Eber Mello
Business and Process Analyst
Location Melbourne, Australia
Activity
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Hi Michael, very good point. That is why the excellent "Business Process Change" book (from Paul Harmon) focus so much on organization-wide concerns. Process improvement and automation works really well if there is long-term commitment from the organization, with backing of top executives, to business process management.
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I think that business process management and automation have one of the most convincing return on investment figures among "IT projects". Once an organization starts doing it, it gets more efficient with each process automated. Moreover, the cost of leaning and automating becomes quite predictable, which is a rare scenario considering the discrepancies between...
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Eber Mello made a comment
Very good lesson. My experience is that, after business processes have been automated in an organization, it takes a long time (maybe years) to fully utilize the potential of process monitoring and control. The organization will incrementally and slowly realize how much can be done by leveraging from the runtime and historical information collected.
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Eber Mello made a comment
More and more things become smart and connected such as the car and house appliances, and new wearables are invented to facilitate and support day-to-day activities. As these "smart" things constantly generate information and alarms, there will be growing opportunities to trigger automated processes to help people live a better and safer life. I believe though...
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Eber Mello made a comment
Besides monitoring and controlling the process itself, I think it is also very important to carefully monitor suggestions and complaints from the users and other participants of the process. Regardless of the amount of redesign analysis done, as end-users and staff start using the automated process, they will find out other scenarios and details the design...
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Eber Mello made a comment
Automation of inefficient business processes is a particular example of a common approach of using IT solutions as the first resource (and sometimes the only resource!) to solve business problems. I have seen quite a few projects end up in tears after millions have been wasted implementing an IT system without understanding and taking into account, in any...
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Eber Mello made a comment
My understanding of process automation is that it involves having a business process "executed" by a software system, typically called BPMS (BPM system). The BPMS ensures that:
* Manual tasks users have to complete are executed according to a pre-defined order and according to pre-defined business rules. Example of manual task are "make a decision" or... -
Eber Mello made a comment
Ideally, I suspect, we should attempt to analyse the process through all these lenses - one at a time, to explore all possible enhancements and redesign options (similarly to applying the "Six Thinking Hats" to problem resolution).
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Eber Mello replied to Brian Hunt
Your observation reminds me of Steve Job's famous statement - "it doesn't make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do". Improved communication processes will certainly go a long way to provide the means for recommendations from the bottom of the organisation to surface.
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Eber Mello made a comment
An university decided to implement a "centralized services model" to provide services to students. The approach is quite common these days, but that experience went terribly wrong. The university let go some of the staff who worked at the faculties providing customer services to students and moved the rest of the staff from those faculties to a central...
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Eber Mello made a comment
As mentioned by the instructor, I agree that many of the pain points with business processes stem from the use of complex IT enterprise systems for the day-to-day business operation. These systems often provide competing and overlaping functionalities with other systems within the organization, triggering friction and disputes of which systems should be used...
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Well said Patricia. I have seen first-hand how often stakeholders from different Faculties within the same University learn from each other, and improve their business processes, when we collectively do business process analysis on a business process that happens to be "slightly different" in each Faculty.
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Eber Mello replied to Brian Hunt
Well said Brian. I have seen a few times that just by "making the process visible", the business stakeholders themselves immediately identify obvious possible process improvements (often at a very low cost) that can be easily implemented.
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Eber Mello made a comment
1) Identify, document and provide visibility to all parties of how work is actually done across various business areas of an organization
2) Identify and document pain points (e.g. waste, compliance risks, poor service delivered to customers) and solve them -
Eber Mello made a comment
My understanding of VA and BVA tasks:
1- Student fills out pre-enrolment form ------------- BVA
2- University sets up access account to student -- VA
3- University makes offer to student ----------------- VA
4- Student accepts offer -------------------------------- VA
5- Student plans study ---------------------------------- VA
6- Student enrols in... -
Eber Mello made a comment
The perfect application process for me is one that:
1- Requires the applicant to provide only the absolute minimum information (e.g. should someone that has been working for 30 years be required to provide academic transcripts?)
