tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23081184374273951062024-03-13T10:14:26.167-07:00QPR SoftwareInsights and expert views on Enterprise Architecture, Automated Business Process Discovery/Process Mining, Performance Management and much more.QPR Software Bloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11168728755983248587noreply@blogger.comBlogger23125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2308118437427395106.post-74623247073213842162015-04-01T02:55:00.004-07:002015-04-01T02:55:48.532-07:00QPR Software blog moved!QPR Software Blog has moved to our website.<br />
From now on, please go and check our posts at: <a href="http://www.qpr.com/content/blog">http://www.qpr.com/content/blog</a> <br />
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- QPR Software -QPR Software Bloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11168728755983248587noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2308118437427395106.post-59080052357256530992015-03-04T07:05:00.002-08:002015-03-04T07:05:44.983-08:00New performance management trends in Saudi ArabiaThe beginning of February accommodated an important QPR visit to Saudi Arabia where I had the opportunity with my colleague, Tero Aspinen, to meet local QPR partners and customers. One of the highlights of the visit was meeting with PMCGA (Performance Center for Government Agencies), a QPR key customer. PMCGA carries out tasks such as measuring productivity rates of government agencies by checking the optimal use of human, financial and material resources. In effect, it is the key organization that supports Saudi Arabia’s government agencies in performance management.<br />
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Reflecting on the above, interest in Kaplan & Norton’s balanced scorecard, as a strategic planning and management system, has increased in recent years in the Middle East. Demand seems to be growing especially in the public sector, where there is regulatory pressure to raise transparency and efficiency. Meeting with customers in Saudi Arabia helped us to gain important insight about the growing market opportunities within the region.<br />
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Another exciting trend is the spreading interest in Enterprise Architecture (EA). EA is starting to gain visibility in the agendas of organizations. Organizations seem to be especially interested in combining balance scorecard and strategic level performance management with EA so as to generate a holistic view of companies’ operations. The main reason for this is that EA is a discipline that covers all the dimensions that are needed to align strategy with business operations such as organizational structures, processes and It systems.<br />
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The recent change of regime in Saudi Arabia will inarguably bring about both big and small changes in governance and organizational structures in the Kingdom, including ones affecting PMCGA. But the above mentioned boost in demand for operational excellence through increased agility and efficiency is a refreshing direction.<br />
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Sakari Lapinsuo<br />
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<a href="https://fi.linkedin.com/in/sakarilapinsuo">https://fi.linkedin.com/in/sakarilapinsuo</a><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15782061514810913166noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2308118437427395106.post-54343604522415594772015-02-13T02:47:00.001-08:002015-02-13T03:05:05.808-08:00Is change your friend or your enemy?Change has become constant in global markets. Globalization and digitalization have created new market dynamics, lowered traditional barriers of entry in many markets, revolutionized distribution in many industries and have given customers more choice and influence than ever before.<br />
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This kind of environment creates exciting opportunities but is also makes and breaks organizations at a much faster pace. They face increasing number of challenges in global competition and their strategies need continuous revising and refining. This means that strategy execution has to be more agile than ever. Change is good for those who understand their position in this new environment and are able to pursue arising opportunities faster and more effectively than the competition. Change is their friend.<br />
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This is why we have taken as our mission at QPR to make customers agile and efficient in their operations. We provide insight to their business operations – through modeling, analyzing, measuring and performance monitoring. This insight enables customer organizations to streamline and improve business operations and to execute their strategies swiftly and effectively.<br />
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In these economically challenging times, there is a strong demand for this. Last year, our net sales growth accelerated towards the end of the year and reached +16% organic growth in the fourth quarter 2014. This development shows that in tightening competition, there is a growing demand for tools to drive profitability and operational improvement initiatives. This is why we are forecasting that our growth will continue also this year.<br />
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How are things in your organization? Is change your friend or do you sometimes feel threatened by it?<br />
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Jari Jaakkola</div>
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CEO</div>
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<a href="http://fi.linkedin.com/pub/jari-jaakkola/4/3ba/2b">http://fi.linkedin.com/pub/jari-jaakkola/4/3ba/2b</a> </div>
QPR Software Bloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11168728755983248587noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2308118437427395106.post-24625501672354235832015-02-06T01:17:00.001-08:002015-02-06T01:18:17.213-08:00Process discovery from SAP data isn’t rocket science<div class="MsoNormal">
SAP, the omnipotent ERP system with many mysteries. It is often regarded as complex, or a black box, so unfortunately organizations actually use a fraction of the wealth of information they collect to improve their business performance. Let’s take supply chain as an example as its state has direct impact to business. The performance is usually followed through numerical KPI reports giving statistics on lead times, delivery accuracy or stock rotation. But is this enough to ensure the optimal running of such a core process? Wouldn’t it be great to have timely access to information which gives basis to make relevant changes with the wanted impact rather than just guess WHY the reported delivery time has gotten longer.</div>
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Getting the WHY from SAP, and even quickly, is just about knowing, which data tables are needed. And then a process mining software that has the built-in capability to acquire the right information directly from SAP and transform it to an end-to-end process visualization. Automated data acquisition is key and our software QPR ProcessAnalyzer delivers just that. When talking to customers, the value of being able to see how their supply chain runs in reality is almost priceless. Yes, they systematically follow performance metrics, have different dashboards but what has been lacking is the visibility to the process itself, the process reality.</div>
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As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, or numbers in this instance. This truly is the case when looking at a process flowchart that is based on facts. Keeping with the supply chain example, from the flowchart, organisations can see immediately at what stage of the process the promised delivery time is compromised or an order is not handled according to guidelines. And it takes just one click to get to the root cause, the WHY. With the right process mining tools, organisations can harness their SAP data to build an understanding of where the issues lay so that they know what needs to be corrected in order to improve the supply chain performance. The time spent on trial and error is removed, saving money, enabling better sales and ultimately delivering better customer experience with a smoothly working process.</div>
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When striving to best possible process performance, it’s not enough to rely just on statistics. You need to understand the real underlying problem before you can effectively improve anything. It’s the same with your own performance or condition. If you notice a pain, a problem, you get an expert to tell you what you need to do to fix the issue right away rather than randomly try different things, hoping one would eventually work. Or do you?</div>
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Teija Räsänen</div>
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<a href="https://fi.linkedin.com/pub/teija-r%C3%A4s%C3%A4nen/3/7b3/71b" target="_blank">https://fi.linkedin.com/pub/teija-r%C3%A4s%C3%A4nen/3/7b3/71b </a></div>
