How Do You Define BPM?

Posted 10-Feb-2004 09:28 AM

One of the few topics hotter than RFID these days is BPM—and vendors know it, few better than Chordiant Software. The company doesn't use the term CRM these days. And, Chordiant is aiming squarely at BPM with the fifth version of Call Center Advisor.

The company has designed this application to make some business processes more efficient, specifically by defining which processes a representative can participate in and then exhibit them on the revamped browser interface. The company believes that the changes will please customers and put it in a good competitive position as well. "Chordiant's customers represent some of the largest contact centers in the world, some with more than 20,000 contact center agents," said Stephen Kelly, chief executive officer of Chordiant Software, in a prepared statement. "We have customers who can tell us the economic impact of shaving a millisecond off calls in centers.

The combination of easier usability, a range of new innovative features and technology leadership delivers a contact center solution that can reduce agent-training time, error rates and call lengths. We believe this release puts Chordiant 18-24 months ahead of its nearest competitor."

How do you define BPM? And what does BPM have to do with CRM?

Teri Robinson
Managing Editor

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Posted 12-Feb-2004 09:43 PM

Hi Terry,

This is my first contribution and I will apologize for my english as it is not my mother tongue but french.
This move seems the same as the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) as they focus more and more on process integration.
Beside the concept of Strategy in CRM, if we want to put this strategy in operation, we have to take action. As we know, we can have the best CRM strategy, but if we are unable to fulfill our promise, what is the benefit of CRM?
This is a good move as we are now in a time where we are analyzing all the processes from the customers to the enterprise and back to the customers. Analyzing meaning looking at bottleneck if any and eliminating them.
CRM is 3 things : the analytics, the operational and the collaborative. In the operational, you have the management of the contact center, the management of the field sales force, the management of the internet sales. All these will bring a lot of data that will be analyzed further by the analytics solution and also feeding the back end application. When analyzing this simplified schematic, we understand that this is the management of processes. Isn't that what we mean by the BPM?
Regards,

Alnoor Dramsi
Elsop Consulting Group France

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Niko
Member

Posted 13-Feb-2004 01:56 AM

Hi Teri,

BPM and CRM should indeed go hand in hand. I fail to see how 'proper' CRM can be practiced without BPM being deployed, not only at the contact center, but at all the interfaces of the contact center with departments that relate to interactions with the customer (which in my mind should be the WHOLE company).

I define BPM as the Operational procedures that translate Strategy and Tacticts to daily operations. A company that cares to practice true CRM, has defined its Operational procedures so that it achieves and maintains customer aquisition, satisfaction and retention at increasing levels of profitability. As such, BPM is not and should not be restricted at the Contact Center, and indeed it is not something that only a Contact Center technology should enable, for it is obvious that it could and should equally be enabled by an ERP product, or a Financial Management product.

Ability to define Business Processes at the contact center is certainly a step forward, altough I would like to know what it means in comparison to a Workflow Manageer that other tools have.

Regards,

Niko

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Posted 13-Feb-2004 04:14 AM

Is this a case of "CRM is dead, long live CRM". Something that was stated to be a "new" thing was just BPM to start with wasnt it?

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Graham Hill
Guru
Member

Posted 16-Feb-2004 02:59 AM

Teri

BPM (Business Process Management) seems to be the logical extension of Business Process Reengineering (BPR) that swept through business' in the 90s, following the publication of Hammer & Champy's now infamous book "Reengineering the Corporation".

If BPR was all about reengineering the corporation around end-to-end business processes, then BPR should be all about managing the processes effectively for superior value creation.

But managing processes requires much more than the processes to have been reengineered. It also requires the addition of a robust performance management framework (such as Kaplan & Norton's Balanced Business Scorecard and TQM (Total Quality Management) tools with which to measure, monitor and manage process performance effectively.

Clearly end-to-end processes cover much more than just the call centre, or at least they should do. And that applies equally to CRM too. Perhaps the best framework to think about linking BPM and CRM is through a common 'customer experience'. If CRM is all about providing target customers with a superior customer experience (at a profit), then BPM is the way that we manage the delivery of that experience.

