BP Community

Successful Customer Outcomes - delivering the Triple Crown (workshop)

2012-02-05T16:36:00.000-08:00

BPGroup & PEX week workshopThe workshop from Florida in January during PEXweek

View more presentations from Steve Towers.

BPGroup Update, Top Blogs, 2012 CPP Program and some

2012-01-31T15:17:00.000-08:00

Welcome from BPM Towers.
One month of the new webiste / Nine most popular process blogs / Top Articles / Top BPM Training /
Combine that with the 50,000+ non LinkedIn members and your not for profit
has never been so active, so drop by.... http://bit.ly/joinbpgroup

**Featured Blogs**

> Successful Customer Outcomes < http://bit.ly/SuccessfulCustomerOutcomes > Steve Towers
> Outside-In Insider < http://bit.ly/OutsideInInsideOut > James Dodkins
> BP Community < http://bit.ly/ProcessCompany > BPGroup
> Making You Think < http://bit.ly/MakesYouThink > Ian Gotts
> Janne Ohtonen < http://bit.ly/JanneOhtonenBlog > Janne Ohtonen
> Process Ninja < http://bit.ly/TheProcessNinja > Craig Reid
> BPM for Real < http://bit.ly/BPMforReal > Chris Taylor
> PEX Network < http://bit.ly/PEX4Process > IQPC
> Customer Service < http://bit.ly/Service4Customers > Service Untitled

**Featured Discussions**
> Mark Barnett < http://linkd.in/w8CEuC > Process Intuition

**2012 Coaching Program**
With 150 sessions planned this year
> http://www.bpgroup.org/register-venues--dates.html <

**After visting the discussions have a look at the brand new squeaky clean website**
http://www.bpgroup.org

and review the seminars, conferences and program for 2012 :-)

**Also if you are qualified do join the closed user groups on BP Group on LinkedIn.**
More giveaways (in December we 'released' to members 21 iPad2's!!)
and access to all the downloads, videos, updated case studies.....

On the subject of giveaways the next London Masters comes free with an iPad2 to boot
- see http://londonpromas.eventbrite.com/

All the Very Best
Steve

http://bit.ly/LinkWithSteve

The OneGoogle Policy - the Silo destroyer

2012-01-30T14:38:00.000-08:00

Google is the epitome of an Outside-In company. Successively reducing costs, improving services and delivering consistent and growing returns for its investors. To some it seems as if there is magic underway as they struggle with changing markets, volatile customers and economic chaos.

What is the secret? At it heart lies a simple formula. Align with Successful Customer Outcomes and you drive out unnecessary complexity, reducing costs and speeding service. We see this in Googles products and services everyday and on occasions our attention is drawn to a particular initiative. This very thing happened a few days ago with Googles new privacy policy launch.

Here is the email many of us received:

Simple and elegant. A prime example of complexity removal and aligned thinking to the benefit of the customer and the organisation.

Not so magic after all once you know the trick!

Thanks to Mark Barnett for bringing this one home - you can reach him via mark.Barnett At bpgroup.org

For more tales of magic and successful outcomes review http://www.bpgroup.org and access resources. If you would like a complementary copy of the book Outside-In The Secret of the 21st century leading companies drop James.Dodkins At bpgroup.org a line with the reason why and we'll oblige.

All the Best
Steve

Introduction to Outside-In Thinking

2011-12-13T04:27:00.000-08:00

The Challenge
If we consider the challenges of succeeding in business in the 21st century, most major companies would come up with a similar list:

When they talk about their customers
> Competition is fierce, global and increasing.
> Customers have become rebellious, they realise they have the right to alternatives and they frequently exercise that right.
> Customers have high expectations, they demand more and unless that demand is met they will go elsewhere.
> Customers demand choice, comprehensive information and the best price.