QPR Software Bloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11168728755983248587noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2308118437427395106.post-41814536833957178302015-01-14T04:46:00.000-08:002015-01-14T04:52:32.008-08:00Enterprise Architecture in the Finnish public sector – It’s the law<span style="font-family: Calibri;">In 2011, Finland adopted the Act on Information Management Governance in Public Administration, aiming for a common way of working when using and managing information. For the citizens the results of the Act can be experienced via more coherent processes when dealing with public services, even if many organizations are involved in the delivery. It is important to note that the Act reflects an advanced thinking on information management by mentioning Enterprise Architecture and how it has to be adopted by the public sector.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The Ministry of Finance drives the modeling the action-oriented and strategy based enterprise architecture work. It also has a governing role for common services. The execution is the responsibility of all public sector organizations.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The effects of the new law are already visible. If 2013, was still a year of spreading the word and the understanding on enterprise architecture (already 88% of state organizations had started EA work), 2014 has seen some major EA implementation projects. So 2015 can be predicted to be a booming period for EA in many public sector organizations. As the understanding and maturity of EA has increased, it’s becoming an integral part of the public sector ICT transformation process. However, EA has gone further from ICT planning and it’s now also playing a major role in the state financial administration and control development.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">In order for EA to be implemented and to serve as the common language for development, the joint enterprise architecture approach is backed-up by a large and efficient training program developed by the Ministry of Finance. Since 2013, approximately 1000 officers from state, municipal and academic administrations have received training in 8 different EA subjects.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Finnish public organizations must now by law plan and model their enterprise architecture as well as comply and maintain it. The goals and benefits for public sector EA are numerous, but essentially it aims to provide new and existing services in a smooth and accessible way as well as bring cost savings for the administration. This in turn leads to realizing a vision of boosting the Finnish technology sector in international competition and securing the country’s leading position in electronic services.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Jussi Siltanen</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Product Marketing Manager</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><a href="http://fi.linkedin.com/in/jussisiltanen/">fi.linkedin.com/in/jussisiltanen/</a> </span>QPR Software Bloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11168728755983248587noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2308118437427395106.post-82527170430635106062014-12-16T00:33:00.000-08:002014-12-16T00:40:08.319-08:00What's the deal in LATAM?My colleague and I did a 3 week road trip in Latin America where we visited some of our partners and customers as well as hosted several marketing events in different countries such as Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Trinidad and Tobago. It was a great experience as we got firsthand insight of the local business environment in both private and public sectors. During the trip we learned how organizations approach strategy execution and operational development.<br />
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<b>Focus on Performance Management and Strategy Execution</b><br />
What we perceived when talking to customers and partners is that the business environment in Latin America is not significantly different from Europe. Organizations are facing similar kinds of challenges - political changes, new laws and directives as well as pressures caused by the downturn in economic growth. These pressures force organizations to rethink their strategies and business models and also think how to improve operational efficiency.<br />
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However, organizations in Latin America and Europe do differ considerably in the way they approach the above mentioned challenges. In Europe, the market pressures are tackled by aligning strategic requirements with operational development and to support this organizations have already adopted methodologies to measure performance and model operations such as business processes and IT-systems. In Latin America, organizations are focusing, or starting to focus, on making their operations transparent through Performance Management and only few companies have started to model their operations with the goal of making plans on how to improve the performance.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From left: Angel Arturo Perez Cotero (Laguna Verde), Mario Nuricumbo (NG Business Value -QPR partner), Raul Partida (QPR), Tero Aspinen (QPR), Martin Nuricumbo (NG Business Value - QPR partner)</td></tr>
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Another focus area for organizations in Latin America is strategy execution and by far the most adopted methodology is Balanced Scorecard. Many companies have achieved brilliant results with this approach. For instance, the largest Nuclear plant in Mexico, CFE’s Laguna Verde power plant, won a prestigious BSC Hall of Fame award based on their successful strategy executions using Balanced Scorecard methodology.<br />
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<b>New approaches to operational improvement create interest</b><br />
When facing the current market challenges, organisations in Latin America are driven to improve their strategy execution and operational efficiency with Balanced Scorecard and Performance Management being the most popular approaches at the moment. But I see great value for organizations when they will, probably during the upcoming years, apply also methodologies focusing on planning and identifying how they can improve their operations based on strategy and performance requirements. In this area methodologies, such as strategy driven Enterprise Architecture and business process modeling as well as Automated Business Process Discovery (ABPD) will offer organizations great value. This provides great opportunities for organization working with QPR as QPR’s total offering supports organizations to formulate and communicate their strategy as well as to monitor and plan the operations to match the strategic requirements. <br />
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Raul Partida<br />
<a href="https://fi.linkedin.com/in/raulpartida" target="_blank">https://fi.linkedin.com/in/raulpartida </a><br />
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Tero Aspinen<br />
<a href="http://fi.linkedin.com/pub/tero-aspinen/2a/592/344">http://fi.linkedin.com/pub/tero-aspinen/2a/592/344</a><br />
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QPR Software Bloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11168728755983248587noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2308118437427395106.post-25468057533325986532014-11-04T00:45:00.000-08:002014-11-18T03:17:28.062-08:00Data and processes in Portugal<br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Couple of weeks ago QPR joined OnGlobal Solutions, our
partner in Portugal, to a breakfast seminar in Lisbon titled “Improving and
monitoring performance with QPR ProcessAnalyzer”. Sharing the stage was also
Link Consulting who presented how process performance monitoring is linked to
overall process management and improvement. In QPR’s presentation I
concentrated on describing how organizations can get value out of the data that
they already have in their existing IT systems such as SAP ERP.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">It’s actually surprising how many organizations still
improve their processes and performance merely based on a “gut-feeling” and on
perceptions of individuals. According to a study we published in September in
Finland, about 40% percent of the interviewed organizations said that they are
not measuring the performance of their processes and only 1/3 of the
organizations measured a crucial KPI like delivery accuracy. Truthfully, these
results were a bit shocking to us. But they also showed that there really is a
lot to do within organizations when it comes to process performance measurement
and monitoring. And the best value can be reached by using existing data.</span><br />
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seminar presentation in Lisbon and of course data driven process improvement
itself generated a lot of discussion amongst the audience. Many of the
participants were not aware how much information regarding their process
performance and inefficiencies they actually could get from the data they just
have “laying around” in their systems. And how easily and visually it can be
done with QPR ProcessAnalyzer. The discussion continued also after the seminar
in one-to-one meetings with customers together with OnGlobal Solutions and so
message of using data to improve processes is well on it’s way in Portugal.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Mika Leonsaari</span></div>
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<a class="view-public-profile" href="http://fi.linkedin.com/pub/mika-leonsaari/3/359/495/" name="webProfileURL" title="View public profile">fi.linkedin.com/pub/mika-leonsaari/3/359/495/</a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"></span>QPR Software Bloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11168728755983248587noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2308118437427395106.post-75465304532418832782014-10-30T04:47:00.001-07:002014-11-18T02:58:23.542-08:00EA – it’s magic!The leading IT research and advisory company, Gartner, recently made an analysis of the top EA vendors and again assessed each vendor’s entry into its magical EA quadrant. This time around, QPR was one of the shortlisted EA vendors, and we entered the playing field as a new entrant based on Gartner’s assessment of our completeness of vision and ability to execute against it.<br />
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So what exactly is our vision?<br />
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We believe that EA modeling and analysis alone are not enough to safeguard real business value. To avoid modeling for the sake of modeling, EA initiatives must be monitored and measured to ensure the delivery of a full development cycle and continuous improvement; and above all, EA initiatives must serve a purpose! This purpose can take the form of a strategic goal or a desired business outcome that steers EA initiatives toward a common goal. It all sounds like common sense, right? But in the middle of a diagram jungle and an army of stakeholders pulling you in different directions, it’s easy to lose focus. In our vision, EA brings a unique insight to your operations, which provides decision making support and therefore, allows senior management to execute strategy, reduce complexity and achieve operational excellence.<br />
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Now you know our vision, but what does the market think?<br />
