Sidebar: Five Tips for BPM Success

Maritz Travel's Rich Phillips shares keys for BPM makeovers

1.Think big. "It's critical that people think about the big picture," says Phillips. Don't start with a narrow problem like 'Our contracts need to be written faster.' Start with 'How do we sell?'

2.Get business sponsorship. And get it at a high level. "It's just imperative," Phillips says. "You will run into bumps along the way."

3.Don't forget the change factor. That's especially true if your company has a culture that praises people for solving problems in idiosyncratic ways. "Shifting to process management as a methodology for defining how a business operates involves subtle but important business shifts," says Phillips. "People doing things uniquely may not be better. We're now taking capacity that used to be consumed fighting fires and focusing on customer issues."

4.Plan to communicate and communicate the plan. Stress what the process changes will mean to customers. "I really encourage business leaders to talk about how they are going to communicate the new culture . . . and how it's beneficial to clients," Phillips says.

5.Focus on the end user. IT should pay more attention to customer services than the systems involved in the BPM revamp. "Once we had a common purpose, a common strategy, we had a sense of team and kinship," Phillips says. He advises IT execs to think through the challenges and applications for the business and align the BPM effort with that.

- L McLaughlin