When they talk about their operations
> Operations, structures and business flows are becoming ever more complex
> The process of change is becoming ever more complex as the obvious improvements are delivered and the focus is on looking for new improvements often with diminishing returns
> A significant proportion of change projects under-perform and do not achieve the desired outcome
> There are so many alternative methods to effecting change out there it is difficult to select which one makes most sense for my business

When they talk about their overall business performance
> I fundamentally believe I offer a superior product and/or service but I’m still struggling to make the returns I believe possible
> I strive to be a market leader, I believe we have the capability to be a market leader but the issues above prevent me from getting there
> It is difficult to markedly cut my costs without impacting my service levels
> The impact of the global recession has affected my business and our fortunes won’t markedly improve until the business environment improves.

There may be additional comments however this is typical of observations from companies all over the world. And it is getting worse.
It isn’t though we don’t have choice in improvement approaches. As of 2011 there were over 6000 improvement methodologies all geared to helping organisations improve performance. How do you decide which one works best?

How do you ensure sustained business improvement when the average CEO in the 21^st century lasts 3 years and each new regime brings fresh ideas but a lot of the same issues?

Origins of Outside-In
Despite all the issues documented above there have been companies who have regularly ‘bucked’ the trend and posted great business results, grown significantly and sustained that growth. For example SouthWest Airlines posts 58 consecutive quarters of profit when most of their competition made huge losses – in the case of Delta this has been billions AND more than once ‘achieved’ in just a quarter!

Apple have introduced innovative new products and regularly posted impressive results and increasing market share when organisations like Motorola who used to be one of the main players in the mobile handset market have dramatically suffered despite having gone through numerous iterations of business improvement.

Outside-In has been built on the approaches and lessons learnt from those companies who have managed to beat the competition and moreover delivered market beating results on a sustained basis. The approaches and techniques have been developed to be easily applied even to those organisations that have already been through numerous change iterations and believe they are as efficient as they could expect to get.

What is Outside-In in the context of the BP Group?
1. Outside-In is a philosophy and method of managing an organisation by understanding and delivering Successful Customer Outcomes.
2. Outside-In Process optimizes value-delivery to customers. By fusing customer-driven process with customer-centric strategies, O-I creates successful customer outcomes (SCOs) – the foundation for achieving sustainable growth and profitability in an increasingly buyer-driven marketplace.
(Customer ProcessOne Council, May 2010)

There are many accreditations in the process space. This BP Group community is sponsored by www.bpgroup.org (not for profit) which in turn advocates the Certified Process Professional qualification
(http://www.bpgroup.org ).
There are four levels of recognition:

Certified Process Practitioner (CPP-Practitioner)
Certified Process Professional (CPP-Professional)
Certified Process Master (CPP-Master)
Certified Process Advanced Master (CPP-AdvMaster)

A significant part of that hands-on learning is focused on Outside-In and includes discussion of various methods such as CEMMethod http://www.cemmethod.com)

There is a rapidly developing cadre of people and organisations delivering Outside-In training, consultancy and advisory services with case studies, presentations and podcasts at http://www.oibpm.com

The 20th Annual BP Group conference will have a strong flavour of Outside-In with notable organisations who are the pioneers of Outside-In present and delivering case studies, tutorials and workshops.

Not least of which is the fifth book - Outside-In, now in its third edition (http://www.outsideinthesecret.com)

Outside-In Themes
Outside-In has been developed with a number of supporting themes designed to help the organisation apply and deliver business improvement on a sustained basis.

Exclusive focus on Successful Customer Outcome
The approach we have distilled from global leading companies, which we call Customer Expectation Management Method (CEMMethod^TM), has a set of principles and philosophy that ensures everything you do is aligned to and improves the SCO. CEMM helps an organization bring their processes, systems, strategy and people into ‘outside-in’ alignment.

Every company in business today will impact Successful Customer Outcome to a degree – they have to otherwise customers would not buy. Outside-In is built on the philosophy that the better a company understands Successful Customer Outcomes the more business it will win as a result. Further applying the thinking takes you to places (i.e. business opportunities) that your competition has never been able to exploit and perhaps never thought about.