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Through our daily interaction with many different people and organizations, we have noted that the perception of EA is shirting from an IT centric framework for infrastructure brains to being a tool for senior management to achieve business outcomes. Gartner, too, talks about putting <a href="http://www.gartner.com/imagesrv/summits/docs/emea/enterprise-architecture/EA-2014-EMEA-Brochure.pdf" target="_blank">“business objectives and outcomes first in developing EA signature-ready guidance and actions” and leveraging “EA to produce desired business outcomes and guide your enterprise from chaos to competitive advantage”.</a><br />
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With our vision and the shifting market demand in mind, we have developed a unique set of tools, templates and best practices to make our vision of EA come true. Our customers really value our offering for the ability to link strategy with operations and transformation execution packages, the simple and appealing look of the readily configured templates, the pragmatic best practices and the many EA viewpoints provided to identify change and evaluate business impact.<br />
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For more information on our EA offering, visit <a href="http://www.qpr.com/QPR_EA-EBPA_offering.htm.">http://www.qpr.com/QPR_EA-EBPA_offering.htm.</a><br />
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Is your organization using EA to deliver real business outcomes or still trailing behind with countless diagrams?<br />
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Virpi Nieminen<br />
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<a href="http://fi.linkedin.com/in/virpinieminen">fi.linkedin.com/in/virpinieminen</a><br />
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<br />QPR Software Bloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11168728755983248587noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2308118437427395106.post-10037945982121217062014-10-17T04:44:00.000-07:002014-11-18T03:14:45.648-08:00Balanced scorecard aligns initiatives. .. And then what?<span style="font-family: inherit;">Balanced scorecard alone is not enough for successful strategy execution. To achieve significant change, it's critical to understand how strategic objectives and initiatives influence organization's business operations and architecture.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Balanced scorecard (BSC) is an excellent framework for defining and aligning strategic objectives and initiatives to support strategy execution. However, many organizations struggle with the discrepancy between strategy execution planning and the actual execution. Based on our experience, the discrepancy is caused by too high level strategic initiatives, which do not take into account organization's existing architecture and operations.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">So what should be taken into consideration after a strategy has been defined? How the strategic objectives should be made actionable? You certainly want to avoid your organization ending up in the below situation where planning and execution are going to opposite directions. As per an earlier post by colleague Sami Lotvonen,<a href="http://qprsoftware.blogspot.fi/2014/09/the-answer-is-44-warning-strategy-and.html" target="_blank"> 44 % of enterprises still fail at strategy execution.</a></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk_2NHUudp1HnRHQsZQSFqr6SvvSbj1IEBz6XfJ-xfmRjLVkJ-WlbQClElhpqRjT9tXuqcTzK2eEs1aIAy8RHw-yK9_PFWxpwHwAw8nu7gx2IfPrkNzROAHzoyu-lCl10g8RmDQc2yjto/s1600/bsc+arrow.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk_2NHUudp1HnRHQsZQSFqr6SvvSbj1IEBz6XfJ-xfmRjLVkJ-WlbQClElhpqRjT9tXuqcTzK2eEs1aIAy8RHw-yK9_PFWxpwHwAw8nu7gx2IfPrkNzROAHzoyu-lCl10g8RmDQc2yjto/s1600/bsc+arrow.png" height="181" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 1 - How not to do strategy execution planning</td></tr>
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<br /></div>
<b>What to consider in strategy execution planning</b><br />
<br />
Initiatives in BSC are strategic in nature and often drive for significant change. Based on our global experience, initiative planning is often on a too high level and done without proper understanding of organization's current business operations and architecture. To become actionable, the initiatives must cover three vital dimensions of strategy execution: process, people and IT systems. Only by doing this, you get through the strategy execution chain described in the below picture.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivbIqNlAUoBmlJ_1-_wcuql6b9c-EJVIDl79rgPS36SximNCu8QIrWpOGTRRMMcKpC8_d8zDbnjl5AgFhYbUa5SrwN-4bA0QDV5UvllXdJODYG0HR8EIb20AnM4Yas467_NUl2Fi397Bs/s1600/strategy+chain.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivbIqNlAUoBmlJ_1-_wcuql6b9c-EJVIDl79rgPS36SximNCu8QIrWpOGTRRMMcKpC8_d8zDbnjl5AgFhYbUa5SrwN-4bA0QDV5UvllXdJODYG0HR8EIb20AnM4Yas467_NUl2Fi397Bs/s1600/strategy+chain.png" height="136" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 2 - Strategy execution chain</td></tr>
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<b>Processes</b><br />
To achieve strategic change, processes must change. You can say that all activities in an organization belong to either core or support processes. Some processes are automated using a workflow solution or other IT tool and some are based on people, following instructions and formal process models. Especially the latter can be ad-hoc and happen differently every time, giving its own flavor to making changes.<br />
<br />
<b>People</b><br />
Regarding people, you need to consider two aspects: allocating enough resources to strategically important activities and making sure that the people have sufficient competences. Be aware that for most people, the big challenge is to give up tasks that don’t lead toward strategic execution and take on new ones as “walking on the unknown territory” is often uncomfortable. Nowadays it’s more common to cascade balanced scorecard down to individual level so that the high level strategy leads everyday activities.<br />
<br />
<b>IT systems</b><br />
Cloud technologies, big data and mobility open opportunities for completely new business models. Therefore, IT is not only a pre-requisite for efficiency but it should be utilized as a source for innovations and as an enabler for competitive advantage.<br />
<br />
<b>Four steps to avoid discrepancy in strategy execution planning</b><br />
1. Understand the ‘as-is’ situation of your business operations and architecture.<br />
2. Consider the three dimensions already when analyzing feasibility of different strategic options. For example, an old technology platform can stop an organization from executing a brilliant strategy. If this is not noticed on time, it will lead to some very expensive corrective actions.<br />
3. Plan ‘to-be’ business operations and architecture.<br />
4. Design transition roadmap and deployment for strategy execution.<br />
<br />
When in the strategy execution phase, remember to establish continuous monitoring and feedback loops from all three dimensions. This allows you to steer your business towards strategic objectives.<br />
<br />
Maija Erkheikki<br />
<a href="http://fi.linkedin.com/pub/maija-erkheikki/2/303/a11">http://fi.linkedin.com/pub/maija-erkheikki/2/303/a11</a> <br />
<br />
Tero Aspinen<br />
<a href="http://fi.linkedin.com/pub/tero-aspinen/2a/592/344">http://fi.linkedin.com/pub/tero-aspinen/2a/592/344</a><br />
<br />
Mikko Rajala<br />
<a href="http://fi.linkedin.com/pub/mikko-rajala/a/102/179">http://fi.linkedin.com/pub/mikko-rajala/a/102/179</a>QPR Software Bloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11168728755983248587noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2308118437427395106.post-35609992676961801632014-09-25T01:54:00.001-07:002014-09-25T02:44:03.118-07:00“You have reached your destination”<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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When planning your way to a less known destination, it’s
good to take a short break and think ahead. If you travel by car, the planning
is made easy with the emergence of car integrated navigators. They monitor how
much gas we have left or if a road is blocked, reflecting this on our journey. This
kind of solution would be perfect in business as well, where planning should be
done every day. But often we sit down only once or twice a year when some major
strategic lines have to be defined. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Equally important to reaching your destination, is
reflecting on the now; where you are and what you have. That's just what we did
recently at QPR Software with a group of colleagues from different units. We
know of course well what we can offer in the fields of Process Intelligence,
Enterprise Architecture (EA) and Enterprise Business Process Analysis (EBPA),
as well as Performance Management. But while doing this reflection, we also
observed that our tools enable organizations to know where they are and how to
plan forward. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In a changing business environment, you need to react fast
and be proactive. This agility means that all tools supporting operational
development must be interconnected, leaving no room for guessing and reducing
complexity of root cause analysis.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As said previously, first you need to know where you stand
in terms of your operations and see how you're doing. Dashboards and reports
using the performance management standards of your choice must be easily
available at all times to provide your current status compared to your
objectives. When the red light starts blinking, many fail however to discover
the real root cause of their current performance problems, because they don’t
have the visibility to the actual processes behind them. This can be easily
handled by linking performance metrics to the actual processes. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Knowing your current performance is not just a matter of
numbers and sitting down to review your operations. You need facts and process
intelligence. Especially when processes become complex and produce vast amounts
of data to your business information systems, it's vital to use the information
and see what works and what doesn’t. Process tools use the data to provide process
intelligence for monitoring performance and gaining visibility needed to make
correct decisions on improving and developing your processes. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After you know what happens under the hood, comes the part
