Accenture Using Process Frameworks and Reference Models To Get Real Work Done PDF

Using Process Frameworks and Reference Models
to Get Real Work Done
Contents
Project Personnel and Copyright
Research Champions
Sponsor and Partner Organizations
Introduction
Chapter 1: Getting Started
24
Chapter 2: Adoption, Governance, and Oversight

with The Process of Process Management by Accenture
42
57
Chapter 3: Leveraging Tools
68
Chapter 4: The Framework Implementation Journey
80
Case Study: Cisco Systems, Inc.
90
Case Study: ING Life Japan
101
Case Study: Pitney Bowes
115
Case Study: UPS
122
Case Study: The Williams Companies, Inc.
133
Case Study: Oil and Gas Production by Accenture
145
2011 APQC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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Project Personnel
PROJECT TEAM
John Tesmer, senior project manager, APQC
Shaina Bielaz, analyst, APQC
Travis Colton, senior project manager, APQC
SUBJECT MATTER EXPER TISE
Dr. Mathias Kirchmer, executive director, business process management, Accenture
Dennis Pikop, manager of process architecture, Northrop Grumman Corporation,
aerospace systems sector
Chris Taylor, vice president of consulting, Americas, Nimbus
John Tesmer, senior project manager, APQC
Jeff Varney, senior adviser, APQC
EDITOR
Susan Elliott Blashka

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MEMBERSHIP INFORMATI ON
For information about how to become a member of APQC and to receive
publications and other benefits, call 800-776-9676 or +1-713-681-4020 or visit our
Web site at www.apqc.org.
COPYRIGHT
2011 APQC, 123 North Post Oak Lane, Third Floor, Houston, Texas 77024-7797
USA. This report cannot be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, faxing, recording, or information
storage and retrieval.
Additional copies of the report may be purchased from APQC by calling 800-7769676 (U.S.) or +1-713-681-4020 or online at www.apqc.org. Quantity discounts are
available.
ISBN-13: 978-1-60197-169-2 ISBN-10:1-60197-169-9
STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
The purpose of publishing this report is to provide a reference point for an insight
into the processes and practices associated with certain issues. It should be used as
an educational learning tool and is not a recipe or step-by-step procedure to be
copied or duplicated in any way. This report may not represent current
organizational processes, policies, or practices because changes may have occurred
since the completion of this study.

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Research Champions
Accenture
Nimbus
Sponsor Organizations
Alyeska Pipeline Service Company
BOC Group plc
Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc.
Bush Brothers & Company
CEMEX Research Group AG
Champion Technologies, Inc.
El Paso Energy Corporation
Entergy Corporation
General Dynamics Corporation
Harley-Davidson, Inc.
Hewlett-Packard Company
Horizon Wind Energy, EDP
Hospira, Inc.
IMS Health
Intel Corporation
Medrad, Inc.
National Bank of Canada

Naval Sea Systems Command
Northrop Grumman Corporation
Office of the Comptroller of the
Currency, U.S. Department of the
Treasury
Panduit Corporation
Perdue Farms Inc.
Philips Healthcare
Sandia National Laboratories
Shell Oil Company
Sunflower Electric Power
Corporation
TD Assurance
U.S. Army
USAA
Partner Organizations
Cisco Systems, Inc.
ING Life Japan
Pitney Bowes, Inc.
Sandvik **
ThyssenKrupp Steel USA **
UPS
The Williams Companies, Inc.
** These two organizations participated as lite site visit partners. Lite site visit
partners did not participate in the full best-practice partner interview process.

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Introduction
APQC has long known that the Process Classification FrameworkSM (PCF) is a
widely used tool in business. Since 1992, the framework has been downloaded from
our Web site well over 100,000 times; translated into Japanese, Mandarin, Spanish,
Polish, and Portuguese; referenced in business books; and incorporated into
numerous consulting methodologies for process improvement and re-engineering.
We have worked directly with organizations throughout the world to help them
understand the history of the PCF and how they can use it. APQC has also has
worked with a number of other organizations promoting their own process
frameworks and reference models, including Accenture, Supply Chain Council, the
Telecommunications Management Forum, and the Value Chain Group.
Until 2010, however, we did not spend a lot of time tracking individual uses of the
PCF or other frameworks within organizations, nor did we really understand how
widespread the use of frameworks is. In the summer of 2010, we became acquainted
with Dennis Pearce, enterprise knowledge architect at Lexmark International,
through a post he made on Twitter. Dennis presented at EMC World about how his
organization uses APQCs PCF to help organize internal collaboration spaces. While
not a stretchorganizing content is a natural application for most process-based
frameworksthis was a unique usage that we hadnt yet seen in practice outside of
APQC. We asked Dennis if we could document his experiences in a case study.
APQC (The American Productivity & Quality Center) has a

generic process classification framework that covers the basic
processes needed by companies in order to operate. We can use
their highest-level processes as a starting point for designing
collaboration spaces that maximize coverage of our information
space.
Dennis Pearce, Lexmark
In typical APQC fashion, however, we were not satisfiedwe quickly began
researching and investigating other organizations that were using frameworks to get
real work done. The results were overwhelming at firstwith only a minimum of
outreach, we were able to identify nearly 100 organizations using a framework to
achieve a wide variety of ends. Many of these organizations were also interested in
learning how others were using frameworks, and thus this research was born. The
frameworks team quickly assembled and developed the core hypothesis of the study:
Organizations use process frameworks to get real work done. We set out to find out
the details and confirm our hypothesis, using a modified version of APQCs triedand-true collaborative benchmarking methodology.

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This report summarizes the findings of our research, which, if you include
Lexmarks involvement, dates back to June of 2010. If you consider our experience
in developing and managing business frameworks, however, this reports findings go
back decades and include literally thousands of hours of expertise.
The findings in this report were reviewed and enhanced with the support of our two
research champions, Accenture and Nimbus. Both organizations contributed
countless hours in attending site visit presentations, facilitating discussions, and
reviewing and contributing to documents and findings.
HIGHLIGHTS OF FINDIN GS
The following findings were developed from a variety of sources: qualitative
findings from our partners, quantitative analysis of survey responses, discussions
with research champions, and feedback from our internal subject matter experts. It
is important to note here that these findings are not considered inclusive of all
frameworks research or best practices. Our goal is to provide analysis related to the
data captured during this particular project and ultimately add to the body of
knowledge associated with process frameworks.
Accelerate: Accelerate improvement projects by applying process frameworks
in three key areas: benchmarking, content management, and business
process definition.
Nearly all uses of frameworks APQC has identified can be organized into these
high-level areas: benchmarking, content management, and business process
definition. The framework is really just a tool to accomplish these tasks; it is not an
end in itself. Therefore, when determining whether or not to implement a
framework, the most important question to ask is not necessarily what benefits the
framework could provide, but instead, what the cost of not using this tool would be.
In business process definition, frameworks and reference models help support
process analysis, design, and modeling activities. Starting with a process framework
or reference model accelerates these activities by giving professionals a basis on
which to build. At best-practice organizations, the adopted framework is generally
well reviewed and supported by a consulting firm, standards body, or industry
association such as APQC (the PCF), Supply Chain Council (the SCOR model),
or the Telecommunications Forum (eTOM).
The cost of not using a process framework is the time it would take the process
definition team to develop their own process model and obtain consensus from the
various stakeholders about the processes included within it. As was seen in the all
but the Cisco site visit (since Cisco focused only on benchmarking), organizations
adopting process frameworks for process definition can quickly move beyond highlevel process definition and modeling discussions into detailed discussions and

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working sessions about the merit of the chosen framework and how to adapt it to
meet the organizations needs.
Benchmarking and process measurement activities are generally too costly to
perform without the use of a process framework or reference model. Internally,
organizations need a common way to describe the work they do so that it can be
consistently and repeatedly measured. Externally, organizations normalize their
internal processes against the process framework or reference model and depend on
the objective, standard definitions in the framework to enable the comparison of
processes across organizational boundaries.
The process framework or reference model becomes the Rosetta Stone for
organizations benchmarking with others. Using a process framework or reference
model as a common language reduces the effort required to begin benchmarking
activities. A framework establishes a common language from the start.
Organizations reduce the time spent mapping their specific activities to the activities
of other organizations because everyone participating in the benchmarking has the
same, single process framework or reference model to map all processes to.
What is the cost, then, of not using a process framework in benchmarking activities?
Consider a situation in which an organization must map its processes to the
processes of each of its benchmarking partners. In a situation with five
benchmarking partners, each partner must map to each of its four partners.
Compare this to a situation in which the partners agree to adopt a process
framework or reference model. With the centralized framework, each partner needs
to map only once to the centralized model to ensure an accurate comparison. The
process framework enables each distinct set of processes to be mapped into a
common language that each entity can understand. Using a framework to overcome
this cost is one the factors that enables external benchmarking for Cisco Systems.
Content management activities rely on common taxonomies. Using a process
framework or reference model as the basis for a content management taxonomy
helps knowledge managers quickly build consensus among various stakeholders
even when the structure of the reference model doesnt precisely map to existing
enterprise process model. The process framework or reference model acts as an
interface between the way the content is organized and the way work is performed.
It reduces rework imposed upon a knowledge manager when the organization
changes the way work is done. Again, the cost associated with not adopting a
process framework lies in the collaboration with stakeholders.
Consider the example of the Williams Companies. Williams initial adoption of the
PCF organized enterprise-wide financial content according to a single consistent,
objective model. Mapping that taxonomy to the way work is done within the
organization created an extensible and robust repository of content that can survive
future changes to the ways Williams works. Use of the framework also eliminates
costly retagging and reorganization when changes occur.

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The use of a process framework effectively reduces the time needed to develop
consensus among stakeholders. Not adopting the process framework extends cycle
times for projects in these areas.
Locate: Adopt a framework or reference model at any level of the
organization; even localized implementations yield value.
Centralized, enterprise-wide adoption of a process framework is not the only way to
realize value. Many of the best-practice partners in this study saw value in adopting
the process framework for one or more uses at department and division levels.
ING Life Japan adopted the PCF in its policy operations department. The adoption
was not enterprise-wide or even division-wide, but rather occurred to help a single
department become more efficient in its operations. Similarly, Pitney Bowes
adoption of its process framework in the Mailing Solutions Management division
was initially limited to a cross-functional billing transformation process. The level of
adoption within the organization in that case was relatively low, compared with an
organization such as ThyssenKrupp Steel USA, which performed an enterprise-wide
adoption.
Each partner adopted the framework at a different level, yet each of them realized
benefits.
Centralize: Centralize ownership and protect the integrity of the adopted
frameworks to ensure one version of the truth.
No matter where a framework or reference model is deployed within an
organization, centralized ownership and management of that framework is essential.
Organizations should set up governance structures to foster the consistent adoption
of the framework within the organization. These structures must be harmonized
with the culture of the organization, while maintaining strict control over the
implementation and management of the framework. This control as maintained by
the centralized governance structure ensures consistency and enables the framework
to contribute to the long-term value of the organization.
From a business process definition point of view, the framework itself should be
centrally managed and maintained, but ownership of the processes defined by the
framework should be distributed as widely as possible. Wide distribution of
ownership of whatever is managed through the framework facilitates stakeholder
buy-in of the adopted framework. Stakeholders are even more agreeable to
framework adoption when they learn that they are not required to actively manage
and maintain the structure of the framework, but rather contribute their expertise to
the centralized management body.
Consider UPS program management group, which developed a center of excellence
to support both project management and process management. This program

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management group was the single, centralized group responsible for the
maintenance of the adopted UPS-wide process framework.
A similar situation exists in content management adoptions. The centralized group
does not own the documents stored in the taxonomy, but rather the management
and maintenance of the framework itself. Similar to business process definition
adoption, content managers participate in oversight and management through the
centralized governance function. For example, the group at Williams that owns the
Sarbanes-Oxley compliance framework is not responsible for managing the
processes organized by the taxonomy. Process management is the job of individual
process owners in their respective units.
Adopt: Adopt a framework before adapting it.
Process frameworks and reference models are typically built based on deep
organizational understanding or wide experience across a variety of organizations.
An organization that chooses a framework and immediately begins making
adaptations to fit its existing business risks losing the value inherent in the
framework: the deep organizational understanding or the wide experience brought
by the frameworks authors. Furthermore, some adaptations can severely limit the
adapting organizations ability to use benchmarking to compare performance in an
objective manner.
Cisco, for example, relies on the contextual definitions of processes in the PCF to
act as a common language to support benchmarking. Without a consistent mapping
of processes to the adopted (not adapted) framework, Cisco would have to map its
processes to each of its benchmarking partners. The cost may be manageable when
dealing with a few benchmarking partners, but when comparing to a wide sample of
companies, the cost quickly becomes more than the value obtained from performing
the benchmarking exercise.
Furthermore, ING Life Japan began its improvement project by completely
adopting its process framework. Only after the complete adoption did they adapt
the framework to meet their unique organizational needs. The overall changes were
less than 10 percent of the frameworks total activities. This strict adoption was not
without cost, however. Initially, middle and line managers tasked with performing
the adoption work pushed back on the process transformation team and questioned
the ability of the business to withstand the changes required by the framework
adoption. Strong central leadership was essential to overcoming the initial resistance.
The central leadership required and supported the complete re-engineering of the
department to align with the framework.
UPS adoption of its custom-designed framework similarly encountered resistance
from the groups that were affected by the adoption. The cost of the changes from a
re-engineering perspective was too much for UPS to bear. The program
management group at UPS sought a different approach to adoption and ultimately
adopted an overlayment strategy. They overlaid the framework atop their existing

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organizational structures rather than re-engineering their entire organization. They
built consensus for the new operating models by mapping the adopted framework
to the existing organizational structures and demonstrating the value of the new
framework in defining business processes, organizing content, and benchmarking.
Overlaying the framework to the existing structure and mapping the organization to
the framework eliminated the need to change the frameworks definition.
Tool Up: Adopt appropriate tools to reduce complexity and increase the
long-term value of a framework.
Process framework adoption activities do not require significant up-front
investment in custom-developed or specialized package-software tooling. Most
surveyed partners began exercises with simple tools already available to them,
including whiteboards and common office productivity tools such as spreadsheets
and word processing programs. Most partners envisioned formal process
management tools in their future plans, whether custom-developed or packaged
software, but they did not have to start there.
By implementing appropriate tools when they were needed, the partners streamlined
the use of their frameworks and built a strong foundation for future improvements
and process integration. They key was finding the best tool for the organization and
its needs as the framework implementation took place.
Partners such as UPS, Sandvik, and ThyssenKrupp adopted formal packaged
software business process management tools to support their use of process
frameworks and reference models. UPS adoption of a packaged software process
modeling tool helped them to ensure consistency in the models based upon the
overall framework. The tool also enabled simple benchmarking capabilities around
the adopted framework by automatically rolling up cost and FTE allocations at each
successive level of the organization. UPS defined standards for the use of the tools
within the organization and ultimately trained individuals in process mapping
activities using the tools, widely distributing the expertise necessary to adopt the
framework throughout the organization.
For Sandvik, the enterprises scope was a driving factor in adopting a tool to help
with its business process definition, content management, and benchmarking
activities. With over 130 production units worldwide and five distinct ERP system
implementations, Sandvik struggled to ensure consistency in process
implementation and capabilities. Adopting tools to help manage the wide variety of
organizational involvement reduced the complexity inherent in managing the
widespread adoption and ultimately enabled their organization to benefit from the
process framework.
ThyssenKrupp Steel USA did not have to struggle with organic growth for nearly a
century as Sandvik did. Its new steel plant in Alabama was envisioned to be as
efficient and effective as possible not only in steel production but also in
productivity of its office workers. This goal could not have been met without a tool

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to facilitate the adoption of the process framework and its various uses throughout
the organization. ThyssenKrupp Steel USA was able to define its processes using
the process framework as the basis and map additional frameworks atop the core
processes. This overlayment of multiple process frameworks is one of the ways in
which ThyssenKrupp Steel USA plans to quickly achieve ISO compliance.
Measure: View framework implementation according to a five-step model to
better assess the implementations maturity and the value it provides.
Based upon the observations made during the study, a number of criteria surfaced
that suggest a step-by-step journey organizations take on their way to realizing the
full value of a process framework.
The journey is divided into five core steps, or phases: establish, reference, deploy,
measure, and operate. Organizations may choose not to proceed through all five
steps. Since value is realized at each stop in the journey, an organization must
determine if the value of proceeding on the journey is greater than the cost to move
to the next step. Alsosome steps may be taken out of order depending upon the
long-term goals of the organization; for example, an organization may proceed to
measure after reference and skip deploy entirely.
Set Goals: Evaluate framework use regularly to determine which actions to
take to increase its value and maturity.
Using an implementation model to measure the effectiveness and progress of a
framework initiative allows organizations to set reasonable goals for framework use.
This also enables the organization to completely envision the eventual benefits and
to create individual and organizational commitments to the business communitys
goals. Lacking this sort of vision, a framework is less likely to initiate change or
bring value to the organization. A number of criteria are presented to help set goals,
including organizational readiness, disruption to the business, maturity of the
organization, and executive support.

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Research Champion Perspective
Accenture
Todays global companies face an unprecedented amount of change. Technology
has blurred the lines between business segments, allowing ambitious companies to
enter new industries with game-changing offers. And in the wake of the recent
recession, emerging-market multinationals have gained strength, market share, and
sophistication, presenting an increasing threat to incumbent players.
Safely navigating such a perfect storm of disruptive change requires global
companies to increase their transparency, agility, compliance, quality, efficiency,
integration, and networking on an ongoing basis. The good news is that recent
advances in business process management (BPM) software, tools, approaches, and
reference models are making these goals significantly more attainable.
The use of reference models has become an important component of an overall
BPM approach. They add significant value in building and mastering an effective
BPM capability within an organization. However, reference models are still
emerging content products, so there is little empiric information available about
their specific use and benefits. This study makes an important contribution of data
and research in support of their use and benefits.
Working in concert, reference models and other elements of BPM allow
organizations to become more responsive and improve their core business
processes as conditions change, using standardized, industry- and function-specific
best practices. Yet for this outcome to be achieved, companies must take a valuedriven approach to BPM, not an approach focused solely on methods and tools.
Indeed, as demonstrated in the following chapters, it is insufficient to implement
reference models or BPM frameworks in isolation. Each component of BPM must
be part of an overall, value-driven BPM journey.
This journey also must encompass several important infrastructural and
organizational components. For instance, an organizations overall BPM roadmap
must clarify how reference models and other BPM components will enable processdriven system implementations, such as the implementation of enterprise resource
planning (ERP), supply chain management (SCM), and customer relationship
management (CRM) platforms, as well as next-generation business process
automation systems.

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In terms of organizational components, a robust BPM capability often requires the

development of new competencies, including the ability to craft an overall BPM
strategy focused on high-impact, low-maturity processes. Other key BPM
competencies include strong yet flexible process governance, well-trained internal
BPM centers of excellence, and the ability to capture and monitor process metrics,
thus gaining visibility into process performance and making the right adjustments as
rapidly as possible. Reference models can help here, too, if correctly used as part of
the overall BPM capability.
Perhaps most importantly, an organizations overall BPM capability must be
implemented using a process approach. This process of process management
should follow the same lifecycle as any other business process: It must be designed,
implemented, executed, and measured. Then it can define when and how to use
reference models so that they deliver the best value.
The following chapters describe in more detail the ways in which reference models
are used within various organizations, what value they deliver, and how they are
integrated into the overall BPM journey.

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ORGANIZATION OF THE REPORT

Chapter 1: Getting Started
Organizations that have successfully implemented a process framework all had a
specific need or problem to solve. Taking a few conscientious steps at the beginning
provided an opportunity to accelerate the projectregardless of the level at which
the framework was adopted or the tools used. This chapter identifies projects that
benefit from framework adoption and the best place to locate them within the
organization.
Chapter 2: Adoption, Governance, and Oversight
Centralized governance structures, processes, and toolkits make long-term benefits
through framework adoption possible. Centralized governance of the framework
does not imply that the processes defined by the framework, the content managed
by the framework, or the benchmarking capabilities enabled by the framework are
all centralized. On the contrary; centralization of the frameworks maintenance and
management enables a widely distributed ownership of those adopted pieces.
Managing an adopted framework without centralized oversight can prove costly
because, as the business changes, it is difficult for every part of the organization to
stay aligned with the framework. This chapter provides an overview of two main
best practices: centralize ownership of the framework and adopt before adapt.
Chapter 3: Leveraging Tools
Business process management tools help organizations automate governance,
reduce complexity, increase flexibility, and manage content using process
frameworks. Some organizations develop homegrown tools while others buy tools
designed to meet their specific needs. This chapter focuses on the findings related to
tools: when to use them, issues to watch out for, and how tools can help.
Chapter 4: The Framework Implementation Journey
A process framework enables an organization to rapidly get on the same process
page and drive consistency across performance initiatives. It is widely accepted that
frameworks bring value to organizations in measurable ways and increase their
fundamental ability to perform. But not every organization is ready to fully exploit a
framework. Assessing the readiness for use of a framework sets a baseline, helps set
targets for the organization, and enables benefits to be mapped against a road map
of increasing value.
STUDY METHODOLOGY
The APQC consortium benchmarking methodology was developed in 1993 and
serves as one of the premier methods for successful benchmarking in the world. It

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was recognized by the European Center for Total Quality Management in 1995 as
first among 10 leading benchmarking organizations models. It is an extremely
powerful tool for identifying best and innovative practices and for facilitating the
transfer of these practices.
The Best Practices for Using Process Frameworks to Get Real Work Done project
team adapted APQCs methodology to reduce demands on sponsor and partner
time while maintaining the high-quality deliverables that the process is known to
produce.
Plan
The planning phase of the study began in summer 2010. During this phase, APQC
performed primary and secondary research to determine leading practices and
identify innovative organizations to participate as best-practice organizations (the
partners). In addition to this research, APQC staff members identified potential
partners based on firsthand experience, research, and sponsor recommendations.
The APQC team identified a first-pass list of 16 organization. Each of these
organizations was invited to participate in a screening process. Based on the results
of the screening process, as well as organizational capacity and willingness to
participate in the study, five partners made the final list: Cisco Systems (Cisco), ING
Life Japan (INGLJ), Pitney Bowes (PB), UPS, and The Williams Companies
(Williams).
The project team scheduled two additional virtual site visits with organizations that
demonstrated exceptional capabilities. These lite site visits were shorter (limited to
one hour) and relied on the partner to present off-the-shelf materialnot a
presentation customized to the projects needs. The two organizations selected by
the APQC project team and research champions as lite partners were
ThyssenKrupp Steel USA and Sandvik.
The APQC team and the research champions then finalized the data collection tools
and began the collect phase of work.
Collect
The collect phase of this project entailed collecting qualitative information about the
ways in which the partner organizations get work done using their process
frameworks or reference models. APQC and the research champions jointly
developed three tools to collect information for this study:
1. Screening questionnairea set of qualitative and quantitative questions
designed to identify best practices within the partner organizations
2. Detailed questionnairea set of qualitative and quantitative questions
designed to collect objective data about the use of frameworks within an
organization

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3. Site visit guidea set of qualitative questions designed to facilitate structured
discussion between partners and sponsors at the site visits
Each partner organization (except the lite site visit partners) was asked to prepare
and deliver a four-hour site visit covering the subjects identified in the site visit
guide. Some partner organizations chose to present their material in shorter
sessions. APQC staff members worked with the partners to prepare and review their
presentations before the site visits. The partner organizations determined if they
wanted to host a site visit virtually or in person. Only UPS committed to an inperson site visit. Williams and Pitney Bowes were asked to hold their site visits at
the project kickoff meeting, held in November 2010. After each site visit, the APQC
project team prepared a written report (site visit summary) and submitted it to the
partner organization for elaboration and approval.
The process frameworks project did not include detailed quantitative benchmarking
at a level sufficient to understand cost and FTE allocations of process framework
adoption projects.
Analyze
The APQC project team analyzed both the qualitative and quantitative information
gained from the data collection tools. The analysis concentrated on examining the
practices of each partner organization. This analysis, as well as examples from the
site visits, is contained in this report.
The number of companies participating in the detailed questionnaire was
insufficient to analyze project participants (partners and sponsors) as an
independent sample. The sample from the project was combined with a similar
sample from a previous data collection effort (where possible) to develop the
sample that was ultimately utilized for further analysis and presentation in this
report.
Adapt
Adaptation and improvement, stemming from identified best practices, occur after
the sponsors apply key findings to their own operations. APQC staff members are
available to help organizations create appropriate action plans based on the results
of the study.