Apple are producing applications that people never thought they needed whereas Nokia who have built what they believe is a technology superior mobile phone has had to re-think their approach to business amidst falling revenues and margins. Southwest are close to the era of the free flight ticket and enjoying consistent profitability whereas British Airways are going through possibly the worst business fortunes in its history. If you think about it, an airline is a business which are made up of the same commodity components – similar aeroplanes, customers with roughly the same wants/needs, airports with the ability to offer the same services (if they choose) – yet some operators are flying high and others are sinking towards government bailout or bankruptcy. Both southwest and BA will claim customer centricity but Outside-In defines the important outcome components that are critical to business success and under this lens it becomes very clear that BA is left wanting.

Efficient delivery of the SCO
Outside-In is designed on the premise if a process or operation does NOT contribute to the Successful Customer Outcome - you don’t do it! On first analysis this may appear a difficult to rationalise in a practical sense – most organisations have non-customer facing departments – how can the principle of the SCO still apply?

Non customer facing business areas may not directly ‘touch’ the customer but they are almost always connected to customer facing areas as a support or policing function. Unless these non-facing customer departments are also aligned to the SCO then at best they carry out unnecessary tasks which increase the cost base and at worst significantly prevent the achievement of the SCO.
Examples of how non-customer facing can impact the SCO:

An HR department for a software company might change the rewards that the sales function receive to better align with the SCO. This encourages active qualification and delivery against real customer needs rather than traditionally on revenue contracted which may cause non-customer centric behaviour (to get ‘a deal’ leaving a legacy of problems and reduced future business potential downstream).
The finance department with a good understanding on expense run rates may have a trust based process for all expenses within a specified threshold for the sales and delivery teams. The cost of extra expenses is more than off-set by reduced manual effort and the sales/delivery functions left to focus on their core objectives.
A printing company may decide to remove all its print shops because the customer can now define exactly how he/she wants the delivery to look via a simple downloadable print tool and the SCO says the delivery comes to a place of my choosing when I want – I no longer have to go anywhere to discuss/review/pick-up etc
A lift manufacturer may decide to outsource the manufacture of its lift doors but not the open/closing mechanism because the door itself can be produced to the specification required and the implication on the SCO is easy to control.
A fashion company may decide to centralise its production operations close to its operational headquarters rather than the traditional low cost production centres in China because it can facilitate high velocity in its design to shop floor objective that the customer demands.

These are simple examples as a means to illustrate but in most organisations who have not been put through the ‘Outside-In lens’ there are numerous other examples, which traditional techniques e.g. Six Sigma and Lean fail to identify.

In other words Outside-In thinking helps firstly to identify work that does not contribute to the SCO – which is removed, and secondly helps identify work that does contribute to the SCO and optimises.

Organised to sustain performance change focus
Outside-In is more than a series of tools and techniques to view and improve our business. It is designed as ‘practical thinking’ or a ‘business attitude’ to be orientated to as much of the business that the practitioner or management requires. If implemented to the greatest degree then a company may design and represent its organisation charts around the customer with the customer as the driving central theme. It may represent performance measures using Outside-In measures as its KPIs.

The thinking does not prevent other techniques from being used in analysing and improving our business but it does ensure Successful Outcome is maintained as a central theme even when CEO’s, boards and senior managers change. If focus is only maintained at a tools and techniques level they tend to be pigeon holed into a specific silo and more likely to become forgotten or ignored as the latest panacea for change raises its head.

Taking the Complexity out of how we view our business
One of the issues that change practitioners face is that of the underlying complexity of the business we are trying to improve or change. When we move from high level management representations to process detail, a much more complex picture emerges which we have defined on the basis on that’s what we do. But if we look at that process again from the customer viewpoint then the process is very different. Outside-In shows that the way we traditionally view process is an illusion and prevents us from viewing business in a way to enable significant change. Viewing what we do from the perspective of the customer enables us to think of performance change initiatives that would never been possible if we had studied our business from the traditional left to right top to bottom basis inherited from the industrial era.

How many changes to the way we do business seem obvious once we have identified what they are but somehow eluded us when we are looking at our businesses as a ‘haystack’ of processes?

Developing a methodology we can all apply
Sustained change is best effected if it can be articulated in a way the whole organisation can understand and be part of. Keep it simple.Too many people surround themselves with a jargon and levels of complexity in an attempt to create mystique around their work. This is confusing, expensive and debilitating.

