I attended an excellent day-long session on Creating the To-Be Process at BPMI.org's Business Process Managment conference series in San Francisco this past week. The course was presented by Dan Madison who wrote a well-received book on process management, entitled Process Mapping, Process Improvement and Process Management.
In the world of SAP HCM implementations 'best process' is a well-worn phrase. The result of salespeople and project managers citing it is that as-is analysis often falls by the wayside. The thinking is that since SAP HCM offers best processes there's not much of a point in rehashing old processes. And the argument is sometimes made that reviewing the as-is will lock the client's business process experts into thinking the 'old way' and prevent them from being open to the 'new way'.
Circumstances can be found when it's probably not all that necessary to investigate the as-is processes in detail. Organizations looking for an outsourced solution will not necessarily have the luxury of being able to customize their new processes to the extent they may have liked to. However, a lot stands to be gained from investigating the as-is in detail.
(This discussion really needs to start with what 'best' processes really are in the SAP HCM context and it ought to include a review of policies, business rules and business practices. That for later. Although I'll say so long that 'optimal' instead of 'best' is my preference.)
In considering whether a substantive as-is process analysis is necessary one has to look at what both the customer and the services provider will gain from it. It seems to me that the bulk of the benefit lies here:
1. The as-is is the starting point for understanding how the process works today and what, if anything, is wrong with it. This seems obvious, but if this task is performed well, it may be an eye-opener even to the customer. One of the techniques Dan demonstrated and which the class didn't completely get at first was that process maps are to be drawn based on a very specific example of how that process has recently been executed - this simplifies the analysis in the beginning and ensures that process experts don't analyze in terms of what should be but in terms of what is.
2. By having an as-is analysis of processes available it becomes possible to measure the efficiencies of the as-is against the to-be. This is a clean-cut method to validate that efficiencies have been gained and improvements made. It also lays the groundwork for continued process improvement.
3. Change management and end-user learning are eventually served by the availability of an as-is analysis. It is easier to explain to an end-user how the new way differs from the old way if one can actually draw the comparison. Just like it's easier to remember something new if you already have a framework to attach the new concept to.
There are other important practical considerations here as well - how much time should be spent on the as-is analysis relative to the rest of the project, how should the as-is be documented, should the as-is be performed during the blueprint phase, during the preparation phase or during a pre-preparation phase? Valid questions all. For a next post.
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