Outline
- Abstract
- Keywords
- Introduction
- Background to a New Way of Looking at Alignment for Bpm
- Alignment of Bpm
- Establishing Alignment to Bpm
- Business Scenarios That Would Require Business Process Alignment
- Benefits of Bpm Alignment
- Conclusions
- End Notes
Abstract
Alignment is a concept that dates back to the late 1990s, when it was described by Paul Strassmann: “Alignment is the capacity to demonstrate a positive relationship between information technologies and the accepted financial measures of performance.” Alignment of business process management (BPM) hence should follow a similar principle or pattern to be effective. The objective therefore is how this alignment to and between BPM can create value that is ultimately measurable as a favorable financial outcome for a commercial enterprise. Business process management alignment, which is focused on both reusability and accelerating automation, requires that business managers have an understanding of what alignment is, how to develop an alignment competency, and what considerations should be made by organizations to ensure alignment is adequately adopted. This chapter discusses these aspects of alignment and gives credence to the development of aligned BPM.
Conclusions
In this chapter we have focused on BPM alignment and how it is a top priority for executives. We covered what BPM alignment is, why it is important, and how and where it can or should be applied. Business process management alignment establishes the basis for effective tactical planning and drives continuous improvement and change management. The effectiveness of BPM efforts can be predicted by the maturity of an organization’s planning, alignment, and change management. We described this “how and where” to enable replication of the same success across projects, portfolios, and programs. Combined with Business Intelligence (BI), MDM, SOA, and or the cloud, BPM alignment offers significant potential to drive value and affect organizational performance.