The thinking, tools and techniques within Outside-In can be applied directly to our own organisations after less than a week of training. The terminology used can be adopted if necessary across an enterprise although in reality many will apply the tools and making changes without ever having to be too specific as to the techniques used. This may range from the individual improving performance to a broader remit such as influence with change programmes at the corporate level. Change which the whole organisation can relate to and understand is more likely to succeed than change prescribed by specialists using consultantese.

The world’s most successful organisations are often characterised as those where the staff are seen to be driving and feel part of the business. Giving staff a practical understanding of the techniques that enable change will turn change into an opportunity rather than a perceived threat.

Success Measures aligned to business delivery
Ultimately any change has to be judged under the measures that directly relate to the business – revenue, cost base, shareholder value, market penetration as well as softer but still important qualitative measures e.g. customer satisfaction, market reaction, analyst appraisal.

Outside-In can impact all of these measures and moreover simultaneously – this is referred to as the Triple Crown.

… more soon …

Join us: http://www.bpgroup.org

UPDATE IS FOR CERTIFIED PROCESS PROFESSIONALS

2011-12-08T22:45:00.000-08:00

The BPGroup is 20 years old in 2012.

**THANKS TO YOU**
An enormous thank you goes to you, the qualified members of the community, for making 2011 our busiest year on record. I have completed a brief review of the who and what for 2011, with a teaser for 2012 also.

Before anything else though are you registered with the BP Group? That way you get all the latest resources, case studies, videos and of course networking opportunity. To check YOU ARE REGISTERED (it is free of course) click here:
http://bit.ly/joinbpgroup

**UPDATED BOOK**
For those already registered have you joined your Closed Groups, specifically for your skill set and interest? Click below to check and then download the latest version of 'Outside-In, the secret of the 21st centuries leading companies' now in its fifth edition (available until 31 Dec 2011).

Certified Process Professionals:
https://bitly.com/certifiedProcessProfessional

**REVIEW OF PROGRESS**
It promises to be the busiest year ever for the community as the full impact of Enterprise BPM aka Outside-In is understood and applied around the planet. As part of tHis growth there are FIVE global conferences SPONSORED by the BPGroup in the first four months of the year in the US, Europe, South Africa and SE Asia. Apply directly and claim your discount (we'll see you there!)

BPGROUP CONFERENCE IN ASSOCIATION WITH IQPC – PEX 2012 USA
Lake Buena Vista, Florida, USA - January 16-19, 2012: http://bit.ly/PEX2012

PROCESS EXCELLENCE WEEK – PEX 2012 SOUTH AFRICA
Achieving the 'Triple Crown' – increasing revenue, improving the customer experience and reducing costs
Cape Town, South Africa – February 20-24, 2012: http://bit.ly/SouthAfricaProcessExcellence

CUSTOMER CENTRICITY AND PROCESS ORIENTATION with Marcus Evans
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – March 19-21, 2012 : http://bit.ly/BPMandCustomerCentricity

BPM SUMMIT 2012 - IT WEB ANNUAL CONFERENCE
Johannesburg, South Africa – April 17-18 : http://bit.ly/SouthAfricaBPM

BPGROUP CONFERENCE IN ASSOCIATION WITH IQPC – PEX 2012 Europe
London, England – April 23-27, 2012 : http://bit.ly/PEX2012_London

**EATING OUR OWN DOGFOOD** (as they say at Google)
New webiste:
http://www.bpgroup.org

**MEET YOUR BPGROUP MANAGEMENT TEAM**
http://www.oibpm.com

**OUTSIDE-IN RESOURCES:**

OUTSIDE-IN OVERVIEW: http://www.successfulcustomeroutcomes.net/2011/04/outside-in-and-its-potential-with-steve.html

HARVARD PERSPECTIVE: https://businessprocess.box.net/shared/zqb1z083ub

WHARTON PERSPECTIVE:
https://businessprocess.box.net/shared/tshqkxkdqe

FOLLOWING BLOG/ARTICLES:
http://www.successfulcustomeroutcomes.net/

MANAGEMENT GURU’S:
http://linkd.in/ManagementGurus

THE STATE OF THE BPM INDUSTRY
http://bit.ly/BPM_StateoftheIndustry

STEVE TOWERS PRESENTATIONS:
http://www.slideshare.net/stowers/

For the moment,
All the Best
Steve

Business Process Professionals Recommended Conferences 2012

2011-12-03T14:52:00.000-08:00

The first four months of 2012 sees several EXCELLENT events in association with the BP Group. Attending will gain you your Continuing Professional Credits®, and provide access to the very latest in Outside-In thinking and practice from colleagues and partners.