This includes marketing, sales and service touchpoints and probably some brand touchpoints too.

Graham Hill
Independent Management Consultant

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Vishal Sarkar
Member Council
Member

Posted 17-Feb-2004 12:33 AM

I think Graham has hit the nail on the head!
Indeed, BPM is all about managing the deliverables that CRM promises.

In today's environment, where Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) has become a favorite trend that seems likely to continue, BPM has assumed an even more important role.

Managing the 'outsourced' processes that relate to customer experience (Call Handling via outsourced call centres for one), is a very challenging task. It requires close tracking, metrics and correctional procedures.
BPM is where the BPO industry is and should be investing today as weak BPM can directly relate to a negative 'customer' experience and a possible 'loss' in revenue!

Vishal

Posted 19-Feb-2004 08:47 AM

I agree with Mike 'CRM is dead long live CRM'.
However process improvement is only one aspect of CRM. The slickest and quickest processes are of no value to customers unless you have created value propositions which meet needs. BPM looks to me like a case of a software company trying to distance itself from the bad news around CRM we say lots of last year. I'm not impressed.

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Niko
Member

Posted 20-Feb-2004 01:53 AM

Jeremy and Mike,

It is not so much the case of 'CRM is dead, long live CRM', as much as the case of the industry and the vendors realising and understanding that you cannot just drop a Customer Management / Contact Center product in the middle of a company without well defined business process and procedures, or integration to other enterprise systems that the company uses to serve its customers and expect to achieve a satisfactory and business winning Customer Relationship Management experience.

Of course vendors will try to ride on it and come up with new features of products that would supposedly support this, but technology support without the company having taken steps to create the appropriate business environment (processes, product propositions etc) is like putting the cart before the horse...

Regards,

Niko

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Graham Hill
Guru
Member

Posted 25-Feb-2004 11:48 PM

Niko

There have been three independant, large scale studies—by CRMGuru, George Day at Wharton and Werner Reinartz at Insead—that have looked at what separates successful CRM implementations from unsuccessful ones.

All showed clearly that the introduction of CRM systems (and by implication the choice of which vendor) was NOT A CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTOR for CRM success, once you have reached a certain minimum level of CRM system competency.

That doesn't mean that CRM systems are not required, or even that they are not important, just that they are not a critical success factor in separating the winners from the losers in the vast majority of CRM implementations.

The arguments of the vendors of course assume that the opposite is true, particularly when it comes to the features of own offering. Do not be alarmed. This is just a healthy sign of free markets in action.

Caveat emptor as the Romans would say.

Graham Hill
Independent Management Consultant

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Niko
Member

Posted 01-Mar-2004 12:08 AM

Thanks for the info Graham, I was not aware of that specific research, although I had heard through word of mouth that such research with results along these lines had been carried out in the recent past.

It goes to show one that technology alone does not solve business problems.

Cheers,

Niko

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Posted 01-Apr-2005 09:29 PM

Dear Teri,

My definition of CRM would be a system which helps me in enhancing my customer interaction with each and every customer each time either they or I interact with them!

BPM is fine tuning or enhancing all the processes impacting business and having them integrated to the business or operations!

BPM has a lot do to with CRM and how I see it both BPM and CRM need to complement each other.

Let me share with you an example—a billing process with a telecom service provider is one ofthe key pocesses. Companies are integrating the process and fien tuning it to ensure good collections,accurate billing,, reduction of bad debts etc. they are actually engineering this billing process so that the key objective—collections is met!

CRM facilitates this objective of collections for an organization! In fact if CRM is utilized effectively by an organization it would play a vital role in all all business process fine tuning!

The BPM and its approaach I feel has to be closely integrated with the CRM to ensure the end objective is met!

All telecom service providers today have a CRM in place (they may call it CRM or billing system—however it is the same as its actual role is to capture customer data and throw it up to agents as interactions besides providing all billing information to the agents )