2- Is assessed within a very short timeframe (e.g. 1 or 2 business days)
3- The university contacts the applicant using his/hers... -
Eber Mello made a comment
I suspect that this technique works better if, when doing the analysis, the analyst avoids incursions into the to-be process so that the focus can stay in the as-is process as business stakeholders, during this type of analysis, tend to jump straight on how workflows, tasks and steps should work in the to-be process.
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Eber Mello made a comment
I think it is also very important to have strong business stakeholders involvement in the "applications system design" area by engaging them with detailed (but still simplified) process models so that they can have a clear view (and input) of what is going to be built. I have worked on projects where the team failed to take the business on the transition from...
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Eber Mello made a comment
My list of artefacts:
1- Pre-enrolment form
2- Offer and terms/conditions
3- Student's study plan (units, minors, majors, etc. the student plans to study)
4- Record of enrolment into units
5- Class registration (update of records)
6- Notification that student has enrolled -
Eber Mello made a comment
My list:
1- Pre-enrolled form
2- Offer and terms/conditions
3- Student's study plan (units, minors, majors, etc.)
4- Record of enrolment into units
5- Classes registration (update of records) -
Eber Mello made a comment
I also think that process identification is important because:
1- it provides context to the process improvement work of a specific business process
2- it allows for a review of how effective the business processes are interacting
3- it clarifies the relationship between all processes, including the one that is to be the focus of a business process... -
Agree 100%. A very common issue is that whoever is sponsoring the initiative and often business stakeholders involved in a business process, seldom see the need or value of a identification and prioritization - i.e., there is rarely room to spend time and effort in the "big picture". The scope of the work is more or less defined around the business process...
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Eber Mello made a comment
Buying a ticket online for a regional train trip in Victoria, Australia - simple and precise:
1- Select "from station" and "to station"
2- Walk down the list of available train times and select the one of interest
3- Select class (first/economic)
4- Select seat
5- Provide email to receive ticket
6- Pay with credit card
7- Collect the ticket at any train... -
Eber Mello made a comment
I think "process owner" is the key role - not because the other roles are not essential, but, in my opinion, the lack of commitment, availability and support from the "process owner" is the most common reason why process improvement projects fail. I think it is essential to educate process owners as to expectations and ensure they will have the time to commit...
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Yes, I agree with all of you. An important aspect within the change management is communication management - the "selling" of the change to all parties involved
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Eber Mello made a comment
I think that the most important ingredient for a successful process improvement project is senior managers (C-level) buy in and ongoing support. Many other aspects are also important, but without that support, it takes a humongous amount of effort (and luck) to get the job done (I should have commented about the BPM life cycle instead (-: )
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Eber Mello made a comment
For most of the industries I have worked on, the most important value is "efficiency" (I am assuming the quality will not be affected). After introducing efficiencies, we start freeing up staff time to "worry" about other important aspects, such as compliance and integration.
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Eber Mello made a comment
Really great way to put this. I have seen this in practice whereby BPM allows for processes to be more compliant *and* easier to change (compliance X agility). BPM as a mitigation factor!
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Eber Mello made a comment
I suspect that the lack of transparency come from the fact that managers, and even C-level managers, are constantly locked into a silo mentality that seldon takes the end goals of the organization into account. The end game for these managers is to have their silo look good. Transparency invites all parties to look into everybody's silos, and eventually...
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Eber Mello made a comment
Everything being possible, I would consider removing double handling of requests, by making level 2 support staff to contact the requester directly to pass on the resolution of the issue, that should speed up the overall cycle time for each request that ends up with level 2. I would also consider introducing a better IT system support to manage the workflow of...
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Eber Mello made a comment
The key take away message for me from the video is to ensure that strategic goals are known and agreed upon before attempting any process improvement initiative
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Eber Mello made a comment
I bought a few electronic producs from a major store chain in Canada which had the policy of life-time best price guarantee, meaning that if a customer ever found the product they sold at a better price anytime into the future, they would give the customer the cash difference on the spot. I did try their policy when I found the TV I bought from them 1 year...
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Eber Mello made a comment
Travel Request process at the university. Whenever an academic needs/wants to travel:
1- Academic submits request, providing reason, cost estimates and listing cost codes that will be used to pay for request
2- Request is sent to academic line manager for approval
3- Depending on amount of expenses and destination of travel, request is sent to faculty...