Join us for five conferences in USA, Europe, South Africa and Malaysia in 17 weeks!

BPGROUP CONFERENCE IN ASSOCIATION WITH IQPC – PEX 2012 USA
Lake Buena Vista, Florida, USA - January 16-19, 2012: http://bit.ly/PEX2012

PROCESS EXCELLENCE WEEK – PEX 2012 SOUTH AFRICA
Achieving the 'Triple Crown' – increasing revenue, improving the customer experience and reducing costs

Cape Town, South Africa – February 20-24, 2012: http://bit.ly/SouthAfricaProcessExcellence

CUSTOMER CENTRICITY AND PROCESS ORIENTATION with Marcus Evans
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – March 19-21, 2012 : http://bit.ly/BPMandCustomerCentricity

BPM SUMMIT 2012 - IT WEB ANNUAL CONFERENCE
Johannesburg, South Africa – April 17-18 : http://bit.ly/SouthAfricaBPM

BPGROUP CONFERENCE IN ASSOCIATION WITH IQPC – PEX 2012 Europe
London, England – April 23-27, 2012 : http://bit.ly/PEX2012_London

Hopefully see you there :-)
Steve

CPP's in Cape Town

2011-11-18T13:59:00.000-08:00

The Certified Process Professionals® in Cape Town
November 2011 (it is a tough life for some folks eh?)

This was the 5th class in Cape Town during 2011.
South Africa now has more than 400 qualified CPP's
and 40 CPP Masters®.

This just underlines how progressive the BRICS
economies are becoming. Next stop this coming week for
Charles Bennett is Jakarta, James Dodkins will be in
Brazil and Argentina.

Yours truly onwards to New Zealand.
All the Best
Steve

What's in your wallet? Today and Tomorrow....

2011-10-18T02:52:00.000-07:00

You may recall the 'Capital One' TV adverts that asked what's in your wallet? And now we can see that the new Apple and Android smartphones will have eWallet capabilities built in. Just as technologies such as Google Search and eCommerce have transformed the media and retail sectors in the last 10 years, many folks are wondering will the ewallet transform financial services?

eWallet: an African story

The ewallet is banking through a phone. So who would have thought that the Kenya Posts and Telecommunications Corporation would be at the cutting edge of such technology.

In its incarnation as Safari.com (a Vodafone affiliate) the company serves millions of customers. They use a pin and password to access their banking, which lets them receive money, make transfers and get physical cash from agent outlets and ATMs within the network.

Transactions are all passed through the phone (not a cash card). The ewallet can make money transfers with a few text messages. To withdraw cash from an agent (usually a shop) the customer inputs an agent number, amount to withdraw, and PIN. A screen confirms the transaction then both the customer and the agent get an SMS recording it. The agent hands over the cash.

No plastic, no ATM

Essentially the phone is a cash card and cash machine in one. Banking this way grew up in Kenya because there was no money (and a high risk factor) for banks to set up branches.

Now the service in this third world country is cutting edge and has been expanded to Tanzinia, Afghanistan and South Africa.

Which begs the question of what a reasonable ewallet system would do to the developed world’s banks. As we know, half of them are already trendy wine bars.

A wave and you’re away

Western banks have good internet and telephone banking for customers to manage their existing bank accounts, but the e wallet isn’t yet prevalent. What people are getting excited about is Near Field Communication (NFC) through mobile phones, which will let us simply wave our wallet in a shop to pay for goods.

Apple will introduce ewallet soon

NFC payments are linked to credit cards. Google Wallet, for example, is working with Visa, American Express, Mastercard and Discover.

