Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Process Intelligence and CRM

Process Intelligence is a great vehicle for linking strategy and execution.

Process Intelligence is an organizational capability that aims to ensure that companies consistently and quickly apply relevant knowledge, to and within business processes – in order to provide better visibility of performance, support strategy alignment, improve business agility, improve operational decision-making, and identify issues and their root causes. It has a great deal of power for organizations looking to improve their ability to link strategy and execution, and through this increase business agility and visibility.

The importance of linking strategy and execution
Does your organization effectively link strategy and execution?

Here is a quick quiz. Do you find any of the following scenarios apply within your organization?
-   Front-line workers dont have the right information, context and facts to make informed decisions for the business, or a customer or partner.
-  It is difficult to work out whether or not people are actually following the right procedures and
guidelines and equally whether or not those procedures are actually adding value.
-  A singular focus by one department or functional unit on its own targets and results has a
detrimental effect on other parts of the organization, especially where a business activity cuts
across departmental boundaries.
-  It is difficult to respond in a timely and appropriate manner to uncertainty and changes in the
business.
- It is difficult to effectively and meaningfully measure the performance of the business.
- Too much emphasis on lagging indicators that provides a rear view mirror of performance without
balancing out this view with a more forward looking approach.
-  "Management by metric creates too many Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), or the wrong set
or type of KPIs.
- It is difficult to assess whether a current set of procedures and projects in play is the “best” set
for the organization, given its goals, or whether there are other things that would be smarter to
pursue.

If you experience a number of these symptoms on a regular basis, then its very likely that your
organization struggles to effectively link its strategy-setting work with the day-to-day execution of
business. The ability to effectively link strategy and execution is vitally important in business – for two reasons:

1.   The rapid rate of market change across industries and geographies, affecting
companies of all sizes. Globalization and the role of the Internet are driving the pace of
competitive change; in an environment where competitive and market conditions are changing
rapidly, anything that unnecessarily slows down the recognition of an important new market
factor, the analysis of that factors potential impact and the reaction to it is going to have
significant implications for your organization.

2.   The importance of “customer experience”. In an increasingly competitive environment,
competing on cost alone is going to be difficult for many organizations to pull off. More and more
organizations are realizing this, and combining a focus on cost with a focus on delivering great
customer experiences. Being able to deliver customer experience excellence is one way of
avoiding the commodity trap as a supplier of goods or services: but in todays business
environment, customers have very high expectations. Delivering a great experience means you
have to be able to be confident that you can deliver personalized service in a timely fashion, to a
high level of quality – and also that you can work flexibly to meet the needs and interests of the
customer rather than forcing customers to fit in with rigid and customer-unfriendly procedures.

CRM and the right CRM are an important part of process intelligence providing metrics, accountability and visibility into an organization.

Thanks to MWD Advisors for thier insight.