where you need to draw the map to your goals. It all comes down to evaluating
and aligning your assets against the strategy in order to make your business
successful. Your strategy map should not be linked only to the actual
performance information, but also to your current as-is enterprise architecture
model. Often when discussing with our customers they tell us how important it
is to be able to fast track the dependencies of one single item to the tens or
hundreds of other items in process, application, information and technology
layers. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At first glance the layers often
seem to be a complex grid of elements; however the right EA tool will highlight
and help you recognize the necessary connections and dependencies. This
considerably reduces the needed time to plan a future to-be model and the transformation
roadmaps associated with it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Support for successful business transformation and
continuous improvement should remain a high priority. QPR sees that taking a
comprehensive approach to develop operations drives sustainable results. Reducing
and managing the complexity of operations becomes a key asset in growing
organizations. The integration of software tools supporting EA, EBPA, Process
Intelligence and Performance Management might not yet be at the same level as a
car integrated navigation system, but at QPR we can already offer our tools
together as an integrated solution to help the work of business units, planning
functions and ICT.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Jussi Siltanen</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Product Marketing Manager</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://fi.linkedin.com/in/jussisiltanen" target="_blank">fi.linkedin.com/in/jussisiltanen/ </a></div>
QPR Software Bloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11168728755983248587noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2308118437427395106.post-53001428874372931682014-09-04T04:05:00.000-07:002014-09-04T04:14:24.471-07:00THE ANSWER IS 44 (warning: Strategy and Enterprise Architecture used in the same sentence)<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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It used to be 90. Then, 70. A year
ago, it was established at 44. While this is not the answer to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrases_from_The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#Answer_to_the_Ultimate_Question_of_Life.2C_the_Universe.2C_and_Everything_.2842.29">Ultimate
Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything</a>, it’s still an important one: <i>What percentage of
business strategies fail?</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A multitude of reasons and factors
explain why strategies or transformational initiatives fail. For example, a
long time ago Dr. Kotter found that shortcomings in <i>defining and
communicating a compelling vision, and mobilizing around the planning and
implementation</i> result in failure. More recently, Dr. Kaplan and Dr. Norton
in their book Execution Premium, found that roughly 2/3 fail because <i>a
formal strategy execution process is missing</i>. An <a href="http://www.pmi.org/~/media/PDF/Publications/WhyGoodStrategiesFail_Report_EIU_PMI.ashx">Economist
Intelligence Unit & PMI report</a> from 2013 says the biggest barriers to
successful strategy implementation are: <i>The organization lacks change
management skills, initiatives are poorly resourced, and the organization lacks
project management skills</i>. (They also found out it’s “44”.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The recommendations from these
studies urge you to embrace a smarter and a more wholesome approach to
the execution of strategy. Yet something is missing: a methodology that
supports the connecting of strategy to the components of the execution. Let’s
summarize from the learnings above and add the missing, connecting piece:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
1. <i>Adopt best practises.</i>
All of the proposed best practices and improvements are needed. Ensure your
team cherishes competences and methods for communications and change
management. No excuses allowed!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
2. <i>Get organized</i>. For
execution, a program office is needed as a mechanism of prioritization and
implementation of projects. Also needed is a guiding process that integrates
the typically separate corporate activities. This process should be clear to
all parties from formulation to implementation.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
3. <i>Get systematic</i>. A
comprehensive approach needs to be supported by a methodology where things can
be connected in a meaningful way: <i>Enterprise Architecture</i>. Yes, that
thing that’s based on ancient cults of Zachman and TOGAF, and that uses a
clandestine language of ArchiMate to explain, with a holy metamodel, how all
things necessary in IT, business, and universe are connected. The novelty in EA
is <i>how </i>you use it in a <a href="http://my.gartner.com/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=202&mode=2&PageID=5553&ref=webinar-rss&resId=2788717">business
outcome driven way</a>. EA forces you to define strategy, and its goals with
concrete targets. It can also provide transparency – an improved understanding
of what can be achieved. <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2014/08/07/enterprise-architecture-dont-be-a-fool-with-a-tool/">Taking
advantage of new technology</a> can be enabled by using EA, and it also helps in closing the feedback loop on execution.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With these actions, I believe THE
ANSWER will be improved. As my favorite aphorism goes: Current ways of working
equal current results; New ways of working equal improved results.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Please comment: Did you already try it – what are your
key learnings? What is you way of ensuring
the implementation plans are aligned?</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
PS. Thanks to Gail Severini and others in <i>Balanced
Scorecard /Strategy Office Executives</i> Linkedin group for <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/groups/Is-this-statistic-still-valid-106743.S.180878994">throughly
clarifying</a> the topic.<br />
<br />
Sami Lotvonen<br />
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</li>
</ul>
</div>
QPR Software Bloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11168728755983248587noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2308118437427395106.post-20792887720299170092014-07-10T01:20:00.002-07:002014-07-10T01:22:45.280-07:00An ecological perspective to EA<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Enterprise Architecture provides many short and mid-term benefits, measurable on a monetary scale. However, there is also a greater and more precious long term cause that it is supporting.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">It has been understood for a long time already that
continuous improvement of quality of life for the members of the society requires
continuous economic growth. The traditional kind of growth is based on the
growth of material consumption, supported by the growth in exploitation of
natural resources. In the industrial age, growth has been boosted by processing
the raw materials through complex value systems, resulting in end products with
substantial added value. Technology is a key enabler in this development and
also in the better utilization of the raw materials, reducing waste and energy
consumption in processing. Reducing waste of all kinds is necessary for the
conservation of natural resources.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">As the global population is approaching ten billion people,
exploitation of natural resources has crossed the line of sustainability. The
Club of Rome already pointed out this inevitable predictive conclusion in their
report “The Limits to Growth”, published in 1972. Compounding with this problem,
the fastest developing nations at the moment are those with the biggest and
fastest increasing populations. They are demanding their share of welfare as
well. As the result of these two factors the natural resources, especially
limited non-renewable resources, need to be distributed in a fairer manner.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Globalization is supported by the information and
communication technology revolution, also in the developing economies. The mobile Internet provides
them with better access to technology and education, accelerating their
industrialization journey. The large size of their home market, combined with
lower labor cost, gives them the possibility to pay higher prices for the raw
materials. As the result, a balance between demand and supply will be
established at a higher price point. This favors the big developing economies,
since the mature post-industrial economies are unable to lower their labor cost
without major political and social crises. Thus it will also support a fairer
distribution of natural resources.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">This means a substantial per-capita reduction of material
consumption for the established post-industrial economies, causing them to
search for new ways of satisfying the demand for better quality of life. They need
to become less dependent on the quantity of material goods. A new kind of
perception is emerging about welfare and growth, accounting for the immaterial
side of quality of life as well. It is about moving away from owning material things stockpiled in your house, towards consuming services and enjoying experiences on demand.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">As the developing nations rush through the industrialization,
they will eventually be in the same situation. Technology will provide some
relief every now and then, but in the end, the price of natural resources will
increase to a level that calls for strong measures for
conservation, and at the same time enables investments to implement those
measures.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">At the heart of these measures lies the goal that natural
resources should be allocated or distributed for different purposes based on
their impact on the long-term sustainability of human life on planet earth.