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RESEARCH CHAMPIO NS
Our research champions, Accenture and Nimbus, are experts in the field of
reference models and process frameworks and are supporting the study with
thought leadership, subject matter expertise, research, and funding.
Accenture
Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services, and outsourcing
company, with approximately 204,000 people serving clients in more than 120
countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all
industries and business functions, and extensive research on the worlds most
successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become
high-performance businesses and governments. Accenture has a large BPM practice
with numerous assets, including a BPM reference model repository with over 20,000
models describing over 70 industries. Its home page is www.accenture.com.
Nimbus
Nimbus is a global software company with offices in San Francisco, London,
Beijing, and 10 countries. Nimbus Control software enables organizations to capture
and deploy their operational processes, business controls, and supporting
information to all of their people, across the Web, or to a mobile device. It provides
an enterprise-wide collaborative framework that underpins effective process
management and sustainable performance improvement. Founded in 1997, Nimbus
has worked with over 700 organizations including AstraZeneca, Barclays, Chevron,
Cisco, HSBC, JP Morgan, Nestl, RBS, Sara Lee, Sony, ThyssenKrupp, and Toyota.
Nimbus is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner (ISV), an SAP Software Partner, an
Oracle Partner, and a Salesforce.com Partner. The Nimbus Web site is located at
www.nimbuspartners.com.
SUBJECT MATTER EXPER TS
Dr. Mathias Kirchmer
Dr. Mathias Kirchmer is executive director for business process management (BPM)
at Accenture. He leads the global BPM-Lifecycle practice, as well as the program for
the development of Accentures business process reference models across industries
and functional areas. His special field of expertise is to establish BPM capabilities
that deliver both immediate benefits and sustainable competitive advantages.
Before joining Accenture, Dr. Kirchmer spent 18 years with IDS Scheer, a leading
provider of business process excellence solutions, known for its BPM software, the
ARIS Platform. He was member of the extended executive board, holding roles of
CEO Americas, Japan, and chief innovation and marketing officer.
During his professional career Dr. Kirchmer has developed deep knowledge in
approaches, methods, tools, and software for the design, implementation, execution,

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and controlling of business processes. He has applied this know-how in companies
of various sizes and industries around the world.
Dr. Kirchmer is an affiliated faculty member of the Program for Organizational
Dynamics of the University of Pennsylvania; faculty member of the Business School
of Widener University, Philadelphia; and guest professor at the Universidad de
Chile, Santiago. In 2004, he won a research fellowship from the Japan Society for
the Promotion of Science. He is the author of numerous publications, including five
books. The last one is entitled High Performance Through Process ExcellenceFrom
Strategy to Operations and was published in December 2008.
Dr. Kirchmer holds a Ph.D. degree in information systems from Saarbruecken
University (Germany), a masters degree in business administration and computer
science (Wirtschaftsingenieur) from Karlsruhe Technical University (Germany),
and a masters degree in economics from Paris-IX-Dauphine University (France).
Dennis Pikop
Dennis Pikop is Manager of process architecture at Northrop Grumman
Corporation, aerospace systems sector. His responsibilities include oversight,
administration, and deployment of the sectors business process architecture
framework and facilitation of its process management control board. He also serves
as project implementation lead for the adoption of a corporate-wide process
architecture framework. Key to this was his creation of a ruleset for
generation/revision of process framework elements in addition to a configuration
management process.
His experience with business process management is vast, extending back to the
early 1980s. He has served as executive mentor in related process and quality
principles through initiatives such as process re-engineering, value stream
management, quality assessment, measurement, lean manufacturing, and statistics.
He has facilitated several executive strategic process planning and teambuilding
conferences within industry, across most corporate elements, and has provided
similar support to numerous nonprofit organizations.
He views it as an honor to serve, coach, and mentor people in their quest for
process excellenceespecially in the area of leadership. He works well within any
discipline internal or external to his industry.
Chris Taylor
Chris Taylor joined Nimbus in 2009 and is now vice president consulting, Americas,
where he is responsible for making Nimbus Control the enterprise standard for
meaningful business process management across their largest customers around the
world. Focusing on compliance and process frameworks to make governance,
deployment and end-user adoption the mantra at Nestl, Cisco, Northrop
Grumman, and many others, he is a leading voice in methods and applications for

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unlocking the full value of BPM. He offers this expertise online at
www.bpmforreal.wordpress.com.
His coming to Nimbus was strongly influenced by his years of experience delivering
transformational capabilities directly into the hands of business experts. With ILOG
(now IBM), Chris led consulting for the Americas in its mission to create powerful
business-facing rules, optimization, and visualization solutions for industries, which
include finance, manufacturing, transportation, and health care. His years spent
breaking through IT/business silos and liberating executives, managers, and endusers to have direct control of their world paved the way for much of the
perspective he brought to Nimbus and his enthusiasm for next-generation solutions
that combine the concepts of automation, simplicity, and social media.
In his early career, Chris managed aircrew and flight operations while flying for the
U.S. Navy before transitioning to consulting roles with both Perot Systems and
Accenture. He is an avid skier, hiker and sailor and spends much of his off time
exploring the mountains and coasts near his home in Southern California and the
rest of the world.
John G. Tesmer
John joined APQC in March of 2006 from IBMs Business Consulting Services
(BCS). At IBM, John was responsible for managing custom software development
projects and for providing around-the-clock support for business-critical
benchmarking software in a globally distributed environment and with globally
distributed teams. Prior to IBM, John worked as a management consultant for
PricewaterhouseCoopers Management Consulting Services in the energy and
utilities industry.
At APQC, John works with senior management to:
manage the regular operations of APQCs Open Standards Benchmarking
business, including managing subcontractors, revenue and expense forecasting,
and personnel;
re-engineer benchmarking systems, processes, and tools to reduce operational
expenses through more efficient operations;
introduce new products and services in cooperation with respected leaders and
subject matter experts.
John also is responsible for the management and development of APQCs Process
Classification Framework, including the introduction of 10 industry-specific
frameworks in partnership with corporate sponsors such as IBM.

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Jeff Varney
Jeff Varney is a senior adviser for APQCs delivery services group. He is responsible
for the implementation of business process management and process improvement
projects, content management, custom benchmarking, performance measurement,
and performance improvement activities.
As the process improvement practice lead within APQC, Jeff coordinates research
and applied research projects for business process management and process
improvement (Lean, Six Sigma, etc.) spanning all industries and disciplines. Jeff is
also an instructor for many of APQCs training courses, including Process
Management, Building and Sustaining Communities of Practice, Strategies and
Tactics for Content management, and Applying Benchmarking Skills in Your
Organization.
Jeff has extensive experience with enterprise projects across multiple industries,
including software development, banking, insurance, military, and space. In each
instance, he has been a catalyst for process improvement and innovation, leading
PMI certification efforts, driving SEI CMM and ISO 9001 adoption, driving Six
Sigma initiatives, establishing balanced scorecard reporting, and nurturing strong,
effective teams. He has achieved this through a blending of process, technology, and
training.
Prior to joining APQC, Jeff worked with CSC as its banking PMO director,
establishing a project management office that merged three disparate cultures (due
to acquisitions) into a single, cohesive project management and reporting practice.
He also established and maintained several communities of practice and helped
create CSCs opportunity management approach, which resulted in a structured sales
process. He was an active member of the CSC project management steering
committee and led its best practices capture team.
Jeff has successfully participated in and led technology projects with CSC, Raytheon,
and McDonnell Douglas. These included custom call center solutions, military
command and control applications, and the International Space Station. With a
degree in aerospace engineering, Jeff has a strong technical background that
complements his experience in management, process improvement, and content
management.
APQCS PROCESS CLASS IFICATION FRAMEWORK
As APQCs membership grew along with global attention to best practices, it
became clear that there was no common language to describe organizational
processes. With dozens of ways to reference functions and processes, measurement
and benchmarking were impossible to do in a systematic fashion. APQC set out to
solve this problem and, in collaboration with expert and practitioner panels,
introduced the Process Classification FrameworkSM (PCF) in 1992.

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APQCs Process Classification Framework was originally envisioned as a taxonomy
of business processes and a common language through which APQC member
organizations could benchmark their processes. The initial design involved APQC
and more than 80 organizations with strong interest in advancing the use of
benchmarking in the United States and worldwide. Since its inception in 1992, the
PCF has seen updates to most of its content. These updates keep the framework
current with the ways that organizations do business around the world. In 2008,
APQC and IBM worked together to enhance the cross-industry PCF and to develop
a number of industry-specific process frameworks. In 2009, APQC worked with the
Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) to update the PCF to
support the cross-mapping of CSCMPs process standards to the PCF.

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Chapter 1
Getting Started
Best practices in this chapter:
Accelerate: Accelerate improvement projects by applying process
frameworks in three key areas: benchmarking, content
management, and business process definition.
Locate: Adopt a framework or reference model at any level of the
organization; even localized implementations yield value.
Beginning any project at an organization requires dedication and commitment.
Frameworks adoption projects often require even more up-front effort than other
projects to address issues of location within the organization, centralization and
governance, and tool usage. Making smart decisions at the beginning of a
frameworks project can reduce rework, broaden cultural acceptance, and speed the
adoption of the framework, both within and outside of the frameworks initial
home.
Successful process framework adoption allows organizations to accomplish real
work more efficiently than organizations that havent adopted process frameworks
or reference models. Many of the best-practice partners remember a time before the
adoption of their framework where employees struggled to find job aids, managers
were unclear how their work related to other parts of the organization, and
performance comparison across organizations was too costly to consider. Once the
framework was adopted and later adapted to fit the needs and goals of the business,
these issues diminished.
ACCELERATE
Accelerate improvement projects by applying process frameworks in three
key areas: benchmarking, content management, and business process
definition.
As a part of the research into using process frameworks, APQC surveyed a number
of organizations about how they use these frameworks (Figure 1).

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Findings from APQCs 2010 Frameworks Survey
What Business Issue or Need Led Your Entity to

Investigate Using a Process Framework?
(Select all that apply.)
Data Table
Findings:
Answer
Distribution
Performance management and metrics
61%
Definition of key processes requiring crossfunctional owners

Content management system/knowledge
management
Reorganization/reengineering project, merger,
divestiture, etc.
Enterprise process taxonomybasis for
enterprise operations (i.e., embedded in
enterprise-wide technology and/or tools)
Compliance with an external standard (e.g.,
ISO9001)
Accountingmanagement accounting system
or activity-based costing approach
45%
30%
29%
25%
17%
14%
Not using a framework
12%
Other
20%
The three main

process framework
uses are:
benchmarking,
business process
management, and
content
management.
Twenty-five
percent of
respondents use
frameworks in
tooling.
Only 17 percent
use it due to a
compliance event.
N=76
Figure 1
APQC identified a number of popular uses of frameworks, which we grouped into
three main categories: benchmarking, content management, and business process
definition. More than 60 percent of respondents use frameworks to guide
performance management and metrics, which is essentially benchmarking. Clearly,
process frameworks can effectively support such efforts. Two core components of
business process definitiondefinition of key processes requiring cross-functional
owners and reorganization/re-engineering project, merger, divestiture, etc.are
also commonly used, at 45 percent and 29 percent, respectively. Rounding out the
main uses for frameworks is content management, at 30 percent.
The diversity of these uses is the reason that frameworks and reference models have
developed and evolved over time. Modern frameworks and reference models
include not only simple functional compositions but also valuable content, such as
chains of cross-functional processes organized into value streams, key performance
indicators/associated benchmarking data, and in some cases, best practices related

page 25

to functional compositions and top performance. One example is Supply Chain
Councils SCOR framework, which includes all of these features.
Overlaps Define Business Process Management
Content
Management
Benchmarking
B
P
M
Business Process
Definition
Figure 2
As shown in Figure 2, overlaps occur in the main uses of frameworks within an
organization. The term business process management (BPM) typically captures
the majority of these overlaps. Although this term can be associated with various
concepts, for the purposes of this study, it conveys the overlap among business
process definition, content management, and benchmarking.
Consider the content management and business process definition uses. In an
organization that uses a process framework to define how work is done, that same
framework can easily becomes a mechanism for managing content related to the
work. An organization can, however, manage content without also using the
framework to manage the definition of the business processes. Williams Exploration
and Petroleum, a subdivision of the Williams Companies, is an example of this: Its
content related to Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliance is organized according to a
process framework that is not used to define business processes. The extent of
overlapping usage depends on the organization.

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Frameworks used for other purposes can also be leveraged to facilitate
benchmarking. Organizations using a framework to define business processes are
generally able to use that same framework to measure the execution of these
processes. Once the measurements exist based upon a common framework, it
becomes simpler to benchmark internally or externally with organizations using
similar frameworks.
The most effective organizations are those that leverage a process framework for all
three uses: benchmarking, business process definition, and content management.
The ability to clearly and efficiently understand what work is done by identifying
processes and functions (business process definition), how it is done (organizing
content using the framework or reference model as a taxonomy), and how
effectively it is being done (benchmarking) is a clear competitive advantage.
Benchmarking
To put it simply, a process framework allows tasks to be grouped into standardized
buckets of activity that can then be objectively compared. Developing this common
language typically consumes a large portion of an organizations time. A process
framework or reference model accelerates this process and increases the speed and
depth at which an organization can study internal and external practices and
processes.
Benchmarking in this sense includes not just the benchmarking activities occurring
between organizations but also process measurement and performance management
that occurs within an organization. Accurate external benchmarking can be resource
intensive, mainly due to the costs associated with creating common definitions upon
which all partners can agree. Without common definitions, internal benchmarking is
also a costly exercise. The cost is even greater when more than one organization is
involved. A process framework accelerates benchmarking activities by reducing the
effort required to define a common language.
Consider an example where five organizations wish to compare the performance of
their processes and capabilities (Figure 3). In a world without a common framework
or reference model, each organization must map its processes to its four partners
processes. Assuming perfect sharing of information, a minimum of 10 distinct
mapping transactions are required to ensure that each partner can accurately map its
process to the other benchmarking partners.

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Process Mapping When Benchmarking With and Without a Framework

With Framework (5 mappings)
Without Framework (10 mappings)
FRAMEWORK
Figure 3
Incorporating a process framework or reference model in support of benchmarking
reduces the number of mapping transactions from 10 to five. Furthermore, as
benchmarking partners are added or removed from the exercise, additional mapping
is required only for the new entrants. The framework becomes the common
language through which all benchmarking participants compare their performance.
As shown in Figure 4, Cisco uses APQCs PCF to simplify the translation process
and facilitate the exchange of information and best practices, both in one-on-one
and group benchmarking projects. Cisco provides a unique example of how it
adopted a standard process framework and realized benefits throughout the entire
enterprise. The use of a standard framework created enormous value by enabling
Cisco to compare its internal processes with other organizations without mapping
its internal processes to each benchmarking partner. Working with a standard
language allowed Cisco to communicate with other organizations about how they
handle certain processes Cisco wanted to improve.

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How Cisco Uses APQCs PCF for Benchmarking
Figure 4
ING Life Japans creation and adoption of its Management Operating Methodology
demonstrates how a framework enables internal benchmarking. INGLJs
methodology is completely driven by measures associated with the process
framework (see Figure 5). Each morning, management representing key processes as
defined by the framework meets to discuss the days workload and ensure proper
resource allocation. Central to this workload balancing activity is INGLJs process
framework. The framework enables consistent definition of the items being
measured and therefore enables the regular workload balancing meetings.
One of the key components of success across all the partner organizations that have
focused on integrating their framework with other core functions is the use of
quality and performance measures throughout all processes included in the
framework. Measurement is not solely focused on outcomes but includes in-process
measures that provide data about how the process itself is working. Liam Ward,
business transformation manager at ING Life Japan, made this point clear: We
could map, design, and create new processes, but if we didnt understand the impact
[on outcomes], it is difficult to justify the costs associated with the change.
Typically, the activity of measuring performance is a separate function located in

page 29

Quality or Performance Management departments, but at INGLJ, it has become an
integral part of the process framework system. This type of integration provides
real-time data about process results that can be used to adjust workflow and to
forecast, with reasonable accuracy, what the results and value will be.
ING Life Japans Daily Schedule
Figure 5
Another benefit of integrating performance and process management is that
performance data (both qualitative and quantitative) gathered during quality control
activities can be used to find quick wins for process improvement initiatives. These
can be either minor adjustments, completed with relatively no cost, or more
involved adjustments that can be replicated across multiple processes and thus
realize huge benefits based solely on the sheer number of impacted processes.
Understanding how these measurements affect processes helps managers to
understand potential cost-benefit ratios for improvement efforts.
Content Management
Content management encompasses the processes and technologies that support the
collection, management, and publishing of information in any form or medium. As

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seen in the Venn diagram in Figure 2, content management can have significant
overlap with other uses of frameworks within an organization.
Organizations with significant overlap between the definition of business processes
and content management typically have specific tools built to manage process
contentbe they SharePoint document libraries, Lotus Notes databases, or even
formal BPM tools that include document management functionality.
Organizations in which content management processes do not significantly overlap
process definition or benchmarking processes still typically use a framework to
structure content so it can be easily accessed. In many cases, organizations are not
using comprehensive packaged content management solutions, but rather
homegrown tools built on available technology. This tends to be the case regardless
of whether the business uses the content management framework to define work
processes or not. Process frameworks still offer value, even when business processes
and business process content are defined and organized separately. As long as a
framework is used for one or the other, a simple map is usually sufficient to relate
content to existing business processes.
By 2003, Williams needed to quickly demonstrate compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley
regulations. When initially planning a solution to this problem, Williams discovered
inconsistent internal language to describe work done within the organization. Rather
than attempt to build a model from the existing business unit input, Williams
adopted APQCs Process Classification Framework (PCF) and mapped existing
enterprise content and processes to the hierarchical structure of the PCF. Within a
year, Williams had completely adopted the PCF to document all compliance-related
processes. With the foundation of the PCF in place, Williams Exploration and
Production (E&P) was able to use the framework as the basis for projects to realign
their entire organization around a process-focused mentality. Williams E&P began
moving beyond simple content management use to a more holistic business
process management use, integrating both content management and business
process definition. This evolution is shown in Figure 6.

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Williams E&P Process Management History
Figure 6
ThyssenKrupp Steel USA also used a process framework to organize its enterprise
content, process flows, and models. This organization differed from Williams,
though, in that it originally intended to use the adopted framework in all three areas,
not just for content management. In other words, the actual work processes were
defined to match the framework from the beginning, rather than back-fitted and
mapped into the existing organizational structure.
ThyssenKrupp Steel USA (TK) manages four levels of content against its adopted
process framework, as shown in Figure 7. For each process defined against the
framework, these four levels of documentation exist and are managed by their tool.
These four levels cover a variety of detail, from the overall why, to the supporting
what, and ultimately how. Supporting documentation that helps employees get
real work done.

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ThyssenKrupp Steel USA Levels of Documentation
Figure 7
ThyssenKrupp Steel USA is able to manage these various levels of documentation
using a business process management tool that allows the documents to be not only
stored but also managed through their entire life cycle, including content reviews
and checkpoints. At the center of this model is the process owner.
As with benchmarking, content management is enabled and accelerated when it is
based on a process framework.
Business Process Definition
For the purposes of this study, business process definition incorporates two distinct
activities:
using a process framework to define cross-functional processes, and
using a process framework to create or define existing processes within
functions.

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All of the partners in the study except Cisco used the framework for business
process definition activities (Figure 8).
Definition-related Activities that Incorporate a Framework
Best-Practice Partner
Definition-related Activities
Location
Cisco
Not used for definition
N/A
ING Life Japan
Redefine business processes within functions
Departmental
Pitney Bowes
Define cross-functional processes
Division
Sandvik
Define cross-functional processes (capabilities)
Enterprise
ThyssenKrupp

Enterprise
UPS

Enterprise
Williams E&P
Division
Figure 8
The two main approaches to business process definition using the framework
redefine business processes within functions and define cross-functional
processesare vastly different in their implementation. As one best-practice partner
described it, defining cross-functional processes is like building tunnels through
silos. Organizations try to look at their businesses from a new perspective
horizontallyand need a common language to define and relate daily functional
work to specific processes and individuals. Again, each partner had its own
approach to doing so, but ultimately, a few core practices stood out:
centralize ownership regardless of adoption location within the organization,
adopt a framework before adapting it, and
use tools after building a solid foundation of process expertise and capability.
These practices are explored in detail in chapters 2 and 3 of this report.
Redefinition requires a different approach, which often includes a larger vision of
transformation above and beyond definition. Redefinition activities using the
process framework result in a new organizational structure built around the process
framework, typically with complete adoption of the three main uses (content
management, benchmarking, and business process definition).

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Realizing Value
Leveraging a framework for more than one use (i.e., overlapping framework usage
as illustrated in Figure 2) drives greater value and benefits for an organization. Each
time the framework is reused, it multiplies the value of the process framework
adoption as a whole. Organizations using a process framework or reference model
for just one of the three main uses realize value. Williams did with its single-use
implementation for SOX compliance. Pitney Bowes did with its use for business
process definition. And Cisco did for benchmarking. However, in cases where
organizations employ a framework for more than one use, breakthrough value can
reasonably be expected.
Consider the situation at ThyssenKrupp: The organization uses a framework for
both business process definition and content management. Because process-related
content coincides with the appropriate process definitions, employees better
understand how to do their work, manage their processes, and store/share content.
The entire organization has an improved knowledge of where work and
documentation is located.
Because Williams found sufficient value at the enterprise level with using a
framework solely for content management, the Williams E&P division adopted the
same framework as the basis for its division-specific process definition work. Again,
this reuse of the framework not only accelerated the business process definition
work being done at Williams E&P, but it also brought the E&P organization closer
to the core corporate organization and reduced friction and confusion when dealing
with content or process definitions.
Framework adoption also links employee and customer values to the work being
done. Connecting customer feedback and characteristics to a business framework
ensures that work processes are providing outputs that customers desire. It also
highlights the activities that directly translate into a positive or negative customer
experience, allowing the organization to know exactly which processes to measure
or change to increase customer satisfaction.
Using a framework to link employees to the business (through feedback, work
definitions, or training) significantly enhances employee engagement. By increasing
consistency in the way work is performed and reducing rework, standard
frameworks reduce employee frustration. Also, when employees participate in the
management of the framework or execute work defined by the framework, they feel
more connected to the organization and know that they have a say in how business
is performed.
Employee Values at ING Life Japan
At INGLJ, aligning the framework with employee values was not simple or intuitive,
but in the end it proved to be one of the defining elements of the overall success of
the framework implementation. Much of the difficulty stemmed from the fact that
adoption of a framework and its associated processes often involves some degree of

page 35

fighting against the existing cultural inertiathe mentality that the status quo is okay
and no change is really needed. A change-resistant culture hinders the opportunities
for value to be created by the framework, simply because the people doing the work
every day are not actively engaged. The critical factor, then, is creating a meaningful
link between employee work values and the framework.
During INGLJs framework implementation, cultural resistance lessened after a few
months as performance improved and frontline employees saw their day-to-day
workloads decrease (an important employee value). The staff became much more
engaged, and the culture began to shift, as people discovered how much INGLJs
process framework system improved work-life factors (see INGLJs case study for
details).
Engaging and Recognizing Employees at Pitney Bowes
At Pitney Bowes, the team responsible for the framework has learned that engaging
employees in the framework itself should be coupled with recognizing and
celebrating victories, no matter how big or small. Global process leaders send
messages to their department when one of their global process owners completes a
framework implementation task. This helps build awareness throughout the
organization about the value created by utilizing the framework. In turn, these
messages reduced the need to convince employees to participate in frameworkrelated projects. Because employees had seen past successes, they already had a
strong inclination to join the effort.
Pitney Bowes has also recognized that since the team began regularly recognizing
and celebrating successes, team members are more dedicated and less prone to give
passive-aggressive feedback.
Customer Values at UPS
Customer relationship management and product management, two of UPS core
processes, are a main source of structured inputs into continuous improvement
activities. Every interaction with a customer results in feedbackfeedback that tells
UPS what it is doing but not doing well, or what products it should be offering.
Many of the requirements for new product development ultimately come from the
organizations customer relationship management area. Customer feedback ideas
arrive continually and embraced as part of the culture at UPS. Employees are
empowered to be constructively dissatisfied.
LOCATE
Adopt a framework or reference model at any level of the organization; even
localized implementations yield value.
Throughout conversations with the partner organizations, it quickly became
apparent that framework adoption success is not contingent upon the entire

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organization participating or even supporting the work. More value can be realized
by applying a framework to the largest number of processes, but wide-scale
adoption comes at a cost. This leads to a recurring theme that was expressed by
every partner organization: The most critical element to success is simply getting
started on a framework projectno matter how small, how many people are
involved, or where within the organization the work begins. The study did not
identify any particular correlation between the location of the adoption within the
organization and the particular use (benchmarking, content management, or
business process definition) associated with the adoption.
Enterprise-wide Adoption
UPS defined a framework consisting of four core and five supporting processes
crossing through the various functions within the organization, such as accounts
payable, and human resources (Figure 9). The trigger for UPS creation and
adoption of the process framework was the identification of a performance issue in
its main line of business. Since the entire enterprise was affected by the changes in
its marketplace, UPS needed to locate the adoption of the framework as high up in
the organization as possible. UPS defined a set of core processes and set about
attempting to re-engineer the organization to match its structure.
As in many re-engineering projects, UPS found that trying to completely re-engineer
the organization to match this structure cost too much in terms of the change
required. After reevaluating the situation, the program management group
determined that a strict reorganization would not be feasible. To ultimately effect
the changes required to solve the organizations performance problem, the program
management group determined that an overlayment strategy would be more
successful. They then effectively layered the framework atop existing functions.

