutions and solving problems at the customer site.  At Nimbus since 2003, Mike has worked with clients such as Accenture, Dell, Unilever, Steria and Marathon Oil on process management and performance improvement programs. When Noah Webster […]

How often do we really think through what we do and why? I’m comfortably sitting on the Pacific Surfliner, the Amtrak train between Los Angeles and San Diego, wondering why I ever drive or fly. My laptop is plugged in and charging as I work, my wifi device is sending a strong signal. I’m traveling […]

In my consulting and research I’ve seen many companies launch process improvement programs such as Total Quality Management, Business Reengineering, Lean, and Six Sigma. Many got significant benefits, including lower costs, faster time-to-market, and better customer experiences. But after one round of improvement, they gave up and let their organization get flabby again. Organizations, like […]

Nothing truly worthwhile is ever without challenges and business process initiatives are no different.  Our daily work brings us into frequent contact with a wide range of organizations that are considering a BPM initiative or have one (or more) underway.  From this first-hand view we’ve come up with our short list of the three biggest […]

Start with a cage containing five monkeys. In the cage, hang a banana on a string and put a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the monkeys with cold water. […]

In theory, actively engaging your front line employees in improving the way work is done makes perfect sense. It allows front line workers to learn by doing. It builds capability. It gets the work done. It builds emotional commitment to changes. Yet in practice, leaders seldom choose to actively engage the front line when redesigning work. Why? […]

As a native of France, few things are more curious than the process by which Americans celebrate Thanksgiving. It isn’t an easy holiday for anyone…except maybe the children. But Americans throw themselves into it. They bring their best game. They rise to the occasion every third Thursday in November perhaps because they know it only […]

When it comes to operational improvement, organizations today are light years ahead of where they were two decades ago, but there’s no time to celebrate yesterday’s wins. They won’t immunize your organization against this decade’s march of ongoing progress. That’s because information technology — not just the Internet, but also mobile devices, “big data” for […]