The Relevance of Automation in Process Improvement

This guest blog has been provided by Mark McGregor of MWD. Mark is an industry analyst, based in the UK, who specialises in process improvement and business process management.

Mark has previously presented at a WITNESS User Conference and has most recently written the report ‘On the Radar: Lanner’. We are pleased to publish this blog by Mark, introducing some of his current research.

Process excellence appears to fall into two broad camps, those who perceive it as a technology discipline and take an automation approach, and those who see it as a management discipline and tend to avoid the use of automation technology.

Whatever industry we operate in and whatever market sector we address, it is hard to see how intelligent use of technology does not enable better products, better services and improved communications. However, as we all know technology applied to everything is not an answer, often it can cause as many problems as it solves.

IT or technology audiences are increasingly embracing the need to make better use of techniques such as Lean or Six Sigma, so as to ensure they carry out the required improvements before automation occurs. When we talk with clients, the results are quite stark, those who take the time to understand what they have, remove waste, then improve and finally automate get much greater success.

So what are the barriers that prevent those who carry out great work using techniques like Six Sigma or Lean from building upon their existing work and then going on to apply automation? And when automation does take place is BPMS the technology they use, or do we confuse automation with BPM?

In fact our own research suggests that when promoting around the area of process excellence you are likely to get between 5 and 10 times the response if you omit the three little letters BPM! So for some reason BPM is seen as a turn off by many in the process community.

In order to better understand how non-IT process practitioners view the world of BPM and process automation, MWD Advisors is currently undertaking a survey, and we would love to have you share your views. In return for participating we will share with you (free of charge) the resulting report.

So please click here and take the survey, it should only take you between 5 and 10 minutes.

About Mark

Principal Analyst for MWD's Process research program, Mark combines a wealth of experience as a seasoned BPM practitioner, a Six Sigma Black Belt and certified PRINCE2 practitioner with a talent for writing and analysis, having presented on and published hundreds of articles and papers on the subject of process modeling, Enterprise Architecture, BPM and process improvement. As a recognised industry expert, Mark has worked with and advised many leading software vendors in the BPM sector. In addition to his extensive written and consulting work, Mark is a highly rated and popular speaker and trainer, and has presented to thousands of people worldwide.