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UPS Core Processes
Figure 9
UPS framework adoption led to tangible benefits: a reduction in complexity and a
common, clear, and consistent way to discuss the business and the impact of
strategy on how work is performed within the organization. The cost of applying
this framework across the entire UPS organization is substantial, but makes sense
relative to the scale of the adoption. UPS employs 25 full-time equivalents (FTEs) in
its program management group to manage and maintain its process framework. This
is a relatively small proportion of its work force.
Division-level Adoption
Compare UPS adoption to that of Williams E&P, which adopted APQCs PCF
within the division after its parent organization used the PCF to organize enterprisewide financial content for SOX compliance.

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Williams High-Level Process Framework
Figure 10
As shown in Figure 10, Williams E&P has identified not only its own high-level
processes, but also processes that are managed outside of the scope of Williams
E&P, at the higher Williams Companies level. Even though the parent company
does not yet use the PCF for all processes identified in the E&P process framework,
the relationship between the two entities can be clearly identified. This is another
benefit of framework adoption: the clear allocation of process ownership.
While the UPS and Williams E&P models are similar in structure, the scope is
entirely different. The core processes identified in the Williams example are specific
to its exploration and production capabilities, while the core processes in the UPS
example span the entire enterprise, not just one specific division. Both
organizations, however, used a process framework to define business processes.
Like UPS, the approximately seven FTEs that manage and maintain the Williams
E&P framework are a relatively small contingent of the entire work force. The
scope and number of processes each organization identified is similarUPS has
five core processes, while Williams has four core processes. UPS has five supporting
processes; Williams defined eight enabling processes. Both organizations want to
manage their business horizontally. But Williams is focused on one division, and

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UPS vision is enterprise-wide. Williams seven FTEs ultimately manage the same
general volume of processes, but for a much narrower organizational scope.
Even though UPS and Williams adopted frameworks at different locations within
the organization, both organizations built centralized structures to manage and
maintain their frameworks. UPS had the program management group, centrally
located at the enterprise level and reporting to the vice president of strategy.
Williams had the E&P Process Group, which reports to the vice president of
commercial operations and gas management. These two groups represent another
of the best practices identified in this studythat centralizing the ownership and
management of the framework is essential to its success.
Adoption of the process framework at other partner organizations followed a
pattern similar to that of Williams and UPS: Although the adoption could occur at
the departmental, divisional, or enterprise-wide level, the corresponding support
structures were centralized within the area of adoption.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDE R
1. Which use of a framework is most relevant to the needs of your organization?
2. Which location could benefit the most from framework adoption?
3. Can your organization use the framework in more than one area or for more
than one purpose?

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Accenture
The first step toward using BPM frameworks as project accelerators should be
identifying the specific areas within the overall BPM blueprint that can be
supported and accelerated by reference models. In addition to benchmarking,
content management, and business process definition, these areas typically include
process prioritization, process controlling, change management, training, and project
management.
Furthermore, there is room for the use of reference models at all levels of the
organization and in many different configurations. Indeed, the most critical element
to success is simply getting started, no matter how small the scope of the initiative,
how many people are involved, or where within the organization the work begins.
Similarly, organizations may use a specific configuration or components of a
reference model, or use multiple models in conjunction with one another. For
example, organizations use Accentures BPM reference models in concert with
APQCs PCF.
In most cases, the right part of a model or combination of models depends on
which part of the organization will be targeted and its specific needs. For instance,
some configurations are better suited to detailed design, while others work best in
support of key performance indicator frameworks or for value trees that refer to
process structures. The use of reference models does not entail losing sight of an
organizations specific issues. Rather, the models help resolve those issues in a more
efficient and organization-specific way.

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Chapter 2
Adoption, Governance, and
Oversight
Centralize: Centralize ownership and protect the integrity of the
adopted frameworks to ensure one version of the truth.
Adopt: Adopt a framework before adapting it.
Centralized governance structures, processes, and toolkits make long-term benefits

through framework adoption possible. Centralized governance of the framework
does not imply that the processes defined by the framework, the content managed
by the framework, or the benchmarking capabilities enabled by the framework are
all centralized. On the contrary; the centralization of the frameworks maintenance
and management enables the distribution of the ownership for those adopted
pieces.
Managing an adopted framework without centralized oversight can prove costly, as
it is difficult to change the framework to reflect changes in the way business is
performed. This chapter provides an overview of two main best practices: centralize
ownership of the framework and adopt before adapt.
CENTRALIZE
Centralize ownership and protect the integrity of the adopted frameworks to
ensure one version of the truth.
No matter where the framework is deployed within the organization or how it is
used (for benchmarking, content management, or process definition), centralized
ownership and management of the adopted framework is essential. Governance
structures should coordinate with the culture of the organization to ensure the
maximum utility of the framework while maintaining a baseline set of controls to
ensure consistency. This baseline set of controls and governance can be combined
in a single management system.
System is the best way to describe how many of the partner organizations manage
their adopted frameworks to maximize long-term value. A process framework

page 42

management system creates an explicit link between a set of independent but
interrelated functions to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Not
only did the partner organizations realize benefits after implementation, but their
framework management systems became almost self-perpetuating. One of the
outputs from the use of a process framework within an organization is a continual
stream of data that can be used to identify even more opportunities for value to be
created within the framework.
Two main practices are associated with successful centralized framework
management systems:
1. build a center of excellence; and
2. develop clear standards for process maps, documentation, and implementation
guidance.
Build a Center of Excellence
A process frameworks center of excellence (CoE) is a team of individuals focused
on maintaining and managing the adopted process framework to maximize its longterm value and utility. The center of excellence should not be responsible for
actually managing the content of the framework; that is best left to business owners
with relevant subject matter expertise. The center of excellence should support each
of the uses for which the framework is adopted. The center of excellence manages
the framework and its various applications/uses, and the process/business owners
and other employees perform the work within the framework.
All of the center of excellence team activities should be based on adopted industry
best practices in managing process frameworks and centers of excellence. In many
cases, a center of excellence for managing the process framework may actually just
be a portion of a larger BPM center of excellence. The decision to collocate the
frameworks center of excellence within the BPM center of excellence is generally
related to the uses for the framework within the organization. Organizations using
the framework in more than one area should push the overall framework ownership
and maintenance to a single group for all uses.
The configuration of a center of excellence does not depend on the location of the
frameworks adoption (one is needed wherever the framework is adopted) or the
type of adoption (overlayment or re-engineering). When building a center of
excellence, a good rule of thumb is to create the center of excellence in the area of
the organization driving the adoption of the framework. If multiple frameworks are
adopted within an organization (i.e., one in finance and another in supply chain), or
if each division of an organization has its own process framework, then there should
be a center of excellence for each instance of a framework. An organization with a
number of centers of excellence (corresponding to a number of frameworks) will
realize benefit from coordinating this federation of centers of excellence to ensure
consistent behavior. If multiple areas adopt a single framework, however, one center
of excellence will best coordinate efforts.

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A center of excellence should be sized based on its function and location within the
organization rather than the scope of the processes under its management. Consider
the Williams E&P example: Williams adopted its process framework for process
definition use at the division level and manages its entire framework of 12 process
categories with only seven FTEs. Those FTEs are not expected to train individual
Williams employees on the process modeling and process mapping activities, so
their involvement is relatively less than that of UPS center of excellence team
members. UPS adopted framework of nine process categories is managed with
nearly 25 FTEs, but those FTEs perform more activities and actively train other
UPS employees (Figure 11).
Williams E&P and UPS Framework Adoption Comparison
Williams
UPS
Scope of adoption
Division
Enterprise
Number of FTEs in CoE
25
Number of employees in
organization
Approximately
5,000
Approximately 400,000
Types of services offered
Process
documentation
aligned with the
framework
Training
Facilitation
Process documentation
aligned with the
framework
Figure 11
The Williams E&P Process Group is made up of three analysts, one technical writer,
two support staff members, and one rotational analyst. The analysts are assigned to
a specific function or process group. This creates a center of excellence for a
particular process. The CoE is responsible for the maintenance of the adopted
framework, but the ownership of the process and related content is delegated to a
specific process owner.
Maintaining the framework and the value it creates is not an easy endeavor for UPS.
It requires a significant resource investment in:
process management and
the associated program and project management activities that actually
implement change.
Linking these two management activities creates a synergy between the work that
gets done every day and the process framework itself. This integration is achieved

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through twin centers of excellence (Figure 12). These two CoEs are responsible for
supporting the staff engaged in all program and process management activities
throughout the entire organization. Staff members are exposed to the fundamentals
of each management discipline through internal and external training and toolsets.
In both the functional and cross-functional areas, the CoEs provide support to
teams working on projects.
UPS Twin Framework Centers of Excellence
Figure 12
Since their inception, the CoEs have contributed tremendous value to UPS. Project
management costs have decreased by roughly 40 percent and delivery-to-plannedscope increased from 20 to 50 percent. The program management group believes
that with continued refinement and training, the organization can derive additional
value from the framework.

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Early in the implementation stage of its process framework, ING Life Japan realized
that the greatest opportunity for creating value was by integrating several key
management components that had been historically separate. INGLJs Transformer
Program was developed to formally tie these components into a framework
management system that provides governance, continuous improvement, and
quality assurance to the organization that has adopted the framework. INGLJs
Transformer Program effectively became its center of excellence (Figure 13).
ING Life Japans Transformer Program Relationships
Figure 13
Two unique aspects of INGLJs program are key to the value the organization has
been able to create: (1) linking work to the process framework and (2) engaging
people in the program.
Linking work that is done in the trenches with the overall process framework
gives the entire organization a daily view of how the business is running and what
needs to be improved to gain the most benefit. Managing this feedback effectively is
the responsibility of the Transformer Program members.
Second, the Transformer Programs success depends heavily on the level of
engagement people have throughout the process. To facilitate this, INGLJ provides
numerous opportunities for staff members, from all levels within the organization,
to be involved in key decision making activities. This directly links staff, and their
own work values, to the process framework by involving them in overall
management and governance. The Transformer Program, acting as a center of
excellence, enables this staff engagement.

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Williams, INGLJ, and UPS all provide strong examples of how a center of
excellence can drive framework-based improvement and quality. As an organization
becomes more process focused, it must listen to feedback about processes, set
priorities, and learn where to make changes or enhance communication and training.
Process Maps, Documentation, and Implementation Guidance
Clear, concise, and consistent documentation of the adopted framework and the
tools used to maintain and support it keeps all process framework stakeholders
focused on what is important: the actual work defined by the process framework.
Beyond the information about the framework, documents and templates about
processes defined in the framework must be standardized, clear, and consistent. All
best-practice partners in the frameworks study developed clear standards for
documenting processes identified in the framework, defined core work product
types, and made models and templates.
UPS developed clear guidelines for creating process maps. Its rules are enforced
with all process owners throughout the organization. All process maps are written
from left to right with at least 70 percent of the steps written on the horizontal path,
representing the process under normal conditions. All exceptions to the typical
process are written as vertical tangents, moving downward from the main left-toright process flow (Figure 14). The vertical tangents or exceptions to the process
should not represent more than 30 percent of the process map.
UPS Standards for Leveling Work Force
Activities to Tasks:
Processes
Subprocesses
Activities
Tasks
UPS Program Management Group Process Center of Excellence

UPS Confidential and Proprietary Information
Do Not Copy or Distribute
Figure 14

page 47
28

Not only did UPS define standards for left-to-right flows, but it also went a step
further and defined a standard for how processes should be modeled, using specific
features of its modeling tool (Figure 15). Because process framework responsibilities
are split between UPS program management group (which handles the core
maintenance of the process framework) and individual process owners (who
perform much of the actual framework implementation work), a standard reference
is essential. Having a single point of reference lessens the need for constant backand-forth between program management and process owners, reducing rework and
cycle time. The standard reference also enables speedier training of new resources.
UPS Process Modeling Tool Standard
Figure 15
Williams E&P requires that its framework have a consistently documented and
common set of information about the processes it includes. The divisions
knowledge repository brings together goals, policies, procedures, process maps,
process measures, service level agreements (SLAs), informational team updates, and
tools in a single location (Figure 16). Without a consistent definition for these types
of content, the content for each process would be unorganized and difficult to sift
through.

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Williams E&P Knowledge Repository
Figure 16
Pitney Bowes also adopted common templates, tools, and document types in its
center of excellence. Its framework focuses on three core types of documents:
policies, process flow diagrams, and training. The Global Process Management team
facilitates the work with the process owners, answering questions and providing
guidance as necessary. Material is never taken straight from documentation and
dropped into the adopted enterprise process framework (EPF); it is first reviewed
and modified as needed to ensure it fits with the rest of the EPF.
Pitney Bowes Global Process Management team also developed relationship grids
and key performance indicators (KPIs) at the functional level. Within a particular
process, the team developed a relationship grid identifying the interdependencies
among the various functional members of the team. For each function within the
process, the team reviews any KPIs that may already exist and develops new ones as
needed.
ThyssenKrupp Steel USA consolidates content management and process definition
within its tool, Nimbus Control (Figure 17). The tool allows consistent management
of the documents, including version control and document storage features, all
integrated with the processes defined according to the adopted framework.

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ThyssenKrupp Steel USAs Document Management within Nimbus Control
Figure 17
Creating and managing these various tools from a central location helped the bestpractice partners minimize the amount of time spent managing the process
frameworkallowing the organizations to ultimately get more real work done
instead of spending needless time ironing out the framework and process
definitions.
ADOPT
Adopt a framework before adapting it.
At first, adopting the framework before adapting it sounds like one of the most
counterintuitive findings in the study. The idea that an organization should blindly
bring in a foreign framework of processes and begin benchmarking, managing
content, or defining processes is troubling and, in some cases, seems impossible.
However, the best-practice organizations experience validates this approach.

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The scope of the initial adoption should be reasonable and attainable. The larger the
impact of the adoption, the more difficult it is to coordinate and fully implement. If
an organization plans to adopt a framework across the entire enterprise, the work
required may seem unreasonable. Even if the end goal is to implement a framework
enterprise-wide, it may be wiser to limit the initial scope to a single process. A
smaller breadth of implementation makes the decision to adopt a framework seem
more reasonable.
The scope should also be determined by reviewing the proposed use of the adopted
framework. If the use is benchmarking and is limited to a specific process, then the
effort required for adoption is less significant than if an organization decided to roll
out the framework to the entire organization for use in content management,
benchmarking, and process definition. Even if the use is solely process definition
across the enterprise, the implementation team should take time to decide how
many resources and how much effort will be required for that implementation. The
scope may need to be reduced to a single process or unit to gain more initial
momentum.
When adopting a process framework, an organization must consider scope, use, and
the location of centralization. Understanding exactly which part of the organization
will be affected (i.e., the extent or scope), what the framework will be used for, and
how that adopted framework will be managed are all essential components to
understand before attempting to perform the implementation. Adoption plans can
be made once the team fully determines the scope, use, and governance aspects of
the implementation.
APQC has identified two different types of adoption plans:
1. Overlaymentapplying the process framework atop existing organizational
structures and functions with a mapping layer between
2. Reengineeringmoving the organization to the target framework by replacing
the existing organizational structures and functions with those specified in the
framework
Overlayment is a relatively simple mechanism to bring a process framework into an
organization without significant changes to the underlying organizational structure.
Overlayment adoption plans work best used when an implementation has a large
scope, and where re-engineering would result in incredibly significant changes to the
organizations structure. In this case, change management for re-engineering would
be so immense that overlayment is the better choice. Overlayment is well suited to
content management and benchmarking implementations. Overlayment of a process
framework for process definition purposes can lead to confusion but may
successfully be used as an interim step to achieve cultural acceptance for
re-engineering of existing processes.
UPS and Williams E&P used an overlayment adoption approach. Fundamentally
changing UPS four core and five supporting processes would ultimately require too

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great a change for the employees of UPS to adopt immediately. Rather than lose the
projected benefits of adopting the new process framework, the UPS program
management group decided to map the existing enterprise processes to the newly
defined framework. This mapping became the glue that allowed UPS to overlay
the new framework atop the existing UPS organization without applying the thensignificant changes to the organization. Through the mapping, employees could
begin to see their roles relative to the new framework and how exactly they would
participate in getting real work done, without having to give up their existing roles,
tenure, and expertise. The overlayment also puts the organization in a better
position to fully re-engineer its structure in the future.
Similarly, Williams (the larger Williams Companies, not the Exploration and
Production division) used the overlayment technique when it first adopted the PCF
as a mechanism to organize SOX compliance content. It was unnecessary to
reorganize the business around the SOX compliance activities to demonstrate
compliance. All that was ultimately required was the adoption of the framework and
a consistent mapping between existing enterprise processes and the newly adopted
framework.
The cost associated with an overlayment is calculated based on the time and
resources required to develop and maintain the mapping between the adopted
process framework and the existing organization. This cost is difficult to quantify,
but most best-practice organizations relate it to the cost of operating the
frameworks center of excellence, since the center of excellence should work closely
with process owners to manage the mapping to existing organizational processes.
One way to avoid high ongoing costs is to re-engineer the organization to match the
adopted framework. However, the decision to reorganize is not without cost either.
Re-engineering is closely related to the dont automate, obliterate philosophy. It
requires a sometimes massive amount of change and potentially causes disruptions
to work. Implementation plans should account for these shifts and for the resources
necessary to manage the change throughout the work force.
ING Life Japan used a re-engineering approach to adopt its framework and also
chose not to make changes to the framework before implementing it. After
investigating the alternatives, Liam Ward, business transformation manager for ING
Life Japan, determined that adapting the framework would reduce or eliminate the
benefits of adopting the process framework. The adaptation would move the
company further away from the best practice models and expertise other
organizations had already contributed to the framework.
With strong central leadership, INGLJ was able to completely adopt the process
framework without significant prior adaptation. At the beginning of the
implementation, some middle and line managers resisted this approach. Over
subsequent months, however, the resistance waned as performance results improved
and frontline employees began to find their day-to-day workloads decreasing.

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Ultimately, less than 10 percent of the adopted framework was changed through
adaptation.
The main cost associated with full re-engineering is change management. Like any
transformational project, the success of INGLJs Transformer Program hinged on
the engagement of the organizations people. In particular, INGLJ focused on
getting input from employees at all levels when making important decisions. Other
potential re-engineering costs include lost productivity until all stakeholders
understand the new structure and any actual downtime or delays required for
reorganization.
Strong communication is essential to facilitate re-engineering activities. ING Life
Japan realized that it was important to use different ways in which to communicate
with all employees. To ensure the appropriate level of engagement in the
implementation of the Transformer Program, Liam Ward created a number of
vehicles for communication:
Transformer action teams (groups dispersed throughout the organization to
gather feedback and give support),
Transformer Times (a quarterly newsletter), and
the Transformer communications plan (a series of visual aids, like posters and
leaflets, used in COO communications to the organization).
UPS also identified consistent communication as a key method for reducing the cost
of framework adoption and change management activities. When rolling out its
initial framework, the program management group created a variety of vehicles to
communicate the changes, from screen savers to posters in break rooms and
hallways.
Another solid, but sometimes confusing, approach to framework implementation is
a combination of overlayment and re-engineering. These projects may be multiphased, with overlayment coming first, leading gradually to full reegineering.
Organizations may choose overlayment in certain areas of the business but fully reengineer others. If re-engineering is the goal, but the effort and resource
commitment is too intensive to proceed, a combination approach may be the best
option.
After a framework is chosen and adopted in the business, the next step is to adapt
the framework to fit the businesss needs and ultimately integrate the framework
into employees everyday work. The framework should ultimately give employees a
better of understanding of their role in the business, above and beyond the core
uses identified in the frameworks project.

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Avoid Premature Optimization
Organizations naturally progress from adopting a framework to adapting it to the
specifics of the business, but performing this adaptation too quickly can lead to later
rework, a lesson commonly cited by the best-practice partners. The partners learned
to avoid premature optimization by taking small, calculated steps in the adaptation
process.
For example, UPS learned that process changes that span functions or business
units generally provide the most benefit but are the hardest to execute. The
organization recommends breaking up these efforts into manageable pieces. Linda
McCain of UPS suggests that organizations start framework implementations in an
individual function, but then have a plan to evolve.
The Williams Companies had a similar approach in that it documented only the
processes that were required under the SOX act and then addressed new processes
as business needs arose. INGLJ recognized that about 96 percent of the annual
transactional volume within its paying out and paying in process categories came from
only 34 percent of the 132 transactional processes it had identified. Ultimately,
INGLJ realized that it needed to address only a small number of subprocesses to
make a huge impact on the efficiency of an entire process category.
Adoption as a Tool
Taking a big step back and looking at the question of why organizations should be
adopting frameworks allows us to consider an important idea: The framework is
really just a tool to help accomplish other objectives and tasks. Considering
frameworks in that light, what activities does the framework enable or accelerate,
and what is the cost of doing those activities without the framework to help?
Each of the partners in this study adopted frameworks for one reason: they
accelerated the organizations journey to achieve its objectives. UPS identified a
need to re-engineer the organization, and the framework helped the company
achieve value faster. Had UPS not adopted its framework, could it have achieved the
same objective? Probably. Could it have done it as quickly or as efficiently as it did?
Probably not.
The Williams Companies framework helped the organization achieve SOX
compliance sooner. Williams had a pressing deadline that demanded immediate
attention. Without the adoption of the framework, the effort required to secure buyin from the various stakeholders was immense. The framework made connections
between work activities, compliance requirements, and points of accountability
explicit. The effort expended to achieve the same end without the framework would
have been significantly greater, especially since the scope of the adoption addressed
all financial processes across the entire organizationall business units included.

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1. What are the organizations business goals?
2. What resources can participate in the center of excellence?
3. What will the framework be used for?
4. What standards must be developed to support framework adoption?
5. What kind of adoption will fit best with the organizations culture?
6. How can the center of excellence use communication to reduce change
management issues?
7. What frameworks will be adopted, and how will they interrelate?

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Accenture
The process of process management can be used to effectively implement and
improve an organizations overall BPM capability, and reference models are one
important component of developing this capability. The process of process
management also provides standards, guidelines, and governance regarding process
assets and content.
Governance, in particular, is a key element of process managementand is of the
highest importance to get real value out of reference models. BPM governance
includes defining roles and responsibilities for process stakeholders, rules for
accessing and modifying reference models and their organization-specific variants,
and guidelines for the adoption of new or additional reference models. Furthermore,
effective governance can provide organizations with centralized coordination,
maintenance, and management of their BPM capabilities, even when the execution
of process management is scattered throughout the enterprise. A strong governance
approach will ensure the consistency of reference models, even if decentralized
organizational units adjust them based on specific needs.
The following pages provide more in-depth information about the process of
process management and how it can help companies develop a powerful BPM
capability. As Accenture explains in the article, the process of process management
integrates data, applications, infrastructure, policies, and standards with
organizational components. The result: a robust BPM capability that supports an
organizations long-term transparency, agility, efficiency, and responsiveness to
market developments. And, as discussed in the article, the process of process
management has its own subprocesses, support requirements, and impacts on the
overall business, all of which must be organized and managed to achieve optimal
results.