This is a tall order. It requires broad understanding about the systemic
properties of life in the global ecosystem. We cannot consider human beings, their
societies, and organizations as isolated subsystems from the nature and all
other life forms. We are just a small piece in this very complex puzzle, and
disturbing its balance may cause unpredictable and irreversible effects,
harmful to the goal of sustainable life. We may have crossed the border
already.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The concept of fair and sustainable distribution of natural
resources is a highly complex problem. In addition to considering it from the
demographic viewpoint, we need also to include the time dimension to the
equation. It is not at all evident that using up a certain type of non-renewable
natural resource for the first economically feasible purpose would be justified
from the sustainability viewpoint. It is possible that at a later point in
time, a need emerges stronger than anything before, for a purpose much more
important than today’s purposes. The availability of a certain non-renewable
resource may prove critical for the sustainability of human life at some point
in future. Additionally, future generations are not here to bid for their share
of the non-renewable natural resources, even on a purely commercial basis. If
they were, their demand would probably cause the prices to go much higher than
we can ever imagine, making many uses of natural resources today completely
infeasible.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The future is in front of us behind a foggy curtain, but it
is there. We can’t predict the details over a long term, but we can certainly
discover some trends that are like invariants. One of the most important trends
is sustainability. It has reached the level of global awareness and it is
affecting us at the level of the society, the organizations and businesses
therein, and at the level of individual human beings.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Sustainability calls for optimization and accuracy in
allocating and distributing natural resources for different purposes.
Optimization, to the degree it happens, is the expected result of a rather
chaotic system consisting of the combination of politics, markets, and business
life. They involve people in their different but simultaneous roles as
consumers, citizens, politicians, government authorities, business leaders, and
employees of various organizations. As the result of information being
available about the global issues, awareness about the importance of
sustainability is increasing among all these stakeholders, and consequently is
leading to public opinion, consumer behavior, government policies, and markets supporting
sustainability.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Accuracy in the distribution and allocation of natural
resources means how well we can execute it to meet the goals of the sustainability
policies and supporting stakeholders. It is the purpose of economic activity in
the society to take care of this, guided by the market and government policies.
The need for accuracy can be divided in two aspects.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">First, for a given set of existing business models in an
ecosystem, the goods and services shall be produced in such a manner that it
provides the best match with consumer needs, and at the same time, the best
support for current sustainability policies. In short, this calls for
operational excellence in multiple dimensions at the same time.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Second,
the set of business models shall continuously evolve in order to introduce new
and better ways of utilizing natural resources for simultaneously meeting the
market demand and sustainability policies. Old and wasteful business models
must be demolished. This calls for dynamic capabilities, a different concept
from operational excellence, giving the organizations the ability to reinvent
their businesses on a continuous basis. Organizations incapable of doing this
will perish.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Enterprise architecture is about operational excellence and dynamic capabilities. Thus it supports values that go far beyond the current quartile or fiscal year. The mother of all values is the pursuit of mankind to
sustain its existence indefinitely. If corporate values and goals can be shown
to result in actions and behaviors supporting this, then they can be considered
valuable.</span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Jaakko Riihinen<br />Senior Vice President<br />Products and Technology<br />QPR Software Plc<br /><br /><a href="http://fi.linkedin.com/in/jaakkoriihinen/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2288bb;">fi.linkedin.com/in/jaakkoriihinen/</span></a></span></span></span></span>QPR Software Bloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11168728755983248587noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2308118437427395106.post-87703489413416952862014-07-03T22:46:00.001-07:002014-07-03T22:50:30.550-07:00How to get started with Enterprise Architecture? Information management is part of business management. Part 4/4<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) defines business architecture as “description of the structure and interaction between the business strategy, organization, functions, business processes, and information needs”. Content of business architecture should be provided mostly by organization’s business management. What is missing quite many times or is not that clearly defined is that last part of the business architecture definition, information needs.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">To understand information needs better, it is good to be aware of in what context information is used. Analyzing organization’s strategy is one of the best starting points for finding key information needs and potential usage scenarios. This is also an important way to build linkage between business and IT. Having understanding of data usage and definitions is vital for common understanding how to reach organization’s strategic goals and how to support this by IT solutions. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Lack of common understanding is many times one of the biggest reasons for data quality issues such as unreliable master data. Most of these kinds of information management issues are not technological topics at all but the root cause is that information needs are misunderstood in the business process management. Therefore, I’d like to emphasize the importance of conceptual data modeling as a way to analyze what is important to an enterprise especially in the future. This kind of modeling has nothing to do with databases (relational or columnar) but it is one way to manage organizational intellectual capital and knowledge. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">A ‘big picture’ of how things are connected to each other in high enough level is what executives and managers are many times missing. This is where enterprise architects can become the helping hand by using Enterprise Architecture as an operational development framework to create that picture. Showing high level conceptual data flows needed in business operations, and linking your IT applications and technology to business processes lets you see the whole big picture, that is, enterprise architecture. Having this in place, both business and IT management can make predictable changes to it when needed, and understand the impact to business operations better. Keeping things simple and high level enough, enterprise architecture can be valuable tool for both business and information management.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Ari Anturaniemi</span></div>
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<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Chief Consultant, Enterprise Architecture<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
fi.linkedin.com/pub/ari-anturaniemi/3/572/a51/</span>QPR Software Bloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11168728755983248587noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2308118437427395106.post-17386886451207528672014-06-24T01:37:00.001-07:002014-06-25T01:58:48.131-07:00IRM UK EA/BPM conference - Achieving business outcomes with enterprise architecture a major theme in the event<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Last week QPR sponsored IRM UK EA/BPM conference that took
place on 16-18 of June 2014 in London. QPR’s UK reseller Performance Analytics
joined QPR in the event to promote QPR’s comprehensive and innovative enterprise
architecture (EA) offering. The event brought together both EA and BPM experts
from several countries and provided a venue for excellent discussions and
presentations.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVKbolLnkHlrYi5kEtxV506HtUPmBiTDXRAkRFRClEtnF1N-eJkApbmRwOAzY7F9sb1nXSrGYKsx0bq7BMhh1pixRnIui4KWKClqn5363Q9gJr5p2uyl5A_xWGQw1uRtDx-MIRtucknTw/s1600/WP_20140617_005.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVKbolLnkHlrYi5kEtxV506HtUPmBiTDXRAkRFRClEtnF1N-eJkApbmRwOAzY7F9sb1nXSrGYKsx0bq7BMhh1pixRnIui4KWKClqn5363Q9gJr5p2uyl5A_xWGQw1uRtDx-MIRtucknTw/s1600/WP_20140617_005.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">QPR team in full action at the stand</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">A clear theme in the EA area was that EA should focus on
delivering concrete business outcomes and provide value to the key stakeholders
of an organization. This theme was strongly emphasized in the event key note
speech “Who Cares?: Getting a Grip on your Stakeholders’ Needs and
Expectations” presented by Roger Burlton from BPTrends Associates. Burlton
highlighted that the starting point for EA and BPM efforts should be to look at
the needs of the main stakeholders’ of the organization – such as customers,
owners etc. – and focus the efforts on delivering value to them. Burlton also
emphasized the importance of performance measurement as part of EA work to
demonstrate the results to the management and highlight the results with visually
appealing dashboards and reports. Other dominating EA topics in the event were
the significant role of EA in business transformation and strategy execution,
as well as business architecture, which had its own track in the conference
agenda. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">As usual, the discussions at the expo floor proved to be
very interesting and QPR’s comprehensive and innovative EA offering created a
lot of interest. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Notably, the QPR
business driven approach to EA received a lot of interest among EA and BPM
practitioners. This was a really positive sign, as typically the ideas of the
methodology gurus presented in conferences are ahead of the actual, real-life
practices in organizations. But this year’s IRM UK event indicates that the gap
between business outcome driven EA and traditional IT oriented EA is narrowing,
as practitioners also seem to be keen to adopt this new approach. Or is there
still a clear gap? Thoughts? </span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoListParagraph">
Tero Aspinen</div>
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</div>
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<span lang="FI" style="mso-ansi-language: FI; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-no-proof: yes;">Director, Partner
Management</span></div>
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<a href="http://fi.linkedin.com/pub/tero-aspinen/2a/592/344/" name="webProfileURL" title="View public profile">fi.linkedin.com/pub/tero-aspinen/2a/592/344/</a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span>QPR Software Bloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11168728755983248587noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2308118437427395106.post-48488922002157690602014-06-19T03:34:00.001-07:002014-06-25T01:50:15.578-07:00How to get started with Enterprise Architecture? Looking at enterprise from IT perspective. Part 3/4<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">An optimal way to start creating enterprise