Will the big banks will keep up with the technology and ally themselves with the next wave of payment systems? Possibly. Just as media and retail businesses dismissed the game changing potential of eCommerce 10 years ago and have now gone bust or are on their last legs (eg Circuit City in retail, or newspapers and magazines around the world), the same could happen to banks in the next 10 years.

Still, It’s all good news for potential wine bar owners though.

Best wishes John.

John Corr
New Bond House
124 New Bond Street, London, W1S 1DX, UNITED KINGDOM

john.corr@bpgroup.org

PEX Week Awards 2012 – Deadline to submit entries 14th October!

2011-10-10T14:02:00.000-07:00

The BP Group endorses the Annual Awards program in partnership with IQPC-PEX.

Do you have an award winning Business Excellence program? IQPC – PEX Network’s industry renowned Process Excellence Awards are the ideal way to publicly benchmark and recognize your Process Excellence business results as well as motivate and renew passion within your organizational team. Like no other award program, it's for the community, judged by the community, so what better way to put your improvement program back on your CEO's agenda and elevate your company's profile in 2012?

2012 Award categories include:

Program Awards:

Best Business Process Excellence Program (Over 2 years)
Best Start-up Business Process Excellence Program (Under 2 years)

Project Awards:

Best Process Improvement Project (Over 90 days)
Best Process Improvement Project under 90 days
Best Project Contributing to Organisational Value, Sustainability and Innovation
Best BPM Project

Individual Award:

Deployment Leader of the year

Visit http://bit.ly/njstE1 to download the application kit.

Process Excellence and The Genius of Steve Jobs

2011-10-07T01:08:00.000-07:00

View Bio

Tribute: Process Excellence and the Genius of Steve Jobs: After the news today Apple’s founder and visionary Steve Jobs had passed away aged 56, so much is being said rightly about the technical genius of the man. But beyond his astute commercial insight lies a deeper truth that is much more important to Process Professionals and all of us involved in building and developing Process Excellence. read more

(Posted on Process Excellence Network)

Is Amazon Kindle Fire the death of the bookstore?

2011-10-04T13:30:00.000-07:00

Hello Kindle Fire, bye bye Waterstone’s?

Amazon launched Kindle Fire last week, a tablet competitor to the iPad.
Poor old Waterstone’s: is this the last nail in its coffin?

Kindle Fire

Kindle’s technology means that books can be bought instantly,
many of them for 99p and £1.99 instead of the £20 you might pay
for a hardback in Waterstone’s. And the fact that the new $199 Kindle
is in colour means that users can browse magazines and picture books,
giving booksellers yet another reason to worry.

Waterstone’s, the UK’s largest chain of book shops, has experienced
similar woes to the US’ Barnes and Noble, losing out to online sellers
and supermarkets. New Waterstone’s boss James Daunt acknowledges
that Amazon is tough competition but asks:
“Why wouldn’t you want to spend half an hour in a really nice bookshop?”
His plan is to turn the 300-strong fleet of stores into a collection of friendly, local venues in
which readers can comfortably browse and buy.

The idea has merit. Of course people don’t want to go to another identikit Waterstone’s in

Leeds or Birmingham or Manchester. Foyles had the idea of the ‘destination event’ bookshop

long ago and its overhaul saw it win bookseller of the year for 2010, among other gongs.
But can chummy staff and a frapuccino work for such a large chain? The job to pull Waterstones’
stores up to standard is a big one in itself, but to do it in so many locations with such tough
competition is mammoth. And even those who love browsing through bookshops have to admit
that it is much simpler to ping a request through cyberspace to get the latest read sent to them
for a fraction of the cost.

Recent reports from UK publishers suggest digital book sales now account for around 9-10% of
their overall book sales compared to 4-5% last year. That still leaves 90% of the book market
sold as actual books.

There are takers out there for the ‘book buying’
experience. Daunt has to find a way of get them
through his doors, and fast.

What do you think? Can the book shop survive?

Let me know what you think by email or post

to our blog at www.closequarter.co.uk/blog.

Best wishes John Corr

Close Quarter Limited,

New Bond House, 124 New Bond Street, London,
W1S 1DX, UNITED KINGDOM