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The Process of Process Management:

Delivering the Value of Business
Process Management
For many years, companies have deployed business

process management (BPM) techniques and tools
to improve, refine and adapt business processes
efficiently to support changing business goals. Such
use of BPM traditionally has been on a project basis,
not as a sustainable capability. Today, however, BPM
increasingly is viewed as a source of value in its
own right and as a powerful management discipline.
BPM can be used to create sustainable competitive
advantages that are difficult to copy.
In this paper, we explore how companies can use
BPM to generate value and competitive advantage
for the business on an ongoing, consistent basis. We
also discuss the keys to implementing an effective
and efficient process of process management.
A BPM Process Approach to Deliver ValueSystematically

While companies historically have
seen BPM as a way to help drive a
one-time, project-driven focus on
process excellence, todays business
climate requires companies to develop
and nurture a sustainable process
of process management that helps
them establish and manage a BPM
capability that provides ongoing
operational transparency, agility and
compliance, quality and efficiency as
well as improves external networks
with market partners and internal
integration. These benefits, in
turn, help enable companies to
respond successfully to changing
market conditionsfor example
by understanding which processes
produce which costs, or how to
decrease costs and quickly implement
changes that can have a bottom-line
impact, or respond to new technology
trends (such as using cloud computing
to improve business processes).
Companies can and should implement
such a BPM capability using a
process approach. This paves the way
to an outcome-oriented approach:
A process delivers by definition a
result of value. Indeed, this process

of process management follows
the same lifecycle as any other
business process: It must be designed,
implemented, executed and measured.
The BPM process is at the center of
a BPM capability blueprint, which
outlines the infrastructure as well
as the organizational components
required (Figure 1). Core infrastructure
components are:
Content/Data - for example; process
models
Applications and infrastructure - for
example; process repository tools or
process execution engines
Policies and standards - for example;
modeling guidelines
The organizational components of a
process of process management are:
Roles and responsibilities - for
example; the definition of a process
architecture or a process owner
Organization - for example; how a
BPM center of excellence is defined
and positioned in the organization
Figure 1: BPM Capability Blueprint
Culture
Competency
(Offerings)
Organization
Roles /
Operating
Principles
BPM Processes
Outcomes
Responsibilities
Policies and
Standards
Content (Data)
Applications and
Infrastructure
Competencies or offerings - hence

what a BPM organization delivers
to the company, for example;
management of a process repository or
process improvement projects
Culture - including aspects of
end-to-end process thinking
The process of process management
brings all those components together
resulting in a functioning business
capability.
The process approach to BPM enables
a systematic definition and rollout
of a BPM capability, as well as its
ongoing management, with one goal
in mind: value creation. This process
of process management, like any
other business process, has its own
constituent sub-processes, support
requirements, and impacts on the
overall business, all of which must be
organized and proactively managed.
Those sub-processes are in most cases
not established all at once but step by
step, as required by the organization to
achieve the BPM maturity necessary
to meet its business goals.
A Reference Model for the Process of

Process Management
There are several interrelated subprocesses that together constitute
the process of process management,
each of which must be mastered and
integrated with each other. These subprocesses define which tasks the BPM
organization performs and how these
activities are integrated with BPM
activities handled by business units
or IT function. A BPM organization
consists of one or multiple formal
BPM organizational units to which
people are deployed. In most cases,
those units are called BPM Centers
of Excellence which, in general, also
includes the owner of the process of
process management.
The reference model of the process of
process management is a valuable tool
for any company beginning to define
a process of process management
(Figure 2 shows the highest level
of such a reference model for the
process of process management).
This reference model should be a
basic, cross-industry description
of a general process of process
management that can be adjusted
easily to a specific company and
that captures all the BPM-related
activities and sub-processes that
enable a value-driven approach to
BPM. Hence, this model can have
tremendous impact on the successful
establishment of a BPM organization,
which we view as a critical step in
building and sustaining an effective
process of process management.
As shown in the diagram, our process
reference model for BPM includes five
major process areas:
BPM Operations
BPM Methods & Tools
BPM Delivery
BPM Transformation
BPM Support
BPM Operations
BPM Operations encompasses
four basic BPM sub-processes
BPM maturity and value analysis,
process value analysis, roadmap,
and governancethat are required
to start the implementation of the
process of process management. BPM
maturity and value analysis enables
companies to understand the strength
and maturity of their current BPM
capabilitiesfor example, their ability
to analyze, design, and measure
processes, define key performance
indicators, establish process owners,
and other capabilities outlined in the
BPM capability blueprintwhich, in
turn, helps identify which new BPM
capabilities must be built and which
existing ones must be expanded to
meet the companys goals.
Another core sub-process under BPM
Operations is process value analysis,
which focuses on classifying the
companys business processes in
terms of both impact on strategic
goals and maturity compared with
similar companies. High-impact
processes that are relevant to the
companys overall goals and that
also have low maturity in most cases
take center stage, as they are the
most likely to generate substantial
value upon improvement.
A BPM roadmap is a third critical
BPM Operations sub-process. Such
a roadmap defines which BPM
capabilities must be built and to
which processes they are applied,
thus enabling the company to achieve
immediate benefits while developing
sustainable BPM capabilities. A highlevel business case is assigned to each
element of the BPM roadmap so the
return on investment is clear.
The final core sub-process of BPM
Operations is the ability to create,
roll out and manage a governance
structure that ensures the BPM
roadmap is executed as effectively and
efficiently as possible. This includes
the definition of roles, responsibilities

and accountabilities of members of
the BPM organization, the business
and IT. Well-orchestrated collaboration
among those groups is of the
highest importance to the successful
implementation of the process of
process management.
In practice, the four sub-processes
of BPM Operations are often the
core activities of a BPM center of
excellence and starting point of the
BPM journey.
BPM Methods and Tools

While the core sub-processes of
BPM Operations are necessary to get
the process of process management
started, by themselves they are just
the beginning of the value-driven
approach to BPM. To make BPM truly
effective, a company must put in
place the Methods and Tools to help
form the infrastructure necessary for
successful process management. These
methods and tools are aligned based
on the BPM roadmap so that they are
all focused on creating best value for
an organization.
A key sub-process of Methods and
Tools is the management of a business
architecture containing all information
about the processes an organization
executes and related aspects such
as the organizational structure or
software application architecture.
The business architecture provides
the necessary transparency into the
company that enables fast decisions
such as how to adapt a specific
process or introduce a new process to
meet a certain customer needand
the execution of the resulting actions.
The business architecture forms the
process assets of a company, and is
housed in a repository that enables it
to be used and re-used easily.
Other key elements of the
Methods and Tools sub-process
are BPM systems (such as process
execution engines or monitoring
systems); capabilities for traditional
Figure 2: Accenture Process Reference Model for BPM
BPM Operations
BPM Maturity and
Value Analysis
Process Value
Analysis
BPM Methods & Tools
Roadmap
Governance
BPM Delivery
Business Architecture
BPM Transformation
Process Strategy
Process Analysis
Culture & People Change Management
Standards &
Guidelines
Process
Improvement
Methods
Process Design
Process
Implementation
BPM Community
Repository
BPM Systems
Process Execution
Process
Monitoring
Program & Project Management
BPM Support
Finance
Procurement
improvement approaches such as Lean

and Six Sigma; and the necessary
standards and guidelines, which
can include a modeling handbook
or procedures defining how process
changes should be handled or how
new processes are established.
Methods and Tools are the enablers of
the value that BPM provides; hence
they are used to deliver BPM.
BPM Delivery
The third BPM process group
encompasses BPM Delivery, which
describes the delivery approach for
specific improvement projectsfrom
process strategy, through analysis,
design, implementation, execution,
and performance monitoring. The
BPM Delivery sub-processes use
the defined infrastructure, and
hence the Methods and Tools, are
applied to the company to deliver
value by improving other operational
processes, and are key to enabling the
lifecycle management of a companys
business processes. The BPM
delivery follows the BPM roadmap
developed in the BPM Operations.
Human Resources
Enterprise Services
BPM Transformation
The BPM Delivery sub-processes
also are closely related to the BPM
Transformation sub-processes, which
include all of the processes that enable
BPM to support larger organizational
transformation efforts. BPM
Transformation sub-processes include
culture and change management; the
provision of change management,
hence, information, communication
and training; and project or program
managementall of which are
necessary to the success of large-scale
change initiatives. Another important
BPM Transformation sub-process is
the creation and management of an
internal BPM community that allows
people to exchange thoughts and
best practices and make BPM a living
component of their day-to-day jobs.
BPM Support
Underpinning all of the above are key
corporate, or BPM Support, processes.
The process of process management
must engage tightly with the
processes most critical to successful
and sustainable process
Information
Technology
improvements, which typically include

those related to finance, procurement,
human resources, enterprise services,
and information technology (IT). For
instance, to derive maximum business
value from changes made to core
business processes, companies also
must adjust compensation and reward
systems, or underlying software
applications and technology.
In sum, BPM is itself a process, and
for it to be adapted successfully all
of its moving parts and interrelated
workflows must be integrated into
a cohesive whole. Indeed, while
BPM is similar in concept to other
management processes, such as
those related to human resources and
information technology, it differs in
several substantial ways. For instance,
no other management process has the
same breadth and depth of impact as
BPM. It has the potential to impact
every other business process in the
company, as well as every resource,
asset, and relationship between the
company and the outside world.
Given the sheer impact of BPM on a
company and its culture, it requires the
highest levels of management focus.
How to use the Process Reference Model

for BPM
Once an organization has defined
its BPM roadmap it knows which
process to improve using BPM and it
has defined which BPM capabilities
are requirednew and existing ones.
Now those BPM capabilities have to
be aligned and prepared for a roll out
in the organization. Hence the process
of process management must be
defined and how it is executed within
the company. Thats where we use
the reference model of the process of
process management. We suggest a
five-step approach:
Eliminate the components of the
process of process management that
are not required
Add missing components to the
process of process management
Detail the areas of immediate
relevance
Identify necessary roles and
responsibilities
Define the organizational structure
The required BPM capability (as
defined in the road map) may not
require all sub-processes shown in
the process of process management.
An organization may for example
decide in the medium term not to
build up capabilities regarding specific
traditional process improvement
methods or they may come to
the conclusion not to establish a
formal process community or use
any process execution software. In
that case the related process of the
process of process management can
be eliminated or assigned to a later
implementation phase. This is an
important discussion about the scope
of the BPM capability based on the
identified roadmap.
This discussion may also lead to the

conclusion that processes have to be
added: if, for example, the use of an
ERP system plays an important role for
the execution of processes, a company
could define a specific sub-process
Process-oriented ERP, including
activities like the integration with a
process repository or the processoriented testing of new configurations
of the ERP system.
Once the high-level operating
model of the BPM organization
is defined based on the process of
process management the concrete
implementation and roll out of that
process has to be defined. Therefore
those sub-processes of the process
of process management are identified
that are relevant for the first round
of activities defined in the roadmap.
These sub-processes are then
detailed until task level, so that it is
exactly defined how the BPM work is
executed. This includes for example
the definition of the tasks necessary to
update the repository once a process
change happens or the description
of the steps necessary to update the
BPM roadmap on an ongoing basis.
On the task level we also define which
information is used or produced in
the processes, e.g. the results of the
interview may be transformed into
process models. The definition of
the processes until task level is also
supported by the reference model: it
includes a breakdown of the process of
process management until task level,
so that one can proceed on every level
of detail as described in step 1 and 2.
Once the detailed processes are
defined the roles and responsibilities
necessary to execute the process
are identified. The reference model
includes sample definitions of such
roles that can be used as a starting
point. Responsibilities, accountabilities,
support, control, and information
roles are defined using, for example,

a RASCI diagram. This is the basis for
the process governance. It is managed
through the governance processes
defined in the process of process
management. The identified roles
are in general added to the detailed
models of the BPM process.
Once those roles and responsibilities
are defined the organizational
structure for the process organization
is developed. This means it is defined
if a central BPM center of excellence
is required right away, which
decentralized units are necessary and
which of those roles are executed by
people in business units or information
technology. The process of process
management helps by providing
sample structures for this organization.
This BPM organization is the basis for
integrating the BPM capability into the
overall organizational structure.
The organization is now ready to
establish the organizational units and
start the execution of the BPM process
and its sub-processes as defined.
Once an organization
has defined its BPM
roadmap it knows which
process to improve using
BPM and it has defined
which BPM capabilities
are requirednew and
existing ones.
Drivers of a Successful Process of Process

Management
As companies set out to implement
a process of process management,
they should keep in mind several key
success factors Accenture has gleaned
from its research and experience.
These include the following:
Robust support from and
engagement with senior leadership
Focus on rapid realization of
benefits while creating sustainable
BPM capabilities
Keep things as simple as possible
Provide the right degree of freedom
through appropriate BPM governance,
e.g. define processes in detail to
achieve compliance goals but leave
this definition on a high level where
you want to encourage creativity and
innovation in executing the process.
The most important of these factors is
robust support from and engagement
with senior business and IT leadership,
as well as close alignment of the
BPM organization with business
and IT strategy. This enables fast
decisions during the implementation
and helps establishing the BPM
organization in the company.
Furthermore, because building the
process of process management often
requires significant investments of
effort and resources, the more quickly
benefits are realized the better. In
a continuously changing business
environment it is not possible to take
years to develop BPM capabilities
before applying them to create
benefits. It is key to combine the BPM
capability building with operational
initiatives delivering immediate value.
In our experience, speed can be
enhanced by developing and adhering
to clear priorities that are focused on
the business goals of an organization.
A third factor is keeping things as

simple as possible. Methods and tools
addressed in the process of process
management often encourage people
to come up with very sophisticated
but also very complex solutions and
processes. For instance, one company
had identified more than 40 modeling
methods for developing its business
architecture in its repository. It was
no surprise that no business person
used themit was just too complex
and would take the average person too
much time to understand them. The
company ultimately greatly simplified
the models by using fewer than 10
methods. That said, a company should
avoid oversimplifying things. Fostering
transparency of organizational
processes inherently requires a certain
level of detail and sophistication,
without which a company may end up
creating a BPM approach that looks
good on paper but does deliver the
value desired.
Successfully implementing a process
of process management also requires
maintaining the freedom of people
to do their jobs. Indeed, BPM applied
in a too-rigid way may end up failing
to foster the agility the company
seeks. Thus, it is key to decide for
each operational process the degree
of freedom allowed. Complianceor safety-relevant processes, such
as those in finance or production,
are often defined in detail to avoid
any accidents or legal issues and,
consequently, provide little freedom to
do things differently. In the research
and development area, however,
processes could be only very roughly
outlined to encourage creativity and
out of the box thinking.
Finally, as companies implement the

process of process management,
they should encourage initiative and
process innovation and refrain from
punishing early-adopter mistakes.
BPM can be used to organize
process innovation by providing
the right infrastructure to try out
process-related ideas. This is especially
important for service companies
because their offerings are also
processes. Hence, the innovation of
offerings can be organized through
BPM and the process of process
managementwhich means the
process of process management itself
has to be flexible enough, especially
in the Methods and Tools and BPM
delivery areas.
Because building the

process of process
management often
requires significant
investments of effort
and resources, the more
quickly benefits are
realized the better.
The Process of Process Management

in Action
A number of leading
companies have experienced
substantial business benefits by
implementing a formal process
of process management. One
of these companies is a major
global company. In the wake
of a merger, this company
found itself managing a host
of legacy and newly inherited
business processesmany of
which were duplicative or met
varying process standardsas
well as several distinct BPM
tools and environments. This
hampered the companys
visibility into and control over
key processes. In short, the
company lacked a strong process
of process management.
One way it did this was by using

workshops to define common
post-merger business processes
using a repository-based
modeling tool, which allowed
the company to publish and roll
out new, standardized processes.
Hence, selected BPM Methods
and Tools processes were
implemented. In this fashion,
the company created process
assets and made them ready
for ongoing use. Subsequently,
the company extended those
process assets to include
all safety and compliance
procedures, which were enforced
through a combination of the
process repository and a simple
workflow tool.
Working with Accenture, the

company launched an initiative
to bring its BPM practices up to
speed. The company conducted
a series of individual sessions
and group workshops to develop
a clear and comprehensive
BPM strategy, and hence a
roadmap that would reflect its
BPM capabilities, objectives,
and challenges. The company
started to put in place
their BPM operations. After
identifying and prioritizing
the relevant work packages,
the company began working
toward its BPM-related goals.
In pursuit of a more efficient,

standardized, and accountable
approach to BPM, the company
created a global BPM center
of excellence with centralized
responsibility for the process
of process management
and accountabilities across
the company, in business
and IT. This led to a BPM
governance approach as part
of the BPM operations.
The resulting new process of

process management has helped
the company improve the
transparency of key processes
and, by extension, its compliance
with safety and other legal
regulations. Furthermore, by
eliminating overlap between
BPM processes and capabilities,
the company has reduced its
BPM-related costs and improved
the efficiency of key operational
processes via automation.
The new BPM CoE also has
generated cost savings and
efficiency by using synergies
between business units.
Most importantly, the initiative
has enabled the company to
ensure that these advances are
baked into its corporate DNA
and will drive effective and
globally consistent operations,
aligned to the overall business
goals, for years to come.
BPM: A Key Driver of High Performance

Several years ago, business and
technology leaders debated the value
of formalized, standalone IT functions
as opposed to more fragmented
capabilities. BPM is at a similar
inflection point today. While many
companies continue to maintain
pockets of BPM distributed throughout
the enterprise, those in the vanguard
are achieving more impact and
greater synergies through the process
of process managementcreating
related BPM centers of excellence,
establishing clear accountability and
governance for process management.
Ultimately, the process of process

management leads to greater returns
on BPM investments in the form of
improved operational transparency,
agility and compliance, quality and
efficiency as well as external networks
with market partners and internal
integration. For leading companies, the
process of process management has
become a key generator of enterprise
value, as well as an important driver of
high performance for years to come.
While many companies

continue to maintain
pockets of BPM
distributed throughout
the enterprise, those
in the vanguard are
achieving more impact
and greater synergies
through the process of
process management.
About the Author

Dr. Mathias Kirchmer
About Accenture
Dr. Mathias Kirchmer is Executive

Director for Business Process
Management (BPM) at Accenture.
He leads the global BPM-Lifecycle
Practice, as well as the program
for the development of Accentures
Business Process Reference Model
Repository across industries and
functional areas. His special field of
expertise is to set up BPM capabilities
that deliver both immediate benefits as
well as durable competitive advantage.
Accenture is a global management

consulting, technology services
and outsourcing company, with
approximately 211,000 people serving
clients in more than 120 countries.
Combining unparalleled experience,
comprehensive capabilities across all
industries and business functions,
and extensive research on the worlds
most successful companies, Accenture
collaborates with clients to help
them become high-performance
businesses and governments. The
company generated net revenues
of US$21.6 billion for the fiscal
year ended Aug. 31, 2010. Its home
page is www.accenture.com
Before joining Accenture, Dr. Kirchmer

had been for 18 years with IDS Scheer,
a leading provider of business process
excellence solutions, known for its
BPM software, the ARIS Platform.
He was a member of the Extended
Executive Board, including roles
as CEO Americas, Japan, and Chief
Innovation and Marketing Officer.
During his career, Dr. Kirchmer
has developed deep knowledge
in approaches, methods, tools
and software for the design,
implementation, execution and
controlling of business processes.
He has applied this know-how in
companies of various sizes and
industries around the world.
Dr. Kirchmer is an affiliated
faculty member of the Program for
Organizational Dynamics of the
University of Pennsylvania as well as a
faculty member of the Business School
of Widener University, Philadelphia.
In 2004 he won a research fellowship
from the Japan Society for the
Promotion of Science. He is the
author of numerous publications,
including five books. The last one is
entitled High Performance through
Process Excellence From Strategy
to Operations and was published in
November 2008.
Dr. Kirchmer holds a PhD in Information
Systems from Saarbruecken University
(Germany), a Masters in Business
Administration and Computer Science
(Wirtschaftsingenieur) from Karlsruhe
Technical University (Germany) and a
Masters in Economics from Paris-IXDauphine University (France).
Copyright 2011 Accenture

All rights reserved.
Accenture, its logo, and
High Performance Delivered
are trademarks of Accenture.
ACC11-0612/11-2939

Chapter 3
Leveraging Tools
Best practice in this chapter:
Tool Up: Adopt appropriate tools to reduce complexity and
increase the long-term value of a framework.
Business process management tools help organizations automate governance,
reduce complexity, increase flexibility, and manage content according to process
frameworks. Some organizations develop homegrown tools while others buy tools
designed to meet their specific needs. Deciding when to adopt the tool is also a
critical decision. Some of the partners in the study devised and built homegrown
tools that evolved as the organizations matured, switching to packaged software
only after fully leveraging organic growth. Others were content to manage using
homegrown tools, whereas one organization adopted a highly sophisticated, off-theshelf tool from the initial opening of its business. This chapter focuses on the
studys findings related to tools: when to use them, issues to watch out for, and how
the tools can help.
TOOLS, DEFINED
One of the study sponsors clearly summarized the decision process regarding tool
adoption: A tool is meant to make something easier to do; an aid. In framework
adoption, another way of looking at this is asking oneself, What am I trying to make
easier through the adoption of this tool? If one cant clearly answer the question,
dont implement the tool.
A wide variety of tools are available to automate work related to process framework
ownership, maintenance, and overall governance. Many of these tools are focused
on a specific use (such as business process modeling tools), while others are capable
of supporting not only business process modeling but also content management or
benchmarking activities. These tools typically perform one or more of the following
functions:
model, organize, and disseminate information;
manage governance workflows and processes; and
measure and report organizational performance.
These functions combine with other extant functions within an organization (such
as identity management or core file storage) as a kind of toolkit. Organizations then

page 68

build other tools to add to the toolkit, including document templates, workflow
patterns, document repositories, and tools to capture measurements.
Even more tools are available that specifically handle business process management,
including workflow execution tools and tools related to managing and implementing
business rules. For the purposes of this study, business process management tools
are tools that perform the three core functions defined on the preceding page.
Figure 18 summarizes the tools used at the different best-practice organizations
participating in this study.
Process Framework Tools
Type of Tool
Homegrown
Packaged Software
Comments
Benchmarking
Excel, Word,
PowerPoint, shared
folders, Web-based data
collection tools,
SharePoint or Lotus
Notes collaboration and
groupware.
Integration with other

BPM software such as
Aris, MetaStorm, and
Nimbus Control. No
specific benchmarkingonly software exists.
UPS uses a proprietary

tool called IS/Modeler
that allows an
organization to measure
performance at various
levels within the
framework.
Observed at UPS.
Observed at Cisco and
ING Life Japan.
Content
management
Custom Web-based tools,

shared folders,
SharePoint, Lotus Notes.
Observed at Williams
E&P, Pitney Bowes, ING
Life Japan, and UPS.
Documentum, Alfresco,
OpenText, etc., or a
hybrid BPM/content
management tool, such as
Nimbus Controls
Document Registry.
There are a variety of best

practices; many depend
upon organizational
culture.
Observed at
ThyssenKrupp.
Business
process
definition
Excel, PowerPoint, Visio,

Word, shared folders,
SharePoint, Lotus Notes.
Observed at Williams
E&P, Pitney Bowes, ING
Life Japan, UPS.
Aris, Corel, MetaStorm,

Nimbus Control, etc.
Tools are plentiful in this

space.
Observed at UPS,
Sandvik and
ThyssenKrupp.
UPS adoption can be

considered a hybrid, since
the organization uses a
formal tool (IS/Modeler)
but also has developed its
own tools to support the
definition.
Figure 18

page 69

Homegrown Tools
Homegrown tools support the core functions of process framework adoption for
most of the best-practice partners. Some homegrown tools were built using simple
and widely available office productivity tools, such as spreadsheets, presentations,
documents, and diagrams. Others were built upon an existing IT infrastructure to
enable more in-depth automation of processes. Yet another class of homegrown
tools was developed using existing groupware platforms, such as SharePoint or
Lotus Notes.
Each of these classes of tools was observed in the process frameworks project from
one or more of the partners. (See Figure 18 for more information.) The spectrum of
adoption among partner organizations varied. Some organizations adopted more
than one of the tools, while others had not adopted any and were still dealing with
paper filing cabinets and whiteboards. The maturity of the process partners and
sponsors was thus inconsistent, making identification of a singular and allencompassing best practice difficult. However, this suggests that the best course of
action is to focus on the type, amount, and scope of technology that will work best
for an organizations particular needs. Organizations generally clustered around the
low end of the tool-adoption spectrum.
Pitney Bowes
Among the organizations participating in the process frameworks project, Pitney
Bowes has one of the lowest amounts of automation or formality in tools. All of its
tools are homegrown and based on best practices as identified in APQC training
materials. At the core of its framework adoption lies a series of documents that
model and map the organization.
Tools Used at Pitney Bowes
Function
Finding
Model, organize, and

disseminate information
Pitney Bowes uses Microsoft Office-based process

modeling and documentation. Shared folders serve as
the repository, organized according to the PCF.
Development of SharePoint-based tools to further
integrate into an existing intranet is the vision.
Measure organizational
performance according to
the framework and report
on results
n/aPitney Bowes does not measure organizational

performance against the adopted framework at this
time.
Manage governance
workflows and processes
These are managed using manual document reviews,

manual tracking mechanisms, and e-mail distribution.
Figure 19

page 70

Pitney Bowes performs these management functions using a variety of roles,
including process managers, business analysts, and project managers.
Williams Exploration and Production
Williams E&P uses a number of homegrown tools to address its implementations of
core frameworks management functions:
Tools Used at Williams E&P
Function
Finding

Williams E&P uses Excel-based process modeling

and documentation. Shared folders serve as the basis,
organized according to the PCF. Development of
SharePoint-based tools to further integrate into an
existing intranet is planned.
performance according
to the framework and
report on results
n/aWilliams E&P does not measure

organizational performance against the adopted
framework at this time, although this is planned as it
shifts to a process-focused organization.
Manage governance

Figure 20
The Williams E&P team manages all framework-related processes using seven
FTEs: three analysts, one technical writer, two support staff members, and one
rotational analyst.
ING Life Japan
INGLJ also manages its process framework using a series of homegrown tools.

page 71

Tools Used at ING Life Japan
Function
Finding

INGLJ uses a SharePoint-based process library,

containing as-is process maps, to-be process maps,
and training materials. Process maps were developed
in Visio as well as scanned from hand-drawn images.
performance according
to the framework and
report on results
INGLJs Management Operating Methodology

allows rapid changes to resource allocations based on
measurements of framework processes.
Manage governance

Figure 21
UPS
Similar to Williams E&P, INGLJ, and Pitney Bowes, the UPS program management
group uses a number of homegrown tools to manage its process framework. UPS,
however, has adopted a formal process management tool called IS/Modeler in
addition to its homegrown software.
Tools Used at UPS
Function
Finding

UPS uses IS/Modeler for process modeling and

documentation, as well as a Lotus Notes-based
repository application.
on results
Proprietary IS/Modeler functionality allows for

measuring of cycle time, cost, and FTE allocations.
Manage governance
These are managed using manual document reviews

(including on the wall sessions), manual tracking
mechanisms, and e-mail distribution.
Figure 22
The UPS toolkit is a hybrid toolkit in that a single modeling tool performs all or a
portion of two distinct functions: benchmarking and process modeling. The process
modeling tool, however, does not include capabilities to manage governance
workflows, so resultant process maps are stored in a proprietary format and later

page 72

housed in a Lotus Notes repository. The Lotus Notes repository is developed and
managed by the program management group.
Packaged Software Tools
Packaged software tools provide value to organizations because they reduce the
amount of effort expended on work related to process framework ownership,
maintenance, and overall governance. Effectively, packaged software tools automate
the main frameworks functions by combining many tools into a single package or
suite that partially or completely automates core process framework functions.
The process frameworks project observed only three instances of organizations
using packaged software tools to automate process framework processes:
UPS used IS/Modeler to map and measure processes (described above).
ThyssenKrupp used Nimbus Control for its end-to-end process frameworks
oversight and management.
Sandvik used Aris for its documentation tasks.
ThyssenKrupp
Adopting a packaged software tool to automate work supporting process framework
ownership, maintenance, and overall governance helped ThyssenKrupp realize value
and get real work done.
Initially charged with taking a greenfield business and applying a consistent
management approach, ThyssenKrupp adopted APQCs PCF and Nimbus Control
software to quickly identify organizational processes and activities, incorporate those
identifications into an enterprise process model, and automate the management of
that model.
ThyssenKrupp realized four core benefits from using Nimbus Control and the PCF.
This combination allowed the organization to:
provide business process accountability, control, and oversight;

drive best practices throughout the organization;
align business needs with IT solutions (specifically SAP); and
drive ISO/TS certification.
In addition to these core benefits, APQCs PCF gave ThyssenKrupp a starting point
from which to define key business functions. The organization began by adopting
the PCF at the category level and assigning ownership to high-level functions within
the business. These categorizations and assignments drove further decomposition of
the framework into detailed operational processes and activities, all defined and
managed by individual process owners (Figure 23).

page 73

High-Level ThyssenKrupp Process Map
Figure 23
ThyssenKrupps initial goals for continual process improvement could be achieved
only with significant automation, which it found was attainable only through
automation of the core processes.
Tools Used at ThyssenKrupp
Function
Finding

Nimbus Control is used to document the process

flows and definitions and to disseminate process
information.
on results
Nimbus Control integrates KPI metrics visually into

the process content against relevant activities.
Manage governance
Nimbus Control is used to achieve change control

and manage process-related collaboration.
Figure 24

page 74

One of the core drivers for ThyssenKrupps adoption of the tool was the need to
quickly get up to speed with a minimal amount of resources and project
documentation. Using the process framework and the tool allowed ThyssenKrupp
to achieve its tight timeline objectives, as well as to conveniently incorporate
additional models (such as iTIL) and overlay ISO standards requirements above the
processes with a minimal amount of effort.
Sandvik
Sandvik also adopted a packaged software tool to manage the model of its business
processes. Use of the Aris Design Platform allows the organization to quickly model
enterprise-level processes and develop business capability maps. These maps are
based on the PCF and link business objectives to processes, organizational charts,
and enterprise master data (Figure 25).
Sandviks Process Models Relationship Diagram
Figure 25
Sandvik decided to adopt a tool because it planned to implement its framework and
define processes enterprise-wide. The broad scope of the implementation required

page 75

additional support, which a sophisticated tool could provide. With revenue from
over 130 production units worldwide, ensuring process consistency is critical for
Sandvik. Relying upon manual processes at this level of complexity and scope was
impractical. Sandviks stated approach to its process work is to let our business
organization do the documentation. Then we have to minimize the complexity and
the cost for using a tool. The organization had to work with Aris to determine how
to adopt the tool in a way that would meet its needs.
Tools Used at Sandvik
Function
Finding

Sandvik uses Aris Design Platform (including its

design and publishing components).
on results
Tools from Microsoft currently provide support.