architecture (EA) work is first to look at it from the business viewpoint. But
what if you don’t have time or the possibility to do so but you are given a straightforward
task, say, to either harmonize your IT application landscape and reduce some IT
costs or change technology behind the applications, or even both? In this kind
of case, chances are you don’t have the luxury of time. In spite of this, if
you are going to cut the power from some ICT systems, servers or services, it would
be nice to know from whom you are cutting down those services and how does it
affect business operations and processes continuity. </span></span><br />
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br />
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<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">If the only thing you know of your enterprise
architecture is a list of ICT systems and their names, and you are lacking the
knowledge of business process architecture, I’d say now is a good time to start
your EA work by not only making a system acronym list of those ICT system names,
but also understand functionality of those ICT systems and what kind of
information they are dealing with. In an ideal situation you would also know
who the users are of those applications, so you could at least ask them about
the functionalities and data usage – the so called use cases.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">If you are in a hurry to do something with your IT
application’s architecture, this kind of quick use case walkthrough of
applications, information assets and related functionalities would be your
first action point when starting with EA. Later on, when the dust has settled
and you have managed to solve your IT application and/or technology issues at
least for a while, I’d suggest that you continue and expand your EA work by connecting
those application use cases to business processes. If you don’t have business
processes defined by the business, use instead some industry standard process
framework close to your organization’s business area. They might provide a good
starting point for process architecture development anyhow.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
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<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In a perfect world, your enterprise architecture work would
have started from organization’s business strategy, operations and business information
topics, and you would also most probably have a good understanding of your business
processes which show how your organization is running its business. If this would be your starting point, connecting IT to business architecture would be a piece of cake. If
that business architecture layer is missing, you can still start EA work from
the application and technology side using information usage and use cases as linking
glue. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Ari Anturaniemi<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Chief Consultant, Enterprise Architecture<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"></span></span><br />
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><a href="http://fi.linkedin.com/pub/ari-anturaniemi/3/572/a51/"><span style="font-family: inherit;">fi.linkedin.com/pub/ari-anturaniemi/3/572/a51/</span></a></span>QPR Software Bloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11168728755983248587noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2308118437427395106.post-78996235956288874392014-06-04T04:22:00.001-07:002014-06-19T03:41:20.346-07:00How to get started with Enterprise Architecture? The topic of having common language and information. Part 2/4<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">One of the key things I have found most important when
starting discussions around enterprise architecture (EA) matters is to communicate
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and</i> understand people by using their
own everyday language. Even if speaking the same language (e.g. English), it
doesn’t necessarily mean people understand things the same way. One word
written and spelled the same way can have different contextual meanings for
different persons (for example, term ‘product’ might mean to a retailer the
combination of the sales package and the stuff inside the box but for the
manufacturer it might mean that the sales package is just the material part and
the thing inside the package is the actual product). Therefore, you need to be
able to define and explain a meaning of a word or a phrase using other words than
the word or phrase itself.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Terminology can change depending participants of
discussions. When asking ‘what do you mean with that thing’ or ‘what is your
definition for that term’, I have found that there are no stupid questions when
driving for common understanding between people. Therefore, when starting any
kind of enterprise architecture related discussions or work, start it by
creating a glossary of concepts and terms first, and also try to understand how
different terms relate to each other.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">After making that vital glossary of key business terms
(data about terms and their definitions), create also a conceptual information
model showing how terms relate to each other. Understanding the context how
different kinds of terms and words are used in business and how they relate to each other is
also the basis for the information architecture creation which is very
important part of your enterprise architecture deliverables.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Since EA’s purpose is to create a systematic big
picture of all matters related to an organization, using the language of the organization
makes your enterprise architecture more understandable for everyone. When
discussing with Enterprise Architects about enterprise architecture, there is a
good chance we are already using a common vocabulary of EA methodologies,
especially if architects are familiar with e.g. TOGAF or some other EA frameworks.
But do not expect any other person than another Enterprise Architect to
understand that EA jargon. Therefore, it is crucial to speak the language of
the business.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">So, if you are an Enterprise Architect, as a first
thing you need to create a glossary of the business, learn the terms and adopt them
by creating a conceptual information model of the key concepts and their
relationships. That is also one of the most valuable enterprise architecture
deliverables you’ll make and keep up to date. If you are a business
stakeholder, help those persons trying to construct a business glossary since
you’ll find it a very useful tool later on in your own work when discussing
with people about your business.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Ari Anturaniemi</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Chief Consultant, Enterprise Architecture</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><a href="http://fi.linkedin.com/pub/ari-anturaniemi/3/572/a51/">fi.linkedin.com/pub/ari-anturaniemi/3/572/a51/</a></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
QPR Software Bloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11168728755983248587noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2308118437427395106.post-13903808985062997162014-05-21T03:40:00.002-07:002014-06-19T03:41:32.269-07:00How to get started with Enterprise Architecture? Part 1/4: Business<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Enterprise architecture (EA) is a </span><a href="http://qprsoftware.blogspot.fi/2014/03/business-driven-enterprise-architecture.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: inherit;">hot topic</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">both in public and private
sector organizations. One of the reasons why interest for enterprise
architecture is rising, is that world has become quite a complex place. Complexity
costs, especially unplanned complexity, and therefore many organizations are
seeking holistic, and systematic thinking approaches to clarify and simplify things.
The promise and essence of enterprise architecture is to provide that kind of thinking
and a tool for business planning and management. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">A problem many organizations face when starting
enterprise architecture work is where to start, and how to get started? Here is
my simple three-point starting list how to begin your EA work regardless of your
role in that work:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">1. Understand. Start
to understand your organization’s business. Read annual reports, investigate
operating plans and have a look at your organization’s strategy and goals: what
value and mission does your organization drive for? Ask, discuss, and look for
more information about how your organization does its business.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"></span><br />
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">2. Communicate. Have a dialogue with business and
supporting units. When discussing about business, use common business language.
If you are not familiar with business language, you need to learn the basic
terms related to your business. Discuss with business people what are their
thoughts, concerns and worries about running the business. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"></span><br />
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">3. Network. Discuss and share thoughts with people in
your organization who are the customers and suppliers of your organization, and
find out if there are other interest groups your o<span id="goog_1389534390"></span></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a><span id="goog_1389534391"></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">rganization is collaborating
with. Analyze the value network of your organization. If you don’t know
something, ask people who knows. People in your organization are surely willing
to answer if you just ask. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"></span><br />
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">No matter if you are CEO, CIO,
Enterprise architect, IT manager or a line worker in your organization; the
same list applies to you all. If you are a consultant trying to help other
organizations, again, the same list applies. Capture all your learnings, and
you have a good starting point to create your first EA deliverable called
Business Architecture. So, start your EA work from the things that really matter,
that is, business. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p> </o:p></span><br />
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Ari Anturaniemi<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Chief Consultant, Enterprise Architecture</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><a href="http://fi.linkedin.com/pub/ari-anturaniemi/3/572/a51/" target="_blank">fi.linkedin.com/pub/ari-anturaniemi/3/572/a51/</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"></span><br />QPR Software Bloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11168728755983248587noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2308118437427395106.post-49458352227875557212014-05-09T06:09:00.000-07:002014-05-09T06:09:33.945-07:00Process improvement with hunch or facts<div class="MsoNormal">
Traditionally, processes have been developed more or less
based on a hunch that comes from often subjective viewpoints. By talking to
people and manual modeling, you do get about 80% understanding as to how a
process runs, or should run, and where the possible problems may lay. But it’s
the unknown 20% of the process where most of the problems can usually be found.
