IT scenarios before & after OPEX BPM µBPO or from user dependency to control by the system

Although it is really heavy to accept, in fact everybody prefers better not to talk about, after enormous efforts that lasted not less than 30 years, one full generation, and veritable fortunes spent; the day to day operations of most of the traditional business depends, essentially, on what people is doing even manually or manually transferring information from one to another silo of information.

The following figure reflects this typical current scenario:

One could say, OK, no problem: “our competitors are more or less in the same situation”, “we have been very disciplined buying every single new miraculous tool that hardware and software vendors have recommended us, then, we are 100 % automated, really at the technological edge”, “why to change when we are leaders in our market, our sector, our segment, our town, our neighborhood or our “whatever”? 

Remember my words, one day these people will wake-up