Sandvik is investigating Aris Strategy Platform for the
future.
Manage governance
Sandvik is investigating Aris Design Platform, which

includes a component to manage governance, for this
purpose.
Figure 26
Conclusion
Most of the organizations participating in the frameworks study did not adopt
formal tools to automate work related to process framework ownership,
maintenance, and overall governance. They leveraged what they had and learned to
use existing technologies to their advantage. The organizations that have adopted
formal toolsincluding ThyssenKrupp, Sandvik, and UPSdepended on these
tools and realized value from their adoption and continued use. The
implementations involving formal tools had enterprise-wide scopes and were highly
centralized, indicating that advanced tools may best serve a broad implementation
driven from a central location.
IDENTIFYING THE RIGH T TIME FOR TOOLS
Organizations generally adopt tools according to one of three methods:
1. during initial adoption of the framework,
2. as a gradual switch, or
3. as a wholesale change.

page 76

Initial Adoption
The objectives of ThyssenKrupps project required the project team to quickly
define, assign responsibility for, and design enterprise-wide processes. The new
ThyssenKrupp Steel USA plant depended on a greenfield, enterprise-wide
application of the process framework. The parent company provided clear
objectives at the beginning of the project that were eventually achieved using the
process framework and a selection of tools that included packaged software. Based
on the project teams experience, manually performing the tasks required to succeed
would quickly sink the project, due to the effort required to maintain the framework
and keep it viable. It was therefore evident that adopting the toolkit and the process
framework simultaneously would cost more than performing the adoption and
accelerating business process management aspects of work without the tools in
place.
The initial adoption approach works best in conjunction with the locate and
centralize best practices identified elsewhere in this report. Framework adoption
should not take place until the organization determines the scope of the processes
to be addressed by the framework and at least conceptualizes some level of
centralized governance. Once the organization finalizes assumptions regarding
location and governance, the team can quickly move into the tool adoption practice
in preparation for actual framework adoption. At this point, there are typically few
cultural or business barriers to the tools adoption. The decision to adopt a tool,
then, can be based on a simple cost-benefit computation, where the cost of
implementing the tool is just the time it will take to adopt it.
Gradual Switch
A gradual switch occurs when an organization begins with a homegrown set of tools
and slowly migrates to a packaged software implementation.
UPS approach exemplifies a successful gradual switch. The UPS team initially began
with simple homegrown tools and later began process mapping activities using its
IS/Modeler tools. This gradual switch approach was compatible with the
overlayment approach to process framework adoption UPS took. Gradual switch
best serves organizations that have performed some work in the process space prior
to deciding to adopt a particular process framework.
This approach takes the most time but is most suitable for continual improvement.
It takes longer because the change scope includes not only process changes, but also
issues related to the process/content management tool. This approach could be
compared to changing the tire while the truck is driving down the road, but even
this risk can be mitigated with proper management.
Wholesale Change
Wholesale change is a method designed to drastically change an organizations
behavior in a short time. Typically, organizations implement a wholesale change

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when a new business or organization is acquired or divested and the enterprise must
quickly react to the newly available tooling (adopting, adapting, or removing it).
APQC does not recommend a wholesale change approach except in cases of
acquisition or divestiture, and only then with sufficient training and explanation to
those charged with the success of the framework and its tools. The process
frameworks project didnt identify any instances of wholesale change within the
project partners.
1. What work has been done to date?
2. What work should be automated, and how would a tool help?
3. When is the right time for a tool?

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Accenture
As with any business process, specific areas of the process of process management
can gain efficiency and effectiveness via the use of automated tools. In particular,
the use of such tools can make reference models more helpful, and can increase the
sophistication and long-term value of an organizations process-related frameworks.
These benefits are related to the broad and comprehensive nature of many
frameworks. For example, Accentures own library of high-performance process
models comprises more than 20,000 reference models covering 71 industries. Even
within one industry there are several hundred models, which means a manual
approach to model management would be far from effective or efficient.
Selecting the best automated tools requires careful consideration of an
organizations overall process of process management and its use of process models.
Tool selection should be organization-specific and reflect specific business needs
and goalsfor example, an organization focused on compliance or safety may
choose a different set of tools or tool components than one in search of process
optimization and improvement.
Selection of the tools supporting the process of process management in general and
the use of reference models in particular should be done in a business-oriented way,
driven by the benefits the BPM capability could potentially deliver and the specific
maturity level of an organization. Doing so will allow those tools to significantly
enhance the benefits of the use of reference models.

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Chapter 4
The Framework Implementation
Journey
Measure: View framework implementation according to a fivestep model to better assess the implementations maturity and the
value it provides.
Set Goals: Evaluate framework use regularly to determine which
actions to take to increase its value and maturity.
A process framework enables an organization to rapidly get on the same process

page and drive consistency across performance initiatives. Frameworks bring value
to organizations in measurable ways and increase businesses fundamental ability to
perform. But not every organization is ready to fully exploit a framework. Assessing
an organizations readiness for a framework or its current capability to optimize an
existing framework helps improvement teams plan targets and goals for the
organization. An organizations framework-related preparedness or maturity can be
mapped to a standard roadmap (Figure 27), which guides organizations toward everincreasing levels of optimization and value and sets expectations for what is possible
at each stage of development.
MEASURE
View framework implementation according to a five-step model to better
assess the implementations maturity and the value it provides.
Based upon observations made during the study, a number of criteria surfaced that
hint at the journey an organization may take on its way to realizing the full value of a
process framework. The journey is divided into five core steps, or phases:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
establish,
reference,
deploy,
measure, and
operate.

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Organizations may choose not to proceed through all five steps. Since value is
realized at each stop in the journey, an organization must determine if the value of
proceeding on the journey is greater than the cost to move to the next step. Also,
some steps may be taken out of order depending on the long-term goals of the
organization; for example, an organization may proceed to measure after reference and
skip deploy entirely.
The Framework Implementation Journey
Figure 27
1. Establish a Framework
At the lowest level, a framework provides a common vocabulary that can be easily
adopted by an organization and used to foster enhanced communication among
different facets of the business such as IT, production, sales, and marketing. It also
creates a common set of terms that facilitate communication with outside
organizations. In this sense, adopting a framework has immediate value with little
implementation cost. No realignment of the business is necessary, and the
organization can continue to conduct business without disruption.
All the study partners exhibited this level of maturity.

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2. Reference a Framework
Beyond a common vocabulary, the next level of value comes from cross-referencing
or mapping the vocabulary and hierarchy defined by the framework with the
organizations real operating model/hierarchy and vocabulary. This step brings value
by explicitly comparing process activities with actual behavior, regardless of
functional structures or organizational silos.
Using a framework as a logical reference model allows an organization to identify
similar business behaviors throughout the enterprise and reveals optimization
opportunities. Much like the use of a framework for a common vocabulary, the
reference model use also has value without realignment or disruption of the
business, and implementation costs remain low.
The cross-reference requires ongoing support and maintenance, but its benefits
usually outweigh the cost of the maintenance effort. As more of the organization
learns of the cross-reference and the common language established in the first step,
additional parts of the organization may wish to also adopt the framework. This
happened at Williams Companies after it completed its cross-reference in support of
its SOX compliance efforts. Williams Exploration and Production business unit
decided to adopt the framework after learning of the success experienced by the
core organization.
Many organizations build core governance structures around the cross-reference at
this stage of the journey, so the cost of this step relative to the first step (establish) is
relatively higher. It is possible to proceed without a core governance structure at this
point, but changes made to the cross-reference or to the way the business operates
require diligent communication amongst all parties using the framework, thereby
increasing the cost to a point where it may not make sense to proceed manually.
Tools, either packaged software or custom developed, can provide the necessary
infrastructure to facilitate this communication, but they also typically require
centralized governance.
3. Deploy a Framework
In the third step of the journey, an organization may begin to organize its structure
and functions in a way that manages work in an end-to-end fashion, based upon the
cross-referenced process framework or reference model. UPS created its own
framework around its business needs by adapting APQCs PCF. The organization
separated operational processes from supporting processes and then deployed the
framework enterprise-wide. At this maturity level, continuous improvement efforts
become more easily aligned and executed.
The location of the adoption of the framework or reference model is a significant
driver of cost and value at this step of the journey. Organizations adopting a
framework or reference model with a broad scope must have strong centralized
governance structures in place. The cost of maintaining the structure in a distributed
fashion for a broad-scope adoption is generally too great to accomplish without

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centralized governance structures and related tools. Organizations deploying the
framework to a relatively narrow part of the organization (a single process, for
example) can generally avoid building a centralized governance structure.
Because the deployment of a framework potentially suggests revision/realignment
of the organization, it is critical to strategically deploy the framework in a way that
directly relates to an organizations primary or core process value chains. The
organization should make clear, using the cross-reference and other tools already
developed, how the framework contributes and supports the work being done and
the value being created for customers and the organization.
Deploying the framework first in limited, high-priority areas of the business and
demonstrating success can pave the way to smoother deployments throughout the
remainder of the organization. The deployment strategy and the affected portions of
the business should be carefully planned and communicated. When an organization
deploys a framework in this fashion, adoption becomes a part of how we do
business, and concerns center less on the investment required to adopt the
framework and more on the cost of not adopting it.
4. Measure Against the Framework
Once deployed, a framework provides a valuable way to measure an organizations
performance. The ability to perform benchmarking and use metrics relies on having
a consistent view of the organizationa view that allows functions to be grouped,
measured, and compared against historical and external data. This gives managers
the ability to track the relative performance of their organization and provides a
platform for deeper analysis and continuous improvement or realignment.
A manager typically monitors his or her process domain via lagging or postmortem measures (e.g., cycle time to perform a particular process). However, if an
organization views its process framework from an end-to-end perspective, then one
managers lagging metric can be seen as a leading or predictive metric for the
manager involved with the next step. Tying the measures together can yield a view
of the performance of the entire end-to-end process. The framework facilitates the
consistent measurement of these organizational process components and enables
management to rely on these measures to make critical business decisions.
This end-to-end perspective has the potential to save or avoid substantial rework
costs. Additionally, it can provide a basis to compare industry best practices through
benchmarking services such as with APQCs Open Standards Benchmarking
database.
5. Operate Through Frameworks
Any program to analyze, compare, and improve an organization must also
coordinate the effort so that stakeholders understand what is being studied and
managed. The deployed process framework gives managers this capability when it is

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used in conjunction with mature measurement capabilities and appropriate feedback
loops from strategy to actual work performance.
Organizations demonstrating significant experience using process frameworks to get
real work done have the ability to accurately describe their business and the
initiatives going on within it. They can tie those descriptions directly to the
frameworks and models they have developed for themselves, whether those
frameworks focus on operations, compliance, or other capabilities. The ability to
identify and cross-reference multiple frameworks to the organizations vision and
self-description enables the business to move forward on many fronts
simultaneously. By knowing what it is and how it functions, an organization can
make more informed and strategic decisions. What begins as a process classification
framework becomes an operations manual for the enterprise.
The discussion would not be complete without mentioning that the journey does
not necessarily culminate with enterprise-wide adoption of a process framework. An
organization may be taking a variety of journeys, either in a single area of the
organization, in multiple areas, or across the entire enterprise. The same steps of the
journey apply whether the benefits are localized or broad, and the organization
chooses how far it needs to go to achieve its goals.
Strategy Through Frameworks at the Operational Level
UPS aligned its processes with strategy through the work of its program
management group. This group focuses heavily on strategy. With only 25 individuals
supporting the management of process within an organization of over 400,000
(Figure 12), the program management group must have a clear understanding of
strategy and how processes work together to achieve it.
These 25 people are able to align the work of 400,000 employees with the strategic
goals of the company because of a custom framework, managed by a center of
excellence, that makes strategy and related processes highly visible and contextual
(Figure 9). Without this framework, UPS would not be able to clearly assign
accountability, and that would relegate strategic initiatives to a very high-level,
conceptual space within the organization, separating it from the execution of daily
work. The framework guides daily work according to the organizations ultimate
strategic goals.
Operating Multiple Frameworks
In the study, each example of the use of frameworks had its own unique elements:
UPS created its framework around specific business needs; ThyssenKrupp Steel
adopted APQCs PCF and mapped it to multiple compliance frameworks; the
Williams Companies adopted APQCs PCF and mapped its organizational processes
in order to demonstrate SOX compliance. Despite many differences, in all cases, the
ability to consistently cross-reference multiple frameworks or external requirements
proved that an organization had reached step five (operate) of the framework
journey. Williams E&P deployed its framework in a segment of the organization,

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and ThyssenKrupp Steels was used enterprise-wide. Although both were deployed
at different levels of the organization, both implementations reached the operate
step because they linked and mapped multiple frameworks, increasing the
actionability of their frameworks.
Figure 28 shows how ThyssenKrupp manages ISO 9001:2008 compliance as a
framework overlaid on APQCs PCF. The organizations capability to operate a
business, including all of its internal and external relationships, through a single,
consistent language represents a high level of maturity and is a textbook best
practice for the operate level.
ThyssenKrupp Steel USA Integrates ISO9001 with its Frameworks
Figure 28

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Measure: How Good Are YouReally?
Measuring allows an organization to understand the benefits it can expect at its
current phase of the journey, as well as the benefits associated with moving to the
next step. By measuring a frameworks implementation, organizations also can see
where they need to shore up use of the framework. Measuring and identifying gaps
can bring the following strong benefits:
Increased organizational awareness of the framework (or frameworks) and its
value, both realized and potentialThe act of measuring is, in itself, a method
for increasing awareness of the framework.
Improved alignment between framework stakeholders and other parts of the
organizationFor example, measuring could identify a compliance framework
that isnt properly aligned with underlying process activities.
Enhanced decision makingConsistent measurement of the frameworks
adoption and deployment provides objective evidence that enhances an
organizations decisions on where to put its energy and resources in terms of
the framework journey. Measuring a framework can show that the framework
needs to be adapted or customized to better represent the reality of the
business. UPS, for example, made a conscious decision to adapt APQCs PCF
to better represent the realities of its business.
Validation of the choice of frameworkNot all frameworks are appropriate for
all situations. Once a framework is adopted, measuring the value of that
frameworks deployment against expectations either validates that the choice
was a correct one or shows that a different or more customized framework
would be a more appropriate fit.
When an organization chooses a framework, it should put an implementation plan
in place that establishes the timeline for its rollout, associated costs, and expected
value to the organization. If a framework is already in place, the same is true. Clearly
stating cost and benefit expectations sets the stage for measurement that leads to the
achievement of specific goals.
SET GOALS
Evaluate framework use regularly to determine which actions to take to
increase its value and maturity.
Using an implementation model and measuring its effectiveness and progress allows
organizations to set reasonable goals for framework use. This also enables the
organization to completely envision the eventual benefits and to create individual
and organizational commitments to the business communitys goals. Lacking this

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sort of vision, a framework is less likely to initiate change or bring value to the
organization.
Framework implementation involves setting both short- and long-term goals, and
each type of goal reflects a key part of an organizations strategy. Short-term goals
for framework adoption and eventual growth include simple efforts such as
organizational awareness. Short-term goals ensure that initiatives are started and that
a foundation is laid for higher-value achievements set by long-term goals.
The promises of long-term implementation goals greatly outweigh the immediate
benefits of the short term. For example, at the fifth level of implementation
maturity (operate), an organization is able to map its strategic goals through the
adopted and deployed framework directly to the most important metrics and key
dependent processes, even though they may be obscured several levels below those
strategies. Setting a goal to map processes to strategy supports a vision of a fully
aligned organization. This long-term goal guides decisions made earlier on in the
framework implementation journey, helping individual employees catch the vision
and execute work and framework-related activities accordingly.
When setting goals for frameworks implementation, consider the following:
Organizational readiness. How prepared is my organization to accept the idea
that it needs to put an industry-standard or custom framework in place? The
groundwork of support needs to be laid before higher-level and longer-term
goal setting can be practiced. To gain support, set and achieve a series of shortterm goals targeted at gaining executive buy-in and educating stakeholders about
the benefits of frameworks. An organizations must design its framework
journey according to what is most practical for the type of framework(s) being
implemented and the benefits expected.
Disruption to the business. If a frameworks goal setting exercise is likely to
create contention and other disruptions within the work environment, a
communication strategy will need to address this challenge. Organization
leadership often views frameworks, like compliance, as essential to business
continuity and as proof of the quality of operations. Therefore, they are not
optional. However, a framework that has the potential to realign business units
and governance, can be viewed negatively by people affected by the changes
and can create a challenge in goal setting. Carefully looking at potential
disruptions and creating proper messaging and communications can help avoid
energy-sapping contention and political maneuvering. Gaining executive buy-in
can also make this less painful. For instance, ThyssenKrupp Steels first
executive directivewhen the number of employees was very small and before

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most business groups were formedwas to implement APQCs PCF in its
entirety.
Maturity of the organization. Each organization has its own level of maturity,
readiness to accept new ideas, and ways of doing business. Pain is often the best
teacher, and organizations feeling pain from a disconnection between goals and
execution are often the most ready for frameworks. A successful, relatively painfree organization would perhaps need more foresight into or evidence
supporting the benefits of adopting frameworks before embarking on a
prescribed journey. Each organization has a pace at which change cannot be
successfully implemented; finding and planning around that pace is critical to
the successful journey.
Executive support. Without the support of an organizations executives, the
implementation of a framework risks being bolted on versus adding real
value, which is baked in. A framework that is simply bolted onto existing
ways of doing business may be part of the organizations vocabulary but not
part of its ethos.
Operating without a plan for where to take the use of frameworks will likely limit
their value and fail to unlock their potential to transform the organization. Setting
goals for frameworks and their maturity helps to build organizational readiness and
stakeholder support for the new way of aligning and measuring.
1. What are your organizations drivers for choosing and implementing a
framework?
2. Can an organizational maturity assessment help secure buy-in for the work
required to move along the journey and ultimately realize the benefits of
framework adoption?
3. How will you assess your organizations journey to operating using a
framework?
4. Which approaches and IT applications will you use to lock in the benefits of a
framework?
5. How can your organization make sure that a chosen framework will provide the
expected benefits?
6. Which stakeholders will eventually benefit from the framework or frameworks
you implement at each step along the journey?

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Accenture
Reference models can be used to support many aspects of the process of process
management and, in particular, provide a basis to define the master data for
BPM. Reference models should not be implemented in isolation, but rather as part
of an overall BPM roadmap. Doing so helps ensure that organizations can achieve
the full value they expect from their process management efforts. Several examples
in this report confirm the value of using reference models as part of a broader BPM
implementation and demonstrate the difficulty of achieving optimal results with a
more isolated approach.
For full value, reference models should be combined with the right analytical tools,
including performance monitoring systems and repositories, as well as with robust
yet flexible policies and standards, well-defined roles and responsibilities, and
effective governance structures. Strong, centralized governance structures are
particularly important to the implementation of a reference model or framework
within a broad scope.

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Case Study
Cisco Systems, Inc.
SECTION 1: GENERAL O VERVIEW AND BACKGROU ND
Cisco Systems, Inc. is a leading provider of computer products and solutions.
Building on its core business of networking systems, the company now produces a
wide range of hardware and software for voice and video collaboration, data center
operations, wireless applications, and consumer use.
Cisco is headquartered in San Jose, California, and has more than 67,000 employees
in 75 countries. Revenue for fiscal year 2010 was in excess of $40 billion.
Ciscos business structure contains:
six business groups,

15 technology groups,
51 business units,
30 worldwide development centers, and
20,000 engineers.
In line with Ciscos vision of balancing innovation with operational excellence,

these diverse groups share processes for determining business strategies, developing
products and services, and delivering those products and services to users. Each
process is designed to enhance the companys performance in diverse and
expanding markets while delivering consistent value to its customers.
Use of APQCs Process Classification Framework (PCF)
Cisco uses APQCs Process Classification Framework (PCF) to organize its many
processes and initiatives (Figure 29). The Cisco Priority Assessment Dashboard
(CPAD), the companys process for setting corporate direction, falls under PCF
category 1.0 Develop Vision and Strategy. The Cisco Product Development
Methodology (CPDM)used to ensure coordinated, quality-driven engineeringis
an example of a process found in 2.0 Develop and Manage Products and Services.
Category 4.0 Deliver Products and Services houses Ciscos Quality Management
Operating System (QMOS), while benchmarkingwhich is how Cisco closes the
loop on processesis a prime example of a 12.0 Manage Knowledge, Improvement, and
Change process.

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Ciscos Use of APQCs Process Classification Framework
Figure 29
Each of these processes will be explored in detail throughout this case study.
SECTION 2: APQC CATE GORY 1.0CISCOS STRATEGIC
PLANNING
Ciscos corporate direction at each business level is determined using the
organizations Vision, Strategy, and Execution (VSE) alignment template. VSE is a
formal process that identifies a long-term goal, finds the strategies involved in
reaching that goal, and puts forth the supporting programs, actions, and metrics
(Figure 30).
There are three elements that assure quality around the VSE:
people, process, and tools.
David Hsiao, director, corporate quality

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Ciscos VSE Alignment Template
Figure 30
Under VSE, the vision is the top levelwhere the company intends to be in five
years for a particular business objective. Based on that vision, corporate councils,
boards, and functions define the strategythe priorities necessary to achieve that
objective. Finally, VSE requires executionthe initiatives, programs, and actions
that deliver each strategic priority and a plan for measuring the success of each.
While the vision remains consistent, the strategy and execution may change as
products and markets evolve. Strategies are commonly adjusted every year, and
execution methods may change more frequently, as conditions demand.
VSE is applied across Cisco as a common language for all business opportunities.
Almost every major program within the company uses VSE to set its direction.
Cisco provides numerous resources to ensure that VSE remains an integral part of
its approach. The templates and VSE training are available online to all employees,
and the process is open to internal and external feedback for continuous
improvement.