That 20% causes 80% of the process hassle so it’s vital to open that up and get
it under control.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
Data is the road to discover the unknown 20%. You get the
data from business IT systems such as SAP. As most organisations have
support systems which log data, so in principle, all those companies already
have the possibility to benefit from that information by using process mining
or automated business process discovery (ABPD) methodology (both terms are used
for using data to improve processes). <o:p></o:p></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinaMDaDhzn7DnXnqzEzzP9ctH6vCpsNWBHScPuJ2dqATB7vv3fza2VZWxcgNsjzWKeZ_KtZvhT0D5yjfSYqAOxZPY3QAPmYiSfbTWmyNDCahj8C2rdtOkVgBCRdlVcXu0g9usFRgiOKmo/s1600/From+data+to+process.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinaMDaDhzn7DnXnqzEzzP9ctH6vCpsNWBHScPuJ2dqATB7vv3fza2VZWxcgNsjzWKeZ_KtZvhT0D5yjfSYqAOxZPY3QAPmYiSfbTWmyNDCahj8C2rdtOkVgBCRdlVcXu0g9usFRgiOKmo/s1600/From+data+to+process.png" height="135" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Visualization of process based on data from the IT system</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br /></div>
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Usually data is looked at through BI goggles, which doesn’t
tell anything about the actual process, only numbers. There are tools available
that let you analyze the data in a process context and reveal surprising facts
of the process performance. Based on the
experience of dozens of process mining projects we have done, customers are
amazed what data can unveil and what development possibilities it provides. The
biggest pain points can be found in Order to Cash and Procurement to Pay
processes. The discoveries and benefits that our customers have gained include
e.g. optimized raw material purchasing lowering the working capital levels and shortened
process lead times after discovering the root causes for the bottlenecks.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Organisations today continuously battle to develop their
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QPR Software Bloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11168728755983248587noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2308118437427395106.post-68090453406842582442014-04-25T05:17:00.001-07:002014-04-25T05:20:03.350-07:00Strategy execution a hot topic at Strategy Leaders Forum in Dubai <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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Last week QPR and QPR’s Strategic VAR in the Middle-East
region IYCON sponsored Strategy Leaders Forum that took place on 13-17 of April
2014 in Dubai. </div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"> Dr. Robert Kaplan with the team from QPR and IYCON</span></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
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One of the highlights of the Forum was Dr. Robert
Kaplan’s (co-creator of balanced scorecard methodology) Master class session on
strategy execution. Dr. Kaplan started his presentation by emphasizing the
importance of leading change as part of strategy execution and pointed out that
in today’s dynamic environment business leaders should always be prepared for
change - even if business is currently running smoothly. To ensure business
success also in the future, companies should proactively look for strategic
level change. He brilliantly brought home the message by quoting the legendary
former CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch: “Change before you have to”. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph">
Another interesting topic of the Master Class was a
thorough and pragmatic presentation of Kaplan-Norton six stage management
system for strategy execution. It is a comprehensive tool for strategy
execution that creates a link between strategy and operations. Dr. Kaplan then ended
his session by bringing in risk management and talking about the significance
of integrating it into the Strategy execution process. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph">
Overall, as a company that develops software tools
that support organizations in strategy execution and in strategic level change,
is was great to listen to his message. QPR’s offering gives means not only to
plan and monitor strategic change but also manage risk, in addition to fully
supporting the framework developed by Kaplan & Norton. So we can really
help organizations who are looking for management system for strategy execution,
and it was great to see that our comprehensive approach was validated by Dr.
Kaplan who is a leading authority in this field. The event included also many
other excellent presentations and we’re proud to mention that the presented
case studies also included a couple of QPR customers.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph">
And as usual, the discussions outside of the
presentation rooms proved to be interesting. One of the key findings was that
organizations DO regard strategy planning and execution as an essential
ingredient for a company’s success, and most companies have established a
dedicated organizational function, Strategy Management Office, to manage
strategy planning and execution. Furthermore, many organizations also seek for
software tools to automate the strategy execution process and to improve
communication and collaboration around strategy execution. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph">
It seems that the above approach has brought companies
great results in the Middle-East.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph">
So, as a take away from the event we can say that successful
strategy execution requires real dedication and commitment from the organization,
and the right framework with right tools. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph">
Tero Aspinen</div>
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QPR Software Bloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11168728755983248587noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2308118437427395106.post-17149651035866903262014-04-07T01:36:00.000-07:002014-04-07T01:36:25.813-07:00Who stole Enterprise Architecture?Dear friends,<br />
<br />
The term Enterprise Architecture (EA) appeared in the literature for the first time some 25 years ago. Enterprise architecture pioneers like John Zachman and Stephen Spewak linked the concept with a multidimensional and layered structuring of an enterprise, intended to satisfy the needs of the business. Since then, various frameworks have been introduced by different individuals and organizations, ranging from military and government to private sector. Practically all of them contain the basic elements in some shape or form: business drivers and requirements, information architecture, process architecture, application architecture, and technical architecture. The practitioners and standardization bodies are in violent agreement that these are all in the heart of enterprise architecture.<br />
<br />
Given the above, one would assume that the concept and the term Enterprise Architecture would be a stable part of common knowledge. I wish this was true, but the EA culture is suffering from unnecessary turbulence. There are individuals and organizations, acting out of ignorance or commercial interest, trying to introduce definitions and interpetations that are not adding value but rather distorting the picture and confusing those that are new to the topic. For example, some companies having a significant interest in the technology side of IT have advertised enterprise architecture as a big IT architecture. Having strong marketing muscles and excellent access to enterprises through their IT departments, they have created the confusion among their customers that EA is about IT only. If this is the first message that the CEO hears from the CIO about EA, the damage has been done and is difficult to repair.<br />
<br />
The above is an example of twisting the meaning of an existing term. Another type of confusion arises from inventing completely new terms. This has been the core competence of marketing departments throughout the history. Marketing is seeking novelty, defining niches which then can be occupied, claiming to be the first or biggest in the recently invented niche. You can always define your own terms and concepts, and distract your customers from the competition. There is no need to have true novelty in your products or services, playing with words is enough. This is an old strategy: if you can't win on a level playground, try tilting the playground. Who cares if you do damage to your customers and to the enterprise architecture community.<br />
<br />
Education, science, and language are part of our culture. As such, they are subject to the natural laws governing the eternal evolution of culture. Despite of this unavoidable evolution, we need to keep in mind that it is not random but is influenced by people. It does matter, where the evolution takes us and that we do influence it, when it matters. Concepts like business capability and enterprise architecture are purely abstract and artifical, but they are serving an important purpose for the enterprise management and should be engineered to serve that purpose effectively. Whether we can or cannot, is determined by the strength of the global community of scientists and practitioners driving the ontological process for enterprise architecture. New terms and concepts should be introduced cautiously, weighing their value and linkage to existing ones. New knowledge has value only if it can be put in the context of some existing knowledge. This way we can make sure that climbing the stairs of knowledge is not followed by falling down on our noses.<br />
<br />
Enterprise architecture is not something completely new and isolated from other parts of management science. It derives from systems thinking for its philosophical part, and from systems engineering and economics for the methodological part. We need to protect it as the broad conceptual framework and foundation for defining, scoping, and positioning other disciplines like Business Modeling (BM), Operational Development (OD), Business Process Analysis (BPA), Business Process Management (BPM), Enterprise Business Process Management (EBPM), Capability Maturity Model (CMM), Six Sigma, Business Intelligence (BI), and Corporate Performance Management (CPM). None of these disciplines has the richness of semantics and structure to be used as a reference framework for the others. Enterprise architecture as a concept and discipline has these properties for the most part, and as for the remaining properties, let's make sure EA evolves to cover them as well. Starting from the scratch, with a completely new term and concept, is not feasible nor necessary.<br />
<br />
Together we can catch and stop the term thieves!<br />
<br />
Jaakko Riihinen<br />Senior Vice President<br />Products and Technology<br />QPR Software Plc<br />
<br />
<a href="http://fi.linkedin.com/in/jaakkoriihinen/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2288bb;">fi.linkedin.com/in/jaakkoriihinen/</span></a><br />
QPR Software Bloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11168728755983248587noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2308118437427395106.post-88658163314140559622014-03-28T01:56:00.000-07:002014-03-28T01:56:37.516-07:00Business driven enterprise architecture is currently a hot topic!
