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Insights and expert views on Enterprise Architecture, Automated Business Process Discovery/Process Mining, Performance Management and much more.
Wednesday, April 1, 2015
Wednesday, March 4, 2015
New performance management trends in Saudi Arabia
The 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.
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.
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.
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.
Sakari Lapinsuo
https://fi.linkedin.com/in/sakarilapinsuo
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| QPR visits key customer PMCGA in Saudi Arabia |
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.
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.
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.
Sakari Lapinsuo
https://fi.linkedin.com/in/sakarilapinsuo
Friday, February 13, 2015
Is 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.
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.
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.
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.
How are things in your organization? Is change your friend or do you sometimes feel threatened by it?
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.
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.
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.
How are things in your organization? Is change your friend or do you sometimes feel threatened by it?
Jari Jaakkola
CEO
Friday, February 6, 2015
Process discovery from SAP data isn’t rocket science
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.
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.
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.
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?
Teija Räsänen
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
Enterprise Architecture in the Finnish public sector – It’s the law
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Jussi Siltanen
Product Marketing Manager
fi.linkedin.com/in/jussisiltanen/
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.
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.
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.
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.
Jussi Siltanen
Product Marketing Manager
fi.linkedin.com/in/jussisiltanen/
Tuesday, December 16, 2014
What'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.
Focus on Performance Management and Strategy Execution
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.
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.
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.
New approaches to operational improvement create interest
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.
Raul Partida
https://fi.linkedin.com/in/raulpartida
Tero Aspinen
http://fi.linkedin.com/pub/tero-aspinen/2a/592/344
Focus on Performance Management and Strategy Execution
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.
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.
 |
| 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) |
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.
New approaches to operational improvement create interest
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.
Raul Partida
https://fi.linkedin.com/in/raulpartida
Tero Aspinen
http://fi.linkedin.com/pub/tero-aspinen/2a/592/344
Tuesday, November 4, 2014
Data and processes in Portugal
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.
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.
Mika Leonsaari
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