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SECTION 3: APQC CATE GORY 1.0THE CISCO PRIORITY
ASSESSMENT DASHBOARD
VSE is a central part of Ciscos transition to a collaborative, scalable, and repeatable
strategic process. The companys methods have changed considerably in the past
decade. As late as 2005, it set its business objectives using a top-down command
and control structure. The operating committee established one priority per year
for each line of business.
Rapid technological change and emerging business opportunities soon required a
broader approach. In 2006, the company began using a collaborative council
process to set corporate direction. With 50 senior executives serving on interrelated
business councils, the company expanded its yearly strategy to include emerging
markets and the development of new technologies adjacent to its core business.
Today, Cisco uses councils, boards, and working groups to create its comprehensive
strategy, drawing on up to 2,500 employees to address over 30 market adjacencies
per year.
The Council Structure
The operating committee and corporate alignment board oversee the interaction of
15 councils. Three broad categories of councils provide specialized and collaborative
input into the corporate direction.
Corporate segment councils, by area of customer relevance:
Enterprise
Commercial
Service provider
Small business
Consumer
Cross-segment councils, addressing innovation and operational excellence
across business functions:
Emerging solutions
Connected architecture
Emerging countries
Connected business opportunities
Functional councils, organized along Ciscos internal structure:
Cisco Development Organization (CDO)
Sales
Cisco Services
Operations

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Cisco Marketing Organization (CMO)
Finance
These councils augment the standard functional councils of Ciscos business
function and help the company manage emerging markets, broaden product lines,
and cross the chasm in technology development.
Crossing the Chasm
The chasm principle comes from businessman and author Geoffrey Moore, who
identified a consumer gap in the technology adoption life cycle, between the
introduction of new technology and its full-scale integration into the business
environment. Left unattended, this gap prevents new products from reaching their
potential and becoming successful in the marketplace.
To overcome the chasm, technology must solve real and diverse problems for users.
The Cisco Priority Assessment Dashboard is a management tool for key early-stage
priorities, those after a technology products introduction but before mainstream
adoption. It augments the VSE by providing a clearly defined assessment framework
for the VSEs strategies and actions.
CPAD allows the company to:
measure market adjacencies and emerging technologies;

identify growth opportunities and expand customer value;
accelerate the companys entry into new markets;
enhance its collaboration, problem-solving, and resource allocation;
utilize a scalable, repeatable, and flexible decision-making process; and
track the progress of company priorities.
CPAD uses a phased approach to score these opportunities and technologies

(Figure 31). The process takes the priorities and actions from the VSE and subjects
them to real-world testing.
The vision, strategy, and business model for the product or service are developed
during phase one. Phase two involves early product deployment and developing
leadership in a narrow market segment. Phase three expands the product or service
into a wider market, and phase four integrates it into the traditional operations and
functions of the company.

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Cisco Priority Assessment Dashboard (CPAD) Phases
Figure 31
The CPAD process is documented and supported by templates, and each phase has
defined success measures.
SECTION 4: APQC CATE GORY 2.0CISCOS PRODUCT
DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
Engineering and product development is managed using the Cisco Product
Development Methodology (CPDM). It coordinates the work of the technical and
business functions within the company as a product moves from concept to
delivery.
All technical aspects of product development are divided into the following business
layers, or phases:
Concept
Plan
Develop
Validate
Launch

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Sustain
End-of-life
The business layers may include multiple technical layers, each responsible for one
aspect of product development.
Phase Verification and Approval
When a phase is complete, the product must pass through a checkpoint and a
commit gate. The checkpoint verifies the work and deliverables of each phase, as
defined by the technical functional organizations.
The commit gate is the final review and management approval before moving to the
next phase of development. Six commit gates occur during a products life cycle:
Concept commit
Execution commit
Development commit
First customer shipment readiness review
Global availability commit
End-of-life commit
Each commit gate represents a key decision point in the life of a product. By
ensuring the coordination of management and technical functions at these points,
CPDM provides:
project accountability,
product quality,
business and technical coordination, and
visibility and control for management.
The process is flexible, well documented, and readily available. All test plans,
required specifications, design approval documents, and other templates are stored
online and are downloadable. This documentation includes a flexibility procedure,
which is used to customize the standard CPDM process to fit specific product
requirements.
The methodology behind CPDM also allows the lessons of prior products to be fed
back into the development process (Figure 32). When the end-of-life phase is
complete, Cisco analyzes all phases of the products life, reports those findings, and
integrates the results into the beginning of the next product development cycle.

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Cisco Product Development Methodology

Closed Loop Learning
Figure 32
SECTION 5: APQC CATE GORY 4.0CISCOS VALUE CHAIN
MANAGEMENT PROCESS
Over the past 20 years, Cisco has moved steadily away from the in-house
manufacturing of products. Today, it outsources 95 percent of its production to an
ecosystem of manufacturing suppliers. In response, the Global Business
Operations unit shifted its focus from manufacturing oversight to management of
an extensive worldwide value chain.
The company views efficient, quality-based value chain management as an essential
component of quality, market leadership, and the customer experience. Cisco uses
Customer Value Chain Management (CVCM) to control every aspect of product
delivery throughout this network and the organization (Figure 33).

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Ciscos Customer Value Chain/End-to-end Customer Experience
Figure 33
CVCM incorporates multiple groups and functions within the company as well as
the input of top customers and sales channel partners. Members of the CVCM team
are located with, and are part of, the companys working teams to represent value
chain interests at every level of product delivery.
SECTION 6: APQC CATE GORY 4.0QUALITY MANAGEMENT
AND QMOS
CVCMs integration reflects Ciscos view that product quality and value chain
consistency are the responsibility of every group in the organization. Prior to the
implementation of CVCM, a number of independent quality processes were in
place, but a lack of coordination prevented optimal results.
In 2008, Cisco formed a team to develop a new, cohesive method for managing
quality at every level. The result is the Cisco Quality Management Operating System
(QMOS), an organization within CVCM designed to bring groups and processes
together to drive quality (Figure 34).

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Ciscos QMOS Operating Model and Governance Structure
Figure 34
QMOS is not a stand-alone business group. To ensure consistency and
organization-wide implementation, it is composed of members from across Ciscos
business functions and groups. These members review existing quality processes,
establish metrics, and drive the adoption of processes within their working groups.
[QMOS is] a common environment where we can plan together,

act together, and deliver together on common goals and then
measure that output as we go forward.
Giselle Stancic, CVCM market intelligence and
benchmarking manager
QMOS has its own VSE, expanded to Vision, Strategy, Execution, and
Measurement, or VSEM. Internal and external quality measurement is an important
part of, and input to, the QMOS process. For example, Cisco collects over 105,000
customer surveys annually, and the results together with internal operational metrics

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are considered in the determination of quality processes. Review is also part of the
metric process, and each measurement is evaluated and modified for
appropriateness, accuracy, usefulness, and customer impact.
SECTION 7: APQC CATE GORY 12BENCHMARKING WITHIN
CISCO
External benchmarking offers Cisco the opportunity to improve its processes by
learning how other companies handle similar processes successfully. Throughout its
benchmarking initiatives, Cisco has discovered that every organization has its own
language, which can make benchmarking a challenge. Cisco uses APQCs PCF to
simplify the translation process. The company has discovered that using the
categoriesboth at the top level and the drill-down levels underneathfacilitates
the exchange of information and best practices, both in one-on-one and group
benchmarking projects.
SECTION 8: SUMMAR Y
Ciscos current practices and processes provide a consistent approach to rapidly
changing and expanding technology markets. The company places great value on
collaboration and coordination throughout its strategic, development, and delivery
processes. This integration allows the company to take advantage of new markets
and opportunities in a reasoned and consistent way, while preserving the customer
experience and value that has made it a market leader.

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Case Study
ING Life Japan
SECTION 1: GENERAL O VERVIEW
ING Life Japan (INGLJ) is embarking on its second year of transformation. It will
be difficult to top the results of the first. The organization has:
1. reduced staffing from 167 to 100 core Operations people while maintaining
current volume,
2. decreased call handling time by 25 percent,
3. reduced cycle time for all transactions by 50 percent,
4. been ranked top performer for Contact Center in the entire industry within the
country, and
5. accomplished it all at a cost equivalent to four FTEs.
And this is only the beginning for ING Life Japan (INGLJ) as the organization
begins its second year of transformation. So how does an organization with over
700 people managing 25 billion in assets accomplish such results in a short amount
of time? Just two words: process framework. The design and implementation of
INGLJs framework is based on four components: process improvement/business
process framework, a management operating methodology, quality assurance, and
people.
These components are described in detail in the remainder of this case study. At the
core of INGLJs transformative journey to become one of the highest-performing
Operations functions in ING Asia Pacific is the way it harnessed the power of a
process framework by linking management activities to the day-to-day work that
was occurring. Easy to say not so easy to do.
ING Background
ING Life Japan is part of the ING Global corporation, which includes 107,000 staff
members in 40 countries, serving more than 85 million customers. INGs core
service areas include banking, investments, life insurance, and retirement services,
with over 1.1 trillion Euros in assets under management.
INGLJs journey began in 2009 in response to the global economic crisis that was
having a significant impact on financial institutionsnot just in terms of revenue,
but also in terms of how organizations operated on day-to-day basis. Increasing
governmental oversight and regulations as well as changing customer expectations
created a catalyst for transformation. Although INGLJ was not as heavily impacted
as some other financial service organizations, its leadership knew that it had to make
changes to maintain INGLJs current level of success. This meant improving

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services that customers valued to increase brand awareness and reducing costs to
maintain profitability. Every function within INGLJ was given targets to reduce unit
(transaction) costs within a very short timeframe.
With a strong focus on cost reductions, INGLJ leadership turned its attention to the
Operations function as one source of potential savings (in most organizations,
Operations is not a profit center). Operations at INGLJ consists of four main areas
under the direction of the chief operating officer: underwriting, customer service,
customer contact, and business engineering. This group initially consisted of 167
core Operations staffers, with 100 interacting directly with customers and
accounting for approximately 2.2 million transactions per year (Figure 35).
INGLJs Operations Structure
Figure 35
The Process Framework Journey Begins
In November of 2008, INGLJ conducted a four week audit of its core operations
and concluded that although performance was in the green, it was significantly
behind other ING regions in terms of service quality, performance, and cost.
Although executive leadership felt the external push for improved performance in
response to the global economic crisis, it was a tough sell for many middle managers
who felt performance was good enough.
Leaders saw this as a perfect opportunity to create breakthrough transformation for
the organization, so the Transformer Program was established to move the work
forward. Liam Ward, business transformation manager, was brought in to lead the
effort based on his success in developing a process transformation framework with
ING Australia. The goal was to not simply learn from ING Australias best practices
but to adopt those practices as holistically as possible. INGLJs chief operating
officer at the time felt this would provide the greatest chance for overall success.

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During the initial stages of the Transformer Program, it became apparent that
INGLJ did not have the operational levers in place to identify, implement, or
manage systemic change. The biggest piece of this was the inability to really
understand, in a quantitative way, the work that was being done on a day-to-day
basis. The impact of this was that nobody knew where to apply improvement
methods or what the impact could be. The team responsible for the Transformer
Program saw five critical weaknesses that needed to be overcome:
1. Very few processes were formally identified and mapped.
2. The majority of operational knowledge was tacit, held in peoples heads.
3. There was no common process governance model, which led to large variations
in the way processes were managed and ultimately in the types of services and
deliverables customers received.
4. Lack of common processes perpetuated uncommon performance measures,
making it difficult to track, compare, and monitor process performance across
Operations.
5. Lack of visibility into the day-to-day workload made it extremely difficult to
provide resource leveling.
In response to these challenges, four initiatives were established as the core
components of the Transformer Program (Figure 36). These were:
streamlining the complexities of the processes by developing a framework to
govern process improvement,
implementing a management operating methodology,
introducing a quality assurance program, and
increasing employee engagement (people).
In the end, INGLJ was recognized as having a best-practice Operations area within
the ING Asia Pacific region. The following sections describe the objectives and
goals, implementation strategy, success factors, and impacts of each of these
initiatives.

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Core Elements of ING Life Japans Transformer Program
Figure 36
SECTION 2: PROCESS I MPROVEMENT
Liam Ward, manager of the business transformation team that was responsible for
the Transformer Program, made it very clear that the first initiative had to be
process improvement. The key to this work was to take a step back and get a
complete understanding of what work was actually being done. How many people
were involved, how long tasks took, the volume of transactions, and the frequency
of processes across the entire Operations function were all vital pieces of
information. Without this knowledge, there would be no way to evaluate process
improvement opportunities, measure change, or evaluate success.
The process improvement initiative had five goals that defined success:
1. Improve productivity by 50 percent, reduce head count by 30 percent, and
reduce overtime by 14 percent.
2. Create a business process framework for Operations based on APQCs Process
Classification Framework (PCF).
3. Apply Lean principles to all Operations activities to identify value-add from a
customer perspective. The end results were to eliminate waste (resources and
capital) and to remove unevenness across service delivery.
4. Enhance transparency of process tasks, workflows, and measures across all
levels of management and staff.
5. Move the organizational culture into one focused on process improvement as a
key value creator by training and involving all staff members in the work. All

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employees, from front-line employees to the COO, should be fully engaged in
the process improvement framework and fully immersed in the cultural change
that they would be going through.
These goals were accomplished by creating the business process framework (BPF)
(Figure 37) that aligned core operational processes throughout the entire
organization. It is important to note that at this time INGLJ did not have a central
repository or governance for any of its processes. Therefore, the development of
the BPF was a new and necessary initiative.
INGLJs Business Process Framework
Figure 37
The BPF included five stages for developing and maintaining processes across
INGLJ:
design,
modeling,
execution,
monitoring, and
optimization.
Design
Design work encompassed both the identification of existing and the design of tobe processes throughout the entire business cycle. It focused on representation of
the process flow, the actors within it, alerts and notifications, escalations, standard
operating procedures, service-level agreements, and task hand-over mechanisms.
Microsoft Visio was used for process mapping, SharePoint for storing and accessing

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documentation, and Microsoft Excel to manage the list of process and associated
targets and measures. All aspects of the processes, including human-to-human,
human-to-system, and system-to-system workflows, were designed or redesigned
according to targeted regulatory challenges, market, or competitive challenges faced
by the business.
Modeling
The bulk of the modeling effort was allocated to mapping the as-is state, but there
was some discussion about theoretical design. For example: If cost, system
capabilities, time, and customer needs were not limitations, what would the ideal
process look like? After the as-is mapping was complete, the next step was to
develop what if scenarios, or process exceptions, to ensure tasks could be
completed no matter what happened. During modeling, the team identified specific
steps, tasks, and outputs that historically have had high levels of rework, either
automated or manual. These data were a critical input to the second initiative, the
management operating methodology.
Execution
Here the focus was on identifying all non value-added activities or process
bottlenecks that were impediments to improving performance goals and removing
them from the process. In addition, tasks that had the longest cycle times, not due
to any impediments, were highlighted and contextualized to explain why. This phase
also included a risk assessment for each process.
Monitoring
This step encompassed the tracking of all process steps so metadata (the who, what,
when, where, and why) would be current and available, and statistics pertaining to
process performance could be provided. Ward made this point clear: We could
map, design, and create new process, but if we didnt understand the impact [on
outcomes], it [would be] difficult to justify the costs associated with the change.
Process performance measures developed during this phase typically fit into one of
three categories: cycle time, defect rate, or productivity. Each was monitored to
various extents based on what information the business wanted to evaluate and
analyze.
Optimization
Performance data (both qualitative and quantitative) gathered during the monitoring
phase were reviewed to further identify bottlenecks and potential opportunities for
design enhancement. Special attention was paid to tasks that could be automated for
quick wins or to improvements that would impact multiple processes.

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Supporting Tools and Deliverables
In conjunction with the development of the BPF, the team created a set of tools and
deliverables that were used to manage the BPF itself as well as the five-steps just
described. First was the process matrix, which was a spreadsheet that held all the
metadata about each process.
For example, Figure 38 shows a portion of the process matrix for set of
transactional processes in the paying out and paying in process categories. Data were
collected pertaining to service levels, service expectations (expected cycle times to
complete the transaction), annual transaction volume, the existence of a map, and
whether the process had gone through the optimization phase. The matrix played an
integral role in the entire process improvement initiative as it finally gave the team
and other staff members a way to visualize the impact of each process, as well as the
potential return on investment for improvement activities.
ING Life Japans Process Matrix
Figure 38
The Transformer team soon realized that that only a small percentage of the 132
processes had to be optimized initially to see a significant return. Thirty-four percent
of these processes accounted for 96 percent of the annual transactional volume.
This provided crucial data for prioritizing which processes should be focused on
first as part of the Transformer Program initiatives. Prioritization was also based on:
critical processes that must be completed,
high transactional volume, and
whether the process was categorized as major or minor (major meaning
transaction volume higher than 100 annually or monies as the transaction
medium).

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The second tool in the BPF, a process library created on the internal SharePoint
portal to provide information for all employees, includes as-is maps, to-be maps,
and training materials. The key here is that the information was available to all
employees. The last tool was the implementation of two process improvement
methodologies: One Touch and Lean Kaizen.
One Touch: Eighteen of the operational processes were selected to go through
the One Touch methodology, which is based on drastically reducing the
number of touch points in a process. Essentially these 18 processes were
redesigned and optimized to have only two touch pointsone to handle the
actual work associated with the transaction and one for quality control. Some of
these processes had upwards of seven touch points, so redesigning them was a
fundamental leap in the way work was completed. It was a simple concept that
had a huge impact in terms of efficiency and cost savings.
Lean Kaizen: The main goal of this methodology was to eliminate waste in the
form of waiting time, unnecessary interruptions (avoidable phone calls and staff
movements), over-quality (focus on what customers truly value and remove the
rest), over-processing, and load-balancing workloads. Employees were
beginning to be multi-skilled. Therefore, the number of individuals touching the
process could be reduced, and they could work on a broader range of processes.
Throughout the implementation of this methodology, INGLJ made a conscious
and concerted effort to leverage a more bottom-up approach as Kaizen ideas
were solicited from all employees.
SECTION 3: MANAGEMEN T OPERATING METHODOL OGY
The next step after building the BPF was to figure out how to support the work
necessary to complete the processes. The Management Operating Methodology
(MOM) was established to support this as a framework within which employees do
their work. It was a consistent, reliable, and integrated system for planning, decision
making, executing, and reporting on activities. In support of the BPF, MOM also
enabled managers to effectively plan and manage day-to-day activities in the most
efficient and consistent way by:
Setting standards in which to plan, organize and assign work, and monitor
progress and performance. This provided consistency in the way that activities
and performance were communicated, reported, and tracked.
Providing a daily monitoring system to identify variances and the means to
correct them quickly.

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Having a clear reporting framework for all management levels. This enabled
follow-up on work assignments and ensured that work was completed on time,
to service and quality standards, and conformed to all business requirements.
Clarifying roles and responsibilities for key processes. This ensured that people
were held accountable for their work and performance.
Aligning and reinforcing the right behaviors.
The MOM was designed to help ING Operations measure what really matters and
to enable teams to make sound operational and strategic decisions in a timely
manner. It includes tools that facilitate corrective action, develop root cause analysis,
and determine the exactly what the organization needs to accomplish its business
goals.
ING Life Japans Management Operating Methodology (MOM)
Figure 39
The following five steps, shown in Figure 39, are the core components of the
MOM:
1. ForecastThis step combines historical trends, real-time data, and
management judgment to provide a more reliable method of predicting future
volumes. A forecast is created for every process on a daily, weekly, monthly,
and annual basis.

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2. PlanThis step involves translating the forecast into workload by applying
standards and constraints and then assigning resources. In combination with
robust forecasting, the plan allows more accurate matching of resource levels to
the expected workload.
3. ScheduleIn this step, the plans are converted into work that has to be
completed to effectively meet plan targets. Each schedule matches the work to
be done to the resources required to complete the work, such as labor,
equipment, and materials. It also details the service expectation (the amount of
time to complete the transaction), ensuring staff members are allocated a fair
days work, and tracks actual performance so that teams can detect any
variances and remove them from the process.
4. ImplementThis step manages actual performance against planned
performance in real time to identify and correct variances. This is essentially
measuring the health of the process, allowing the team to take timely action to
ensure it meets daily business objectives. Many circumstances can impede the
delivery of the daily plan, so effective short interval controls are needed. The
measure and control activities within implementation are seen as a supportive,
which encourages employees to focus on performance-to-standard and to
articulate barriers. Review meetings (huddles, which are described in more
detail later) are a key component of this phase.
5. Report and EvaluateReporting is clear, consistent, and timely, showing
performance against the plan, and provides the foundation for increasing the
accuracy of forecasting, planning, and scheduling. This phase is well-rounded to
account for quality, service standards, and cost. Through reporting and
evaluation, management is able to identify variance to plan, determine the root
cause of the variance, and subsequently determine the corrective action
required. Overall, it becomes a systematic approach to permanently remove
problems from the business.
One of the critical success factors of the MOM implementation was the ability to
visualize the business. To provide this ability, INGLJ created four tools to forecast,
schedule, and report process results. These tools were the driving force behind the
Transformer Programs success at exceeding goals for customers, employees, and
shareholders. The MOM tools are:
1. Master schedule (MS)a spreadsheet-based tool that incorporates daily
forecasts, daily schedules, and a monthly summary of resources. It translates
expected transaction volumes into the resource requirements needed to
complete the work to quality, cost, and delivery requirements. The MS uses a
measurement called service expectation, which is the number of units of work a
competent operator can complete per hour under normal circumstances.
2. Daily reportinghybrid reports that link transactional data from the mainframe
to offline data (process metadata, for example) stored in smaller databases. The

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daily report displays the results for the previous day for each administrative
team. Data elements in the reports include:
Number of staff members on each team
Total staff members scheduled to be in the office on the day of the report
Available hours minus shrinkage (noncore activities, i.e., meetings and
training)
Forecasted hours, calculated based on case volumes
Actual hours received and completed
Variance, or the difference between cases forecasted and actually received
Outstanding cases not completed for the day
Attainment, or completion rate
3. Whiteboardsused to clearly demonstrate each teams current workload and
highlight the performance of the team relative to the previous day.
4. Daily huddlesused at the start of each day to review the previous days
performance and detail any issues that may affect achievement of the current
days goals. Each workday begins with one huddle for management and another
for managers and their individual teams. Managers also conduct floor walks to
see if each team member requires any assistance and to monitor the days
overall performance.
The daily reporting, whiteboards, and daily huddles all fall under the Active
Management umbrella. This proactive approach to the daily management of
Operations allowed for early detection of variances to work plans.
SECTION 4: QUALITY A SSURANCE MODEL
To ensure the BPF and the MOM provided ongoing tangible benefits, measured in
terms of business competitiveness, a Quality Assurance (QA) and Monitoring model
was also created and deployed for Operations by the Transformer Team. This
model enabled managers to provide constructive feedback to workers and to
evaluate the processes themselves through consistent and structured evaluation of
activities. The QA work, in conjunction with all the data collected and reported in
the MOM, gave an accurate and immediate view of the process environment that
could be used to ensure overall quality. The transportation team, as an independent
function, provided governance for the QA model.
Quality Assurance has four distinct elements, shown in Figure 40:
1. Complaintsreporting, servicing, and action plans to reduce the number of
customer complaints received. All complaints are tagged to the process
framework by process, which provides extremely valuable data for the
optimization process. The processes with the most complaints are good

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candidates. The data can also be used in the design or redesign phase for the
to-be state for processes.
2. Voice of customeractivities focused on gathering value-based data from
customers. This is done through the use of customer satisfaction surveys as well
as the calculation and reporting of the Net Promoter Score (an industry
standard method of evaluating customer satisfaction and loyalty).
3. Quality controldata from all transactions, which are checked by Operations
team members. This core set of data is used to identify errors by task, work
stream, or the larger process. Management monitors these data to identify
specific work tasks that have a significant number of errors. Solutions are
additional training for the staff or process optimization/modification.
4. Quality monitoringrandom quality control, achieved and rechecked by the
monitoring program after a transaction has been completed. This check is used
within the contact center once a call is finished.
ING Life Japans Quality Assurance Program
Figure 40
SECTION 4: ENGAGING PEOPLE
Employee engagement was driven by factors based on demographics and
perceptions (Figure 41). The factors that were most important, or most valued by
employees, were also the motivating factors that drove engagement. This
information gave the Transformer Program team insight into which factors to focus
on first to improve employee working life. The team realized that many of these
factors were directly related to the processes in the BPF and that streamlining these
processes through the Process Management steps and balancing resources with
workload as indentified by the MOM would increase employee engagement.