Hi all,<br />
<br />Last week we attended Executive IT event organized by Management Events in Helsinki. The event had approximately 350 delegates attending + an additional 150 vendor representatives. We had 30 scheduled meetings with delegates. Additionally we had a chance to discuss with another 30 delegates during the day. Our customer Lassila & Tikanoja gave a case presentation about business driven enterprise architecture project that we had done jointly during H2 2013. Presentation topic was “Towards business driven solutions using enterprise architecture”. Despite the late time after 4 PM and six parallel presentations the topic attracted over 100 delegates to the audience. Once again I want to thank Petri Kuismin for the excellent presentation.<br /><br />Based on all dialogues during the day it became obvious that the interest and need for business driven enterprise architecture is high and constantly growing. Why is that? There are probably several factors but here is my main thoughts. First of all the economy has been tough in the western world since the financial crises in 2008. Traditionally there has been an upswing shortly after the crisis and companies have gotten back to the usual growth path without any radical development programs. The world, however, has changed. Six years later we are still waiting for economic growth. It seems that companies have finally realized that this time the economic growth may not come as before and rescue them but they have to take their destiny in to their own hands. In practice it means that companies must achieve more with less. In order to do that business driven enterprise architecture has proven to be a good approach. Another important factor for the genuine interest towards QPR’s business driven enterprise architecture must be the customer maturity. Enterprise architecture as such is not a new thing. However, it has and still often is misused for describing technical architecture work. That is neither business driven or enterprise level approach. It definitely has not delivered the expected business outcome and benefits. Most of the customers have already had these bad experiences from IT focused projects that didn’t deliver the expected results and were ignored by the business. Now they are looking for alternative approaches and vendors “who get it”. After they here about QPR's business driven approach and methodology the response is very positive “This is exactly what we have been looking for”.<br />
<br />
Matti Erkheikki<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/matti-erkheikki/2/302/b35">http://www.linkedin.com/pub/matti-erkheikki/2/302/b35</a>QPR Software Bloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11168728755983248587noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2308118437427395106.post-52071260850852433092014-03-22T04:36:00.001-07:002014-03-22T04:36:46.224-07:00Processes or competences, which one is more important?<strong>Dear friends,</strong><br />
<br />
This time I'm addressing the ever so interesting discussion about whether processes or competences are more important.<br />
<br />
An organization needs to establish a balance between the amount of effort invested in competence development and in process development. This balance is very important, since both require continuous renewal and maintenance, costing money. Overspending or underspending in either of these is equally detrimental; it is money wasted forever without proper return.<br />
<br />
The issue is not, whether one should emphasize processes or people, but to understand the dependency of business results on the integrated whole. Enterprise architecture being a rather novel approach, there is still quite often leadership in place, having rather vague idea how to integrate the process and competence viewpoints. However, because of their scale and complexity, for most global industry sectors, a systematic approach like enterprise architecture is not only desirable, but an outright necessity. For the early adopters, it may even be a competitive advantage, but in the end, mastering enterprise architecture, as a business capability among others, will become a basic requirement to compete.<br />
<br />
Processes are part of the organization’s memory, and as such should provide the accumulation of best practices and knowledge about how people should work together to achieve the business objectives. In this sense processes organize work in a top-down manner. Competences of the people, on the other hand, should cover the skills, practices, and disciplines at the level of executing the individual personal activities, approaching and integrating with the process in a bottom-up manner. There is no black and white definition of where exactly processes and competences meet each other, so some prudent judgment is needed.<br />
<br />
The location of the borderline is influenced by the availability of trained staff, or the average level and distribution of competence among the employees. The lower the average level of competence with respect to the requirements of the work roles, the more detailed process models are needed. For work roles and their individual activities requiring high degree of consistency and quality, and the employees at the same time having inconsistent or inadequate education and experience, you need to provide detailed step-by-step work instructions, train the employees to apply them correctly, measure, and follow up the execution, and provide immediate and direct feedback for learning and continuous improvement purposes. In other words, effective performance monitoring and coaching is needed. As tedious and energy consuming as it sounds, there is no other way, no magic that can cover the gap between competence and process, just hard work. This supports consistent performance by reducing variance caused by unavoidable disturbing factors like attrition and random differences in individual competence levels and performance.<br />
<br />
Organizations in technology industries tend to have a pyramid-like competence & resource base: the higher the competence requirements of the job, the smaller number there is of these jobs. For example, there needs to be roughly one system architect for every 20 to 30 design engineer. It takes around 10 to 20 years to become a good system architect, after graduating from the university with an MSc in engineering or an equivalent degree, provided diverse post-graduate work experience and a good coach. But having made it, a system architect does not need much handholding for the processes. He is the one that has the most profound understanding about the processes and is even capable of providing formal designs of process architecture and improvements, whenever needed.<br />
<br />
It is typical of the high volume work roles with relatively low qualification requirements to have higher attrition rate than the work roles having higher qualifications. This is a statistical axiom, since typically positions with higher qualifications are awarded to people with more experience resulting from a longer career in the company, and having also demonstrated process competences, among others, vital for the organization. You can’t count on this for the entry level roles. This said, I have never seen an organization overspending in competence development of people at the lower job grades.<br />
<br />
As a summary, when designing and documenting your processes, you have to consider the competence level of available people, and decide whether to cover the gaps between processes and competences by continuous investment, in either more detailed process models, or more competence development, or both. You need then to agree on competence and performance level standards and expect people to meet them, but not to blindly assume that everybody does. Monitoring and coaching is needed to ensure consistent performance on the job.<br />
<br />
<strong>Jaakko Riihinen</strong><br />
Senior Vice President<br />
Products and Technology<br />
QPR Software Plc<br />
<br />
<a href="http://fi.linkedin.com/in/jaakkoriihinen/" target="_blank">fi.linkedin.com/in/jaakkoriihinen/</a>QPR Software Bloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11168728755983248587noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2308118437427395106.post-23379850464863393102014-03-20T06:34:00.000-07:002014-03-20T06:34:26.101-07:00QPR blog - watch this spaceQPR will be blogging soon. Read expert views of Enterprise Architecture and Automated Business Process Discovery and much more...QPR Software Bloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11168728755983248587noreply@blogger.com0