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BPCCs can lead business process innovation

Malcolm Ross, Senior Vice President, Product Strategy, Appian
April 17, 2013

Business process innovation projects often face a few common challenges across organizations that employ them. One of the most common process improvement challenges stems from the need to create continuity and oversight over a company's process initiatives. Having a business process competency center (BPCC) in place within a corporation can ease this challenge, TechTarget reported.

Speaking at the recentGartner Business Process Management Summit, Gartner'sBruce Robertson explained that a BPCC can take all of the isolated gains associated with business process management projects in different departments and unify them into a common thread that impacts the entire organizationfor the better.

Taking a close look at BPCCs

According to TechTarget, Gartner believes that just a small number of companies are actually using BPCCs, but those that are end up benefiting substantially from the arrangement. As a result, organizations should take a closer look at how they can use a BPCC setup to improve their process management efforts. Robertson told audiences at the conference that a BPCC plays a primary role in making process innovation repeatable and standardized. This is key because many process projects within businesses are isolated from one another and end up running into major limitations whencrossing functional or organizational boundaries. A BPCCprovides the oversight necessary to connect process projects and standardize operations across the company to make them more repeatable.

There are a few ways to establish a BPCC, but regardless of how it is set up, a few things are constant across all organizations. The report said BPCC success hinges on being able to establish an executive champion who will take an active role in the entire matter. Roberson explains that getting a champion is vital for almost any corporate project, but BPCCs need a champion who is in it for the long haul, not just to get the system on its feet. Other key BPCC considerations include balancing personalities and skills onthe BPCC team, fostering process development consistency and focus on evolving operations constantly over time.

Choosing the right BPM solution

BPM can be deployed as enterprise social software, to support mobile business processes or get the most out of the cloud. A BPCC setup can help organizations unify these diverse BPM projects. Having the right overarching software system in place can make the entire unification much simpler. Appian BPM solutions are designed to offer organizations a holistic foundation for BPM, making it an ideal fit as the technological solution that goes alongside a BPCC setup.

Malcolm Ross

Vice President of Product Marketing