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INGLJs Employee Engagement Model
Figure 41
Improving employee engagement was not as simple as aligning the motivating

factors with the process work. It would have been easier, in terms of time and
cultural inertia, to simply adapt the best practices from ING Australia into the
culture of INGLJ. But it became apparent that adapting would compromise the
scope and benefits and ultimately change the practices too much. The COO decided
that the only option was to adopt best practices and change the culture to fit the
practices. At the beginning, some middle and line managers resisted this approach.
This resistance reduced after a few months as performance improved and frontline
employees saw their day-to-day workloads decreasing. The staff became much more
engaged, and the culture began to shift, as people found that the process framework,
MOM, and quality assurance initiatives greatly impacted work-life factors.
The continued success of the Transformer Program depends on the level of
engagement people have throughout the process. Thus, it is important to provide
opportunities for the staff, from all levels within Operations, to be involved in key
decision-making activities and to make the whole process (the management of the
framework) transparent. This is accomplished through three communication
mediums:
1. Transformer action teamsgroups of frontline employees working with the
business transformation team to provide feedback on all change initiatives in
the Operations area. Every team in Operations is represented by a member in a
monthly meeting. Transformer action team members work as ambassadors,
collaborating with their own teams to receive feedback and communicate
changes. Managers are not allowed to be part of this frontline working group.
2. Transformer Timesa quarterly newsletter, much of which is written by
employees, is sent to all Operations employees. It includes updates, staff

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profiles, an events calendar, and Q&A. The newsletter is placed on the
recreational area of SharePoint for easy access.
3. Transformer communications plana series of visual aids (posters, leaflets, and
e-post cards) is used in the COOs communications to the entire organizations,
monthly Operations manager meetings, and quarterly town halls.
SECTION 5: CONCLUSIO N
ING Life Japan has moved their Operations function from the middle of the pack
to one of the top performing in the entire ING Life corporationall within a single
year and at a relatively low cost compared to the realized benefits. While the journey
has started off with many successes, the Transformer team has a lot of work ahead
of it in the coming years, as success breeds higher expectations. The focus for the
next phase of implementation is going to be on integrating knowledge management
best practices into the framework, implementing ING common process (from a
regional perspective), and beginning the work of moving the framework into other
functions in the organization.

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Case Study
Pitney Bowes
Serving the $250 billion U.S. Global Mailstream market, Pitney Bowes has
continuously operated since 1920, earning over $5.6 billion USD in revenue in 2009.
Pitney Bowes has acquired 83 companies since the year 2000. These acquisitions
include high-tech companies involved in customer relationship management,
litigation support, and traditional mail services. Pitney Bowes also maintains a robust
intellectual property portfolio including more than 3,000 patents worldwide.
Pitney Bowes uses their framework to get real work done. Their Mailing Solutions
Management line of business defines and manages business processes and organizes
its content using the framework.
Pitney Bowes is unique in its bottom-up adoption of a process framework, which
continues to spread through the business. Although the organizations use of a
framework began as a high-level business transformation project within one of its
divisions, the project hasnt yet left that single division. The spread of the process
framework outside that division of Pitney Bowes can be credited to the work done
within that department.
Considering the unique way in which Pitney Bowes is using the process framework,
it should not be compared to organizations with more centralized or well-funded
business process management (BPM) initiatives. Pitney Bowes excellence comes
from the bottom-up way in which the framework was adopted and is currently
being adapted.
Pitney Bowes lines of businesses include: Mailing Solutions Management (MSM),
Pitney Bowes Business Intelligence (PBBI), Pitney Bowes Managed Services
(PBMS), and Mail Services. The Global Process Management team is chartered
under Mailing Solutions Management and consists of four global process owners
and three directors, each responsible for components of process management and
business transformation within Mailing Solutions Management.
The Customer Operations organization is responsible for managing key customerfacing functions and processes for the Mailing Solutions Management organization.
Initial work on the Business Transformation project included the Pitney Bowes
Business Transformation team (composed of members of the Customer Operations
organization and the Global Process Management team) and a professional services
firm.

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SECTION 2: A SHOR T H ISTORY
In 2007, executives in Pitney Bowes Mailing Solutions Management recognized the
need to modernize and streamline their operations and become a more customercentric organization. The executives initiated a project to review and enhance the
policies and processes surrounding their customer billing processes, a core
customer-facing function within the organization. Objectives for this billing
transformation project were to reduce billing complexity and cycle time in the endto-end customer billing process.
The work on the billing transformation project caused the project team to realize
how many processes across Pitney Bowes depend on the customer billing process.
Until this time, a single customer doing business with multiple Pitney Bowes
business units could have received a different invoice from each of those units.
Within a year, the executives realized that a more thorough business transformation
project was in order. The interdependencies between the customer billing process
and the rest of the processes in the business were just too great to consider the
customer billing process alone.
Pitney Bowes chartered a new business transformation team. It consisted of the
individuals from the previous billing transformation team and an additional 20
people from across Mailing Solutions Management who lent expertise in related
areas that were now within scope. The Global Process Management team also
formed at this time. This team would become the key catalyst for the adoption of an
enterprise process framework and the further adaption of the framework within the
enterprise.
SECTION 3: ADOPTING THE FRAMEWORK
The charter for this new business transformation projectstarted in 2008 near the
peak of the global financial crisisincluded a reduction in the complexity of Pitney
Bowess Mailing Solutions Management (MSM) operations. The project also focused
on a return to the core of what made Pitney Bowes a market-leading company by
funneling the results from the Mailing Solutions Management division upward to
the results of the projects efforts. MSM executives challenged the project team to
document What is Pitney Bowes? with the objective of becoming totally process
driven and gaining more of a global perspective of all customer-facing functions
within this line of business. Gaining this perspective, largely by interacting with
functions outside of MSM, was a simple way to reduce operational complexity.
Pitney Bowes hired a professional services firm to participate in the business
transformation project, and that firm made the initial selection (adoption) of the
first enterprise process framework for Pitney Bowes, with little input from the
internal project team. During the adoption process, Pitney Bowes asked the
professional services firm to help us define what it means to be Pitney Bowes.

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After the professional services firm recommended a framework, the Pitney Bowes
team began the adoption process. First, the team identified critical business
policies, statements that summarize the operating principles and philosophy of
Pitney Bowes. Defining these policies was a labor-intensive task. The combined
team spent 10 calendar weeks, eight hours a day, working on this initial policy
development activity. The initial team consisted of 35 individuals, including seven
process owners and a number of functional managers and business analysts.
After identifying the practices and policies that defined the future vision of MSM,
the Global Process Management team began the arduous process of backfilling that
content into the adopted framework (Figure 42).
Pitney Bowes Global Processes and Ownership
Figure 42
The strategy adopted by the Global Process Management team to backfill this
content was simple: It would adopt the framework as a baseline set of processes that
defined what Pitney Bowes accomplished. In certain critical areas, the team would
then dive into the details, creating additional policies, procedures, and other
necessary documentation. Pitney Bowes was trying to identify the best practices
through the policies that defined the Mailing Solutions Management divisionby
which to transform their business. It did this by looking not only back at the
policies and procedures it currently performed, but also forward at the policies
and procedures it sought to implement. The business policies combined with the

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high-level framework defined what MSM at Pitney Bowes does. The defined
documents organized into the framework defined how the work was accomplished.
The team also recognized the need for long-term governance of the framework. As
a result, the Global Process Management team created and implemented a
governance strategy for the framework. The governance structure covers two main
areas: the framework as a whole and the content managed by the framework. One
of the key concepts introduced by the framework is version control over the
documents. Documentation is managed in Pitney Bowes SharePoint portal. The
overall intent of the governance structure was implemented to provide risk
management oversight to this new critical asset.
After about 12 months of working on the project, the team reached an intermediate
goal, and the business transformation project transitioned to the adaptation phase of
the work. One of the most significant deliverables from the business transformation
project was Pitney Bowes complete enterprise process framework (EPF), which
was ultimately adopted by the Global Process Management team, including Maureen
Gervais, program manager.
The framework, based on APQCs Process Classification Framework (PCF), depicts
at a high level the interdependencies among the various parts of Pitney Bowes. The
Global Process Management team is responsible for maintaining the EPF and its
continued adaptation by the various Pitney Bowes departments and operating
divisions.
The choice to continue the adoption and ultimate adaptation of the enterprise
process framework without formal centralized support and buy-in may seem to be a
recipe for rework, but Pitney Bowes has found a unique way to continuously widen
the scope of the project: stakeholder management and continuous adaptation.
SECTION 4: ADAPTING THE FRAMEWORK AND EX ECUTING
WORK
The Customer Service & Support process suite, led by its global process owner, is
considered a center of excellence for using process frameworks within Pitney Bowes
because it has taken the lead in adapting the framework to the actual work being
done within the department. The Customer Service & Support process suite handles
a significant portion of customer-facing functions and processes in the Global
Service organization.
The Global Process Management team engaged APQC in 2009 to customize and
deliver a training class covering BPM basics. This training helped the entire Global
Process Management team craft a common frame of reference for the adaptation
process. Once the initial framework was defined, the strategy outlined, and the team
trained, the next steps became clear.

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One of the first adaptation steps taken by the Global Process Management team
was to define the scope of the work it would try to accomplish. The team did this by
drawing a line in the sand around the processes that would be included in the initial
transformation effort. The initial in-scope processes included:
bill presentment;
bill processing;
customer serviceincoming call-handling activities; and
customer handlingon-site service and maintenance, including repairs.
Processes outside this scope but still within the Global Service organization do not
have assigned global process owners and are not candidates for review and
adaptation until a pressing business need arises. When that happens, the Global
Process Management team evaluates the request and determines if the effort
required to adapt the process will produce a sufficient benefit. Processes that are not
adapted simply continue to exist in their current state.
The Global Process Management team began its adaptation activities by assembling
the various functional leads and process owners in a room and having them identify
the gaps between the adopted framework and the reality of their various processes.
This activity identified a number of gaps and helped define the scope the work to be
performed by the Customer Operations team.
The adaptation process effectively takes any existing documentation and adapts it to
fit one of these core content categories:
Policies
Process flow diagrams
Training
If information required to develop the content is not available for the process, the
Global Process Management team synthesizes the content. The Global Process
Management team facilitates the work, answering questions and providing guidance
to the process owners as necessary. Material is never taken straight from as-is
documentation and dropped into the adopted EPF; it first is reviewed and modified
as needed to ensure it fits with the rest of the EPF.
During adaptation, the scope of the Global Process Management teams work is
managed using a simple parking lot method. If, in the course of adapting the
process, a functional owner or the global process owner has a question about the
process scope that cannot be answered, the matter is removed to the parking lot
where the global process owner can choose to address it at a later time.
The Global Process Management team also developed relationship grids and key
performance indicators (KPIs) at the functional level. Within a particular process,
the team developed a relationship grid identifying the interdependencies among the

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various functional members of the team as defined by the adapted framework. For
each function within the process, the team reviews any KPIs that already exist and
may develop new ones as needed.
A number of challenges arose after the adaptation process began. One of the
challenges that most affected the Global Process Management team was that the
process elements of the adopted EPF are not consistently leveled, meaning that
some activities are relatively more detailed than others. Some of the elements in the
EPF were more descriptions of how to do something rather than descriptions of
what was to be accomplished. The resulting gaps in the documentation made it
difficult for the team to accurately associate the new policies with the process
framework and complete the adaptation activities.
The Global Process Management team solved this leveling problem by choosing a
new target level of detail and performing a gap analysis to identify any process
elements requiring remediation. The team then added the missing information based
on the scope of adjacent process elements as needed. The team conducted two-day
reviews of the adapted processes, during which the members unanimously agreed
on the framework. The global process owners signed off on the framework for their
pertinent areas, and that version of the framework became the baseline.
Adapting a process is not a trivial task. Participation in a process can be very wide,
depending upon the process. Also, the state of existing process documentation
materials prior to framework adaptation is a good indicator of the effort required to
adapt the process. In Pitney Bowes case, many of the Customer Operations
documents were not systematically organized or were stored in a variety of formats,
including paper copies. In some cases, there were no electronic copies of paper
documents. Locating, understanding, and converting these documents into a
consistent format was a time-consuming and error-prone process.
Reducing the effort required to adapt a process begins with choosing a friendly
voicea process owner or functional owner who has expressed interest in the
work. Pitney Bowes Global Process Management team found individuals within the
functions and processes who were interested in the process owner role. Because
they had inside knowledge, they needed little guidance and were able to begin work
quickly. Also, after completing a few minor adaptation tasks with all involved
parties, the team made a sort of internal case study available for other process and
functional owners to review. Using these case studies as guides helped reduce the
effort needed to get new team members on board and fully participating.
Another tactic leveraged by the Global Process Management team to reduce the
effort required to adapt a process was focusing on the WIIFM (whats in it for me?).
With the work structured to reflect WIIFM, the members of the Global Process
Management team were more apt to participate and produce high-quality work
products. Preparing the pitch to communicate the value proposition to new and
potential teammates was a good investment of time. The initial teams that did not
have the pitch prepared didnt fare as well as the later teams that were prepared with

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this communication tool. Those earlier teams ended up spending more time
revisiting initial assumptions and boundaries.
Consistent training also helps to reduce the cycle time to adapt a process. Many of
the Pitney Bowes team members involved in adaptation did not have a good
understanding of the work performed by the Global Process Management team or
where the work fit within the organization. Early on, the Global Process
Management team developed a six- or seven-slide presentation about the EPF. The
global process owners in the Global Process Management team were responsible for
taking this base training presentation and customizing it as needed for their team
members. Again, this upfront investment in tools helped Pitney Bowes improve the
quality of the teams work products.
Once a process has been completely adapted to suit the global process owners
needs and the Global Process Management teams standards, the document is stored
in a special SharePoint repository organized by the adapted framework (based on
APQCs PCF).
Another key that Pitney Bowes identified as critical to its success is that it celebrates
the small victories. Global Process leadership spends time sending messages to their
department when one of their global process owners completes an adaptation task.
This helps build awareness and fans of the work that the Global Process
Management team is doing, simplifying future work. Pitney Bowes has noticed that
team members involved in these positive feedback activities are more dedicated and
less prone to passive-aggressive feedback.
CONCLUSION
To date, Pitney Bowes has completed the adaptation of the bill presentment and bill
processing processes within the Customer Operations global process owner realm,
commonly referred to as the order-to-cash process. These revised processes have
proved the value anticipated by the Global Process Management team, and work
continues on subsequent processes in the Customer Operations portfolio.

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Case Study
UPS
Almost everyone has either sent or received a package through UPS. Their
ubiquitous presence is but a thin veneer over a complex worldwide organization
with a dynamic history spanning over 100 years. With humble roots starting in
Seattle, Washington, UPS has grown to deliver more than 14 million packages a day.
UPS is organized into four main divisions:
U.S. Operations, consisting of Airline, Brokerage, Ground Operations, and
Freight Operations;
International Package Operations;
UPS Contract Logistics; and
Other Non-Package business, including the UPS Store and Mailboxes Etc.
mailing services retail chains.
The company was founded in 1907 by Jim Casey, and today still exhibits the culture
he created. With over 400,000 employees, UPS is the second largest employer in the
United States. Many of its managers and supervisors were hired from within.
The world changed around UPS. If you dont change your

processes, and if you dont have a framework that keeps you
anchored in what you do youre going to be in real trouble.
Dawson Wood, department manager,
program management group
UPS operates more than 250 aircraft and is among the 10 largest airlines in the
world. It also operates more than 88,000 trademark-brown package cars, vans,
tractors, and motorcycles. This large fleet is required to handle the daily delivery of
over 12 million packages worldwide, collected from over 62,000 retail access points
and innumerable homes and businesses. In conjunction with UPS delivery service,
UPS information systems handles more than 22 million package tracking requests
daily. UPS also generates, processes, and ultimately discards more than 2 terabytes
of data daily.

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Many of the employees at UPS are trained industrial engineers, and it shows in the
companys development of mature processes. Dawson Wood, department manager
for UPS program management group, summarizes it best: UPS sells only one
thing: the output of its processes. He goes on to say: Customers expect
consistency and quality: I need it delivered in three days every time from Houston
to New York, and I need it [delivered] without being broken. For that, Im willing to
pay you a pre-negotiated price. If things dont go right within the processes that
make that possible, UPS loses money. UPS industrial engineers have carefully
developed systems of processes, including a process framework, that help them get
this work done.
SECTION 2: UNDERSTAN DING THE NEED FOR A FRAMEWORK
... A hard part of managements problem is to know when to make

changes and when to hold fast to what is still good.
Jim Casey, founder, UPS, 1948
In the early 1990s, UPS had a problem: Results for many key performance
indicators (KPIs) were down, and forecasts were not encouraging. This trend had
been present for a few years by this time, but by 1996 it caught managements
attention. A complete explanation for the trend was not readily available, but
managers knew they faced external pressures from new competitors in the U.S.
small-package delivery marketplace. These new competitors were taking the most
profitable customers from this core market segment, and it was affecting UPS
overall profitability.
Customers like Wal-Mart were demanding more visibility into their own supply
chains. As a result, they began to place more demands on UPS. This new breed of
customer requested services such as demand pack and the pre-determination of
the contents of boxes, skids (pallets), and entire package trucks. No longer was the
business about making sure that the package arrived on time; the business now had
to be as concerned about package information as it was with the package itself. One
customer even demanded that package tracking information arrive at least one hour
before the package.
Management then began to investigate the UPS core processes. Using sophisticated
statistical process analysis that leveraged the expertise of its core industrial
engineering skill set and in-the-trenches managers, the management team
determined that it needed to restructure the core UPS processes. At the time,
business process re-engineering as defined by Michael Hammer was in vogue, and a
re-engineering project was considered.

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Armed with a wealth of popular business process re-engineering information,
management convened a team to re-engineer UPS core processes (Figure 43). The
team worked for about two years to come up with the to-be design of the new
process framework.
SECTION 3: IDENTIFYI NG AND ADOPTING A FR AMEWORK
The resulting framework consisted of a set of 11 customer-facing processes, which
were eventually reduced to four. The team also defined a set of five support
processes. The distinction between the core processes and the support processes
was simple: Support processes are not what the customer comes to UPS for.
For example, customers dont come to UPS to participate in the billing process. The
billing process is a support process, subordinate to the package management
process, but it still must be as effectively and efficiently designed as the package
management process.
This new process framework also considered customer demands on UPS and
emerging trends such as business analytics and the ability to track the individual
contents of packages. Because the design of these processes took place during
normal operations, UPS next challenge was to apply this new framework of
processes without disrupting the business.
With over 100 years of history and culture working against it, the core team tried
fruitlessly to change the organization of UPS to match the new process framework.
Employee feedback on the new framework was negative: In many cases, employees
had spent decades following particular functional career paths, only to have those
paths disappear in the new model. This left senior employees uncertain as to where
they fit. It soon became evident that the change in organizational structure could
only succeed if accompanied by a similar change in culture, career pathing, and
career progression. This ultimately led to a severe change in thinking about how the
organization would adapt the framework.

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UPS Core Processes
Figure 43
WORK
After realizing that a complete change in organizational structure was not feasible,
management crafted a different plan: assign ownership of core processes to a
manager and then overlay the cross-functional processes atop traditional functions
with their existing managers. The result was a structure in which a cross-functional
process is led by a single cross-functional leader but involves a number of
subordinate functional managers. The cross-functional leader interacts with other
cross-functional leaders to resolve conflicting demands on functional resources.
Implementation of this strategy required a significant amount of effort in training,
oversight, and performing the required tasks. To assist with implementation, UPS
created the program management group, 25 people under the vice president of
strategy supporting the worldwide UPS organization. The groups original charter
was to act as a governing body, protecting the integrity of the core framework. Its
charter secured future growth into training and personnel development. The
program management group not only provided guidance to teams performing the
process work but also provided individual training to project and process
professionals. The program management groups approach to training reflects the

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open nature of work at UPS. This [process work] is not a specialty skill set.
Everyone needs this knowledge, said Dawson Wood, department manager of the
program management group.
With a defined strategy and a governance and support structure in place, the work
of translating this new core process framework and strategy into reality could begin.
Adaptation work started on each of the cross-functional processes simultaneously.
One example of the adaptation work is the billing process. In UPS, and specifically
in the package delivery business, a number of functional areas are involved in the
billing process, including sales, drivers, package management, and finance.
Example: The Cross-Functional Billing Process
1. A shipping client provides electronic information about the package. (The sales
group owns relationships with shipping clients.)
2. Drivers collect data while picking up and delivering packages. (Operations and
technology own this.)
3. Information moves ahead of the package to the sender and the recipient.
(Package management owns this.)
4. The actual billing processes occur. (Finance owns this.)
In this example, the billing process owner must communicate with at least four
functional owners. Under the new process framework, the manager of the crossfunctional process became responsible for the results of the defined process as well
as the continuous optimization of the various participating functions. The manager
also must evaluate any changes initiated within his or her process against the other
core processes, to ensure that a change in one function would not reduce the
effectiveness of another core process.
Process owners coordinated at monthly meetings. Section 5 of this case study
provides a good example of how this coordination gets work done.
Dealing with Push-Back
Some existing functional owners resisted the changes. Their feedback had common
themes, including: Its not how we do things, Were different, and Weve
always done it this way. UPS developed four mechanisms to combat push-back,
with a goal of approaching process owners in a way that doesnt trigger defensive
reactions.
1. Appeal to the common good. Appeal to the inherent key KPI measurement
objectives and the we are here to help you mentality.
2. Consider the customer. Appeal to the notion that its not important how this
function performs; its important how the customer perceives the function
within UPS as an organization.

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3. Strict process-based review. Analyze how the process works. What are the
steps of the adopted process? Where do the data come from? Who needs the
data? Why are the data needed?
4. Authoritative change. Take this step, affectionately referred to as armtwisting, only when needed. UPS ultimately had to resort to this in a small set
of circumstances.
Adapting existing functional work into a new cross-functional process framework
was not a trivial task. The required effort varied widely: Adaptation of the product
management process occurred relatively quickly while other processes, like package
management, took nearly 10 years to complete.
The time it took to complete each adaptation was determined primarily by the
availability of technical infrastructure and components. In 1996, one set of functions
within a process needed to move the equivalent of terabytes of data within 2.5 hours
to specific operating centers. At the time, the technology didnt exist to enable this
level of data transfer, so the process had to change. The process owner had to work
with the appropriate functional leaders and customers outside of UPS to reconsider
the need for the individual fields of data and to reprioritize individual field-level data
transfers. When the technology became available, the processes changed again to
use the new capabilities, and the performance of the process improved accordingly.
Adaptation Decisions and Making Tough Choices
Not all processes in the new process framework received the same attention in the
adaptation phase. Support processes were ultimately left with little adaptation
because UPS determined that the existing functions were sufficient and that they
were not key drivers for filling previously identified KPI gaps. The company would
simply react to the need for change as the business case demanded it.
As the infrastructure became available and resources became scarce, UPS developed
a method of prioritizing and approving project-level adaptation work. The
responsibility for this prioritization fell to the business information analysis (BIA)
group, a group similar to business intelligence. This group acted as an independent
party to evaluate the assumptions that were built into projects. It also attempted to
improve estimation efforts among project teams by driving a single methodology for
costing and pricing the resources needed to complete projects. The program
management group works very closely with the BIA group.
After overseeing a number of projects that didnt deliver projected value or
exceeded cost and time estimates, the program management group began enforcing
strict governance rules. One of these rules stated that any project affecting a core
process had to proceed through a review process to ensure that its estimates were
accurate and that the project was accurately planned. Project results are also
included in personnel performance planning and individual scorecards, tying project
performance directly to the annual employee review process.

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Education, Training, and Communication
Maintaining the integrity of the framework required a significant investment in not
only process management and governance but also corresponding program and
project management. As a result, the program management group formed two
distinct centers of excellence (CoEs): the project management CoE and the process
management CoE (Figure 44). The process management CoE and its members do
not own processes. The process management CoE owns improvement
methodologies and tool sets to help process managers do the actual improvement
work.
UPS Program Management Centers of Excellence
Figure 44
These two complementary CoEs represent one of the ways in which UPS protects
the integrity of its framework. Individuals at UPS are exposed to the fundamentals
of each discipline through internal and external training and tool sets. In both the
functional and cross-functional areas, the CoEs provide support to project teams.
The close partnership between these two CoEs is one of the tools that enable UPS
to get real work done using process frameworks.

