Is BPM trending Outside-In?

April 08, 2010

Through 2009 we ran a survey, for a large part in conjunction with LinkedIn. Thank you to all the contributors especially so the BP Group (www.bpgroup.org) membership.

More than 260 people took the time to respond and produced the following result. A selection of supporting comments and authors reveals a startling trend as business process management as a purely ‘inside’ the organisation activity, to one now best reflected in the phrase “the customer experience is the process”. This latter view coined ‘Outside-In’ fundamentally changes every aspect of the way we do business in terms of people, processes, strategy and technology. The next poll will build on this understanding….

Comments include:

BPM will never die. It may change names and technology, but never die. It is essential for continuous improvement. Without continuous improvement an organization dies.

Process improvement is essential, however the vernacular will continue to evolve.

I voted for the outside-in approach by definition (after attending your excellent training). I think, that those three BPM should be separated EXPLICITELY — this will help us to move from current vendor-centric BPM to correct customer-centric BPM. Thanks, AS

“Encouraging” results. Good to know that enterprises and specialists are converging to an approach that delivers value. Successful BPM has to be is client-oriented / ”outside-in”. (I know … some still disagree …). If possible Top-Down. Never a Technology. Regards, NMusa

It’s crazy that so many organisations still focus on the inside-out approach. It seems that fundamental marketing practises are forgotten as soon as we get to work. I still recall Kotler from my MBA over 10 years ago defining marketing as understanding and producing what the customer wants… When we link our internal processes and architecture to truly deliver that then we succeed!

Imagine designing anything from the inside out. What is the likelihood that if you had all the components of a car designed separately that it would ever fit together? What if you designed a house by having people design each room and then see how they fit together. A design principle is: Top Down Outside In.