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The CoEs were not part of the original adaptation plans, but rather emerged as
another response to the program management groups dissatisfaction with poor
project and return-on-investment estimates. After benchmarking large projects, the
program management group determined that UPS process-related projects were
anywhere from 50 percent to 70 percent over budget (cost and or time) and
delivered only approximately 20 percent of the planned results. Since UPS started
these CoEs and provided training and oversight to its employees, project results
have improved. Projects now deliver approximately 50 percent of planned
deliverables, and overages have reduced to about 30 percent over cost and time
estimates. The program management group believes that additional improvements
are attainable.
Another way in which the program management group protects the integrity of the
framework is to require certification for employees operating projects in the process
space. The certification program was not initially planned but was developed to
respond to issues realized after the framework adaptation. Project managers seeking
certification in process management work are tested on a process improvement
exercise. They have to take a process, map it, and implement changes according to
the CoE guidelines. The certification includes a full, in-depth audit of skills and is
roughly equivalent to a Six Sigma green belt. Project management skills are typically
dependent on the Performance Management Institutes Project Management
Professional (PMP) certifications.
The program management group later sought ways to reduce cycle time to achieve
the to-be processes. After reviewing historical projects, the group determined that a
reasonable project duration was about one year. Projects initially defined to last
longer than one year were not as successful as projects with planned durations of a
year or less. Recognizing the need for multi-year projects, the program management
group views larger projects as programs and works with the project managers to
subdivide them into year-long pieces.
SECTION 5: UNDERSTAN DING BUSINESS BENEFITS AND
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEME NT
You should come to work every day with the thought that
you can do better than you are [doing] today.
UPS culture is one of continuous improvement. Originating with its founder, the
concept of constructive dissatisfaction is applied throughout the organization.
Constructive dissatisfaction is the principle that employees can do better with
constructive changes to the way that work is done. On top of this, UPS has a

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promote-from-within mentality, and many of its employees have formal education
in industrial engineering, a discipline dealing with the optimization of complex
processes. The result is a number of senior-level executives with a deep expertise in
the business and a core understanding of the methods to improve it.
Managing the flow of feedback is essential for an organization as focused on
processes as UPS. All of the business and industrial engineering experience in the
world wont help an organization that cant effectively manage feedback and then
use it to prioritize and manage the resulting improvement projects. The program
management group serves as a central body for UPS, coordinating improvement
projects and the processes used to perform them.
Customer relationship management and product management, two of the core
processes from the original 1996 framework, are one of the main channels
providing structured inputs into continuous improvement activities. Every customer
interaction results in feedback that tells UPS what it is not doing, what it is not
doing well, or what products it should offer. Many new product development
requirements come from the customer relationship management area. These ideas
arrive continuously and are the result of the culture at UPS, where employees are
empowered to be constructively dissatisfied.
Senior management works with the program management group to review and
prioritize improvement projects, considering the existing enterprise data
infrastructure and the overall UPS mission and strategic imperatives for the period.
The tools for managing this constant stream of improvement include UPS strategy
road map, process pyramid, balanced scorecard, and suite of governance checks and
balances. The program management group also works closely with the BIA group to
review project fundamentals. One core question the group asks for all projects is:
Are the benefits you claim to seek really available? The group acts as a reality
check against wild project assumptions. This process evolved over time in response
to projects that didnt meet initial assumptions for cost and deliverables.
Long-Term Life with the Framework
You cant rest on your laurels; you cant expect organic growth to
carry you where you want to go. You have to be looking at new
products and new markets all the time.
After about 10 years of living with the framework, UPS realized that the processes it
had so carefully defined began to look a lot like the functions they were intended to
replace. Again, the senior managers at UPS were determined to improve the way it

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does business. Around 2004, UPS embarked upon a strategic review of its
operations.
This review produced four strategic imperatives, a number of corresponding
measures and goals, and a series of over 30 critical initiatives. All were initially
summarized into a single document called the strategy road map (Figure 45).
UPS Strategy Road Map
Figure 45
The strategy road map communicated how the mission of the organization related
to the projects necessary for achieving its strategic imperativesthe things UPS had
to do to remain competitive. Although the map was helpful for communicating this
interrelationship, it provided little immediately actionable information. Employees
needed a way to understand how these projects related to the ways they were already
getting work done. To respond to this need, UPS evolved the strategy road map into
a single document that identified the strategic imperatives and critical initiatives
the projects intended to effect the required changeand named senior managers to
these initiatives.
As a result, the program management group was able to better coordinate critical
initiatives such as the global shared services project, the integrated global sales
force project, and the problem resolution project. These projects aligned with
enterprise strategy, making it easier to secure resources and remain visible among
the many concurrent demands placed upon the project teams (Figure 46).

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Project, Process, and Strategy Alignment at UPS
Figure 46
CONCLUSION
While not a traditional off-the-shelf framework, the UPS framework of processes is
a good example of how an organization can, through introspection and teamwork,
develop a common language under which everyone in the company can operate.
UPS business process management activities have become dependent upon the
framework, and the core processes remain relevant even after 15 years.

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Case Study
The Williams Companies
SECTION 1: GENERAL O VERVIEW AND BACKGROU ND
The Williams Companies, Inc. is the 10th-largest natural gas producer in the United
States. A publically traded Fortune 500 company, Williams 2009 revenue exceeded
$8 billion. The company employs more than 4,800 individuals in 25 states.
Headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma, this integrated natural gas provider has major
offices in Houston, Denver, and Salt Lake City. Williams also has a significant
presence in western and southwestern Colorado, northwest New Mexico, the Gulf
Coast, and Pennsylvania.
Williams has three business units: Exploration & Production (E&P) (the focus of
this case study), Midstream, and Gas Pipes.
The E&P process group is part of the E&P business unit. It is a shared service
across the organization, conducting projects in multiple areas of the business unit.
The group consists of three analysts/specialists, one technical writer, two support
staff members, and one rotational analyst.
We are a very lean shop; we focus on the use of contractors

when needed, whether its an optimization effort or a
need from the business.
Matt Foste, senior business process analyst
The analysts in the group are aligned with processes, such as procurement or
knowledge management, rather than locations. This creates a center of expertise,
which is how the group provides value to the business.
History of E&P Process Management
Williams E&P launched its process management initiative during 2000 to 2003. The
IT group learned about process methodologies in 2001, and as a result, the
organization formed its business process management (BPM) practice. In 2002,
Williams E&P undertook its first process initiative within its accounting group; the
beginning of enterprise SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley) documentation formed the
foundation of early process work the following year.

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The next phase in the organizations process management journey, which lasted
from 2004 to 2007, involved the development of Williams E&Ps framework and
standards. Standards teams were developed to provide governance. In 2005, the
company began working with APQC and subsequently established its BPM
methodology and Williams process model. Also in 2005, Williams documented the
E&P procurement process and created its first process team. Then, in 2006,
Williams E&P focused on understanding its core processes, defining and
documenting them through its Management Systems Framework project.
Since 2007, Williams E&P has concentrated on business unit processes, moving
from compliance to optimization. 2007 saw the formation of the E&P common
process team, the E&P Business Process Group, and the process support team, as
well as the creation of the BPM governance framework. In 2009, the E&P process
management group rolled out key performance indicators (KPIs) for major
company processes and developed its knowledge and records management strategy.
Most recently, in 2010, the group developed and rolled out the SharePoint tool for
knowledge and content management.
SECTION 2: UNDERSTAN DING THE NEED FOR A F RAMEWORK
In the early 2000s, E&P employees were confronting obstacles such as:
difficulty finding documentation about specific processes,

not knowing which document was the most current,
no audit trail of changes in processes or controls, and
too much time spent looking for information.
Still, the need for compliance didnt reach its peak until 2002, when Williams, a
publically traded company, needed to comply with the new Sarbanes-Oxley Act. All
of the business unit processes with financial implications had to be documented
enterprise-wide.
The threat of noncompliance was huge, so it drove a need to determine a
framework that we could use to start documenting, explains Sondra Holt, E&Ps
manager of business processes.
The general auditor and director of enterprise accounting tasked Holt, who then
worked as an internal consultant in the IT group, and the rest of her group with
assembling a framework to document the companys processes. This top-down
approach was atypical for Williams, which usually forms grassroots teams that take
time to discuss issues and try to create their own solutions. In this case, however,
the solution had to be delivered quickly, and the group conducted research to find a
tool it could adapt. That research led to APQC and its Process Classification
Framework (PCF).

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To capture E&Ps processes, the group came up with standard templates for
mapping, using Excel rather than a specially designed mapping tool. The process
owners received brief training on how to complete the documentation so that
everyone was working in the same way to create a standardized result.
Williams E&Ps initial framework project was completed within one year and
resulted in the base framework that now serves numerous processes.
SECTION 3: USING THE FRAMEWO RK
Williams framework was created in 2004 and has been refined over the years as the
companys processes have changed. The framework is a high-level, industry-neutral
model focused on energy. It enables Williams departments to see activities from a
cross-functional process viewpoint. It is used primarily to catalog and segment
process documentation.
The business process group is responsible for governance and maintenance of the
framework.
Based on APQCs PCF, Williams also created an eight-point process documentation
model to categorize types of documentation that are included in the framework. The
divisions are as follows:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Policies
Standards
Process maps
Procedures and tools
Supporting documents
Process measures
Projects
Catalogs
This eight-point process model is embedded in the framework. Each process has its
own eight-point model underneath it for information storage and cataloging.
Williams Business Process Alignment High-Level Framework (Figure 47) includes
12 processes, categorized as either core or enabling, that are documented in the
framework. This isnt meant to be everything, explains Matt Foste, senior
business process analyst. This is just everything weve touched from a compliance
perspective or an optimization perspective. We dont define additional processes
until theres a need to do it.

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Williams Business Process Alignment High-Level Framework
Figure 47
This framework guides Williams E&Ps business model, which consists of the
following five core processes:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Assess reserve potential

Acquire ownership
Develop reserves
Optimize production and operations
Market and sell
Key activitiespre-drill, gather, drill well, complete well, well-head operations, and
close/abandonsupport those core processes, as do the enabling processes of
planning (vision, strategy, and compliance), information technology (IT), human
resources (HR), environmental health and safety, finance and accounting, and
managing business improvement and change/knowledge management.
The next level of the process framework breaks the processes down into
subprocesses. Procurement, for instance, is divided into the subprocesses of
authorization for expenditure operations, contract administration, bidding, sourcing,
and invoice coding and approval. Several of these have subprocesses under them as
well.

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WORK
Adaptation of Williams framework occurred in four basic steps:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Identification of targeted groups and departments

Identification of targeted processesthose that impact the bottom line
Identification of targeted process owners
Adaptation of the processes to the framework
With the framework in place, Williams E&P was able to shift the work perspective
from a vertical to a horizontal one, focusing on processes across the company rather
than the activities of a single location. It also has been able to put more effort into
fixing the processes than into fixing the people and to manage the organization
more as an adaptive system.
The process group turned to Williams E&Ps definition of process owners as it
completed step two. The company defines a process owner as the individual
ultimately responsible for process performance. This person coordinates the process
management activities, has the authority and the ability to make changes in the
process, and manages the process end-to-end to ensure optimal overall
performance. While process owners own the processes on the framework and their
documentation, the process group is responsible for keeping the framework current
and available to the process owners.
When Williams rolled out its framework, all departments, functions, and processes
with financial implications were included in the adoption. As noted earlier, since that
initial rollout, the scope of E&Ps framework initiative has expanded from
compliance to optimization.
One way Williams E&P executes its framework is by taking a BPM approach with
teams that addresses three levels of performance (Figure 48). At the organization
level, it helps ensure strategic alignment with the vision of both the business unit
and the company. It also focuses on the strategy for meeting goals and adhering to
the applicable policies or standards.

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Business Process Management at Williams
Figure 48
The tools employed in this step are a process catalog, which uses numbering
corresponding to the framework; a relationship map, which helps set the
frameworkanother important tool; and the policies and standards.
E&P documents its processes using a RACI (responsible, accountable, consulted,
informed) chart, which helps determine who is accountable for each activity and
who needs to be consulted before decisions are finalized, as well as who needs to be
informed. Process maps and process measures also are valuable tools at the process
level.
Supporting documentation used at the individual level includes procedures (which
specify the terms of the process), governing documents, templates, forms, and a
listing of tasks and who performs them.
When working with the teams, the E&P process group emphasizes that
documenting a new process is not a one-time event. Although the team would like
to get the entire process documented in detail the first time around, the exercise is
one of continual improvement. To facilitate this continual improvement, the teams
technical writer is responsible for keeping track of the documentation. Part of her
job is revisiting the documents every two years, with SOX documents being

page 138

reviewed more frequently. She asks the process owners if the document details are
still current and updates anything that has changed.
Process owners are also asked to send changes to the technical writer whenever they
occur so she can keep the documents as up to date as possible, even between
scheduled reviews.
The Process Management Road Map
Williams E&Ps process management road map consists of nine components, many
of which were addressed earlier in this case study:
Identification of processes.
Process support team review. This governing executive team within the process
group is composed of the executive in charge of operations (who was also the
process groups initial sponsor), the optimization director, the human resources
director, the IT account manager, and the controller. The process support team
helps the process group determine its annual guiding principles and goals. The
team and group meet approximately every two months.
Identification of the process owner.
APQCs PCF placement. At the beginning, when new processes were being
identified and documented, they needed to be placed on the framework.
Because there are fewer new processes today, the framework is mostly used
during optimization efforts, where the team drills down and completes
additional documentation.
Process documentation.
Identification of KPIs and metrics.
Knowledge management. This step addresses what knowledge the process
performers need to do their work and where the group will place it so the
performers can find it easily.
Records management. A corporate-driven compliance effort involving records
management has been combined with the process groups efforts in process and
knowledge management (Figure 49). The goal of this integration is to have one
source of truth so that Williams employees arent confused by conflicting
information.

page 139

Williams Consolidated Approach to Managing Processes, Knowledge, and Records
Figure 49
Knowledge Repository and BPM Repository
Williams E&P has two linked repositories that store its process documents: its
knowledge repository and its BPM repository. The knowledge repository is the front
end and the BPM repository is the back end of this knowledge sharing tool.
The knowledge repository, accessible through the companys intranet, offers users
access to the documents they need. The documents there are categorized by type
such as process maps, procedures, and toolsand assigned headings that closely
align with the PCF. Some subprocesses with a lot of related documentation may be
split into more than one category or have a special numbering scheme in the
knowledge repository, rather than being shown as a subcategory as they are in the
PCF.
The knowledge repository also offers access to process catalogswhich show every
document created under that process, the version number, the date last updated,
and anything else a user would need to know about the documents.
The BPM repository, stored on a shared drive, serves the entire corporation. Only
certain people can access the documents through the BPM repository; most users
access them through the knowledge repository instead.

page 140

SECTION 5: UNDERSTAN DING BUSINESS BENEFI TS AND
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEME NT
Measuring the Impact of Framework Adoption
The Williams E&P process group compiles data annually to track its success. The
following measured criteria demonstrate the groups worth to the rest of the
organization:
Number of processes defined (i.e., maps created)

Centralized coordination of process documentation and common processes
Employee understanding of standards for documentation
Employee understanding of common processes
Metrics identified and measured for most core processes
Since [the process group has] been in existence, weve always

saved a lot more annually than weve spent for the head count.
Sondra Holt, manager, business processes
Guiding Principles for Adopting a Process Framework
Based on its process management experience, the Williams E&P process group
offers the following suggestions to share with other organizations preparing to
undertake similar initiatives.
Do:
Use existing tools such as APQCs PCF as a foundation.
Align your framework with an existing business model.
Apply centralized governance of the frameworkparticularly for a program like
SOX that has to be managed at the corporate level.
Reinforce usage of the model in all aspects of process management and
optimization.
Create a framework that is transparent to the process owners. They dont need
all the details about it; they simply need to understand the logical process for
finding their documents.

page 141

Dont:
Overcomplicate the framework. Make it easy for people to find the documents
they need, and dont burden them with more than that.
Create a model thats not easily adjustable.
Make the framework a focal point. Holt says: If you went to [individuals at]
Williams E&P and asked, Do you use APQCs Process Classification
Framework?, they would say, What? They would not know. If you said to
them, Where do you find your procedures?, hopefully they would know that.
In addition, Williams E&Ps process group operates under the following guiding
principles for integrating knowledge management and business process
management.
Integrate process and knowledge management efforts consistent with the
business strategy and process model.
Begin with creating and optimizing business processes, and then focus on
knowledge management.
Treat knowledge management as part of the process and not a separate
initiative.
Align business processes, records, and knowledge management as a natural
progression.
Keep it simpleintegrate where and when it makes sense.
Ensure that the approach is practical, cost-effective, and non-disruptive to
normal business operations.
[Being non-disruptive] is so critical to our people in the field

because they dont have more people than they need, and theyre
focused on producing the output that theyre responsible for. So for
us to come in and try to give them days of training or lots of
explanation they just want to know what they need to do to get
it done.
Sondra Holt, manager, business processes
Future Plans
The process group believes there are local procedures it doesnt yet know about and
therefore has not documented. It believes it will uncover them during E&Ps

page 142

upcoming rollout of SharePoint. Every time the process group sets up a new
SharePoint site, it does an inventory of the documentation that site has. These
inventories should help the group detect local procedures it needs to learn about, as
well as promote the use of a central repository.
SharePoint will be a centralized place where employees, teams, and functions go to
work, collaborate, and find all of the documentation they need. SharePoint has two
kinds of sites: access team siteswhich are location-basedand process sites
which take the concept of the framework one step further. Each process that
identified through the framework has a dedicated site where people involved with it
can collaborate and work on their daily jobs. SharePoint will be available from the
E&P business units main intranet page.
Williams E&P plans to continue its journey toward becoming a more processfocused organization. It uses a chart based on APQC concepts (Figure 50) to show
its progress and its destination. When the business unit began its efforts in 2006, it
was just slightly beyond the level of a functional-based organization. Today it finds
itself within the process-focused section, with some progress still to be made.
Process-focused Progression at Williams
Figure 50
The target for Williams E&P is not to be process-based. Our culture wouldnt
enable us, we do not believe, to be totally organized by process, Holt says. That

page 143

would require each location to have individuals responsible for each process, rather
than having one director or manager responsible for the entire location. Although
Williams E&P has leaders in those process areas, it does not have single process
owners and does not foresee that changing in the future. This decision demonstrates
the importance of choosing an implementation strategy and setting goals based on
the specific characteristics and goals of an organization. The experience of Williams
E&P illustrates the benefits of committing to process thinking and organizing work
using a framework and adoption plan that fits the culture and business needs.

page 144
Using Business Process Management to ensure

safe and efficient operations at a leading oil
and gas production company
Client profile
The client is the worlds largest deep water
operator, with operations in 40 countries and
30,000 employees. The company produces 1.95
million barrels of oil equivalent (BOE) per day and
about 22 billion BOE in proven resources with 5.6
billion as booked reserves. It is one of the worlds
largest net sellers of crude oil, and is a world
leader in carbon capture and storage.
Business challenge
In the wake of a merger in 2007, the
company found itself managing a host of
both legacy and newly inherited business
processes, many of which were duplicative
or met varying process standards.
These processes were not only designed to
differing standards, but also were characterized
by several Business Process Management
(BPM) tools and environments. This mixture of
process standards and technologies hampered
the companys visibility into and control over
key tasks and workflowsincluding those
related to equipment maintenance, security,
environmental protection, and health and
safety. In an industry where the compliance
of processes and procedures with international
safety, health, and environmental regulations
is a major concern, the company saw a clear
need to improve its BPM capabilities.
Yet, despite an internal initiative aimed at

modeling the new entitys full range of business
processes and making them more accessible
and manageable, this energy company still
had a surplus of process standards and
repositories. It was aware of the improvements
to efficiency and transparency that would
result from a comprehensive transformation
of its BPM capabilities. In light of Accentures
deep BPM experience and central role in
the companys post-merger integration
efforts, it approached Accenture for help
bringing its BPM practices up to speed.
How Accenture helped

The companys goal was to establish a modern,
flexible and streamlined platform to support new
and improved BPM capabilities and serve as a
single, unified repository for all of the companys
business processes, process models and related
content. By doing so, the company hoped to
replace its multiple legacy BPM tools with one
best-of-breed platform that would unite all of
the companys processes under a single standard.
Accenture tapped into its substantial experience,
selecting and implementing BPM platforms to
support the companys comprehensive platform
selection process. This effort included identifying
specific requirements for the new platform,
narrowing down the field of potential vendors
and platforms to the best possible options, and
ultimately selecting IDS Scheers ARIS platform.
Realize value faster

While helping the company address
this immediate need, Accenture
concurrently worked with it to achieve
several of its longer-term BPM goals.
For instance, following its merger this
oil and gas producer became aware
of a multiplicity of BPM approaches
and resources within the organization.
Seeking a more efficient, standardized,
best-practice approach to BPM, the
company set out to create a global BPM
Center of Excellence (CoE) to act as a
single internal source of high-quality
BPM services. Accenture worked
closely with it to create this new
CoE, establishing optimized internal
standards for process management
and developing roles and setting
requirements for the centers staff.
Today, the companys new BPM CoE
supplies a growing range of superior
BPM services including providing
process owners with process modeling
services, planning and carrying out
modeling workshops, and delivering tool
support and business process model
conversions. Statoil is also planning to
expand the services offered by its BPM
CoE continually: Future services may
include process monitoring and control
and enterprise architecture modeling.
In addition to addressing these nearterm BPM challenges, the company
asked Accenture to help establish
an end-to-end BPM strategy that
would help the company address its
future needs. To that end, Accenture
conducted individual sessions with the
companys BPM leadership as well as
group workshops with process owners
and other key stakeholders to develop
a clear understanding of the companys
BPM capabilities, objectives, and
challenges. The output of this effort
was a comprehensive, holistic BPM
strategy that encompassed roadmaps
to the companys future BPM needs as
well as the governance and operation
of its process models. An important
element of this strategic BPM plan is
its enterprise architecture: the process
models and application landscapes
underpinning the companys processes
for the foreseeable future. To ensure

that the enterprise architecture can
support the companys business
processes adequately, Accenture
currently is helping the company identify
the most critical IT capabilities and
information concepts.
proposals and other BPM initiatives.

Similarly, the companys new globally
standardized approach to BPM helps
ensure that it enjoys a uniform level of
process quality regardless of where it
operates, thus accelerating its evolution
as an international energy leader.
High performance
delivered
Establish long-lasting
BPM solutions
Deliver measureable results

Offshore oil companies long-term
success depends upon careful control
over and visibility into the compliance
of their most important processes with
health, security and environmental
requirements. As a result of its work
with Accenture, the company has
taken a major step forward in this
area. Its newly harmonized and unified
business processes have improved the
transparency of these key processes
and their compliance with rules and
regulations. This, in turn, reduces the
companys risk, as well as the amount of
time and effort it must spend ensuring
process compliance.
The companys new BPM approach and
assets have increased its efficiency
and effectiveness while augmenting
the impact of its post-merger cost
reduction activities. For instance, by
identifying and eliminating duplication
and overlap between its BPM processes
and capabilities, the company has
reduced its operating costs as well as
improved the automation of key business
processes and their integration with
applications such as SAP. In addition,
the company is replacing four existing
BPM tools with one best-of-breed
solution based on the BPM strategy
that Accenture helped developwhich
will not only reduce the companys BPM
tools costs, but also will provide greater
visibility into ongoing cost-savings
opportunities in other process areas.
Most importantly, Accenture has helped

the company ensure that these advances
are baked into its corporate DNA
and will drive efficient and globally
consistent operations for years to come.
Its new BPM platform, CoE and strategy
have helped the company embed a
process of process management as
well as the ability to improve its BPM
practices continuously. In short, by
teaming with Accenture, this oil and gas
producer has gained a powerful new
capability that supports its long-term
pursuit of high performance.
About Accenture
Accenture is a global management
consulting, technology services
and outsourcing company, with
approximately 211,000 people serving
clients in more than 120 countries.
Combining unparalleled experience,
comprehensive capabilities across all
industries and business functions,
and extensive research on the worlds
most successful companies, Accenture
collaborates with clients to help them
become high-performance businesses
and governments. The company
generated net revenues of US$21.6
billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31,
2010. Its home page is
www.accenture.com
The companys new BPM CoE has also

has generated cost savings and efficiency
by allowing the company to right-size its
BPM staff and establish a single point
of contact for process improvement
Copyright 2011 Accenture
All rights reserved.
ACC11-0616
Accenture, its logo, and

High Performance Delivered
are trademarks of Accenture.

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Using Process Frameworks and Reference Models

to Get Real Work Done

Sponsor and Partner Organizations

Chapter 1: Getting Started

Chapter 2: Adoption, Governance, and Oversight

Chapter 3: Leveraging Tools

Chapter 4: The Framework Implementation Journey

Case Study: Cisco Systems, Inc.

Case Study: ING Life Japan

Case Study: Pitney Bowes

Case Study: UPS

Case Study: The Williams Companies, Inc.

Case Study: Oil and Gas Production by Accenture

2011 APQC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Using Process Frameworks and Reference Models

2011 APQC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Using Process Frameworks and Reference Models

2011 APQC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Using Process Frameworks and Reference Models

National Bank of Canada

2011 APQC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Using Process Frameworks and Reference Models

APQC (The American Productivity & Quality Center) has a

2011 APQC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Using Process Frameworks and Reference Models

2011 APQC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Using Process Frameworks and Reference Models

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Using Process Frameworks and Reference Models

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Using Process Frameworks and Reference Models

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Using Process Frameworks and Reference Models

2011 APQC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Using Process Frameworks and Reference Models

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Using Process Frameworks and Reference Models

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Using Process Frameworks and Reference Models

In terms of organizational components, a robust BPM capability often requires the

2011 APQC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Using Process Frameworks and Reference Models

ORGANIZATION OF THE REPORT

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Using Process Frameworks and Reference Models

2011 APQC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Using Process Frameworks and Reference Models

2011 APQC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Using Process Frameworks and Reference Models

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Using Process Frameworks and Reference Models

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Using Process Frameworks and Reference Models

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Using Process Frameworks and Reference Models

2011 APQC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Using Process Frameworks and Reference Models

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Using Process Frameworks and Reference Models

2011 APQC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Using Process Frameworks and Reference Models

Findings from APQCs 2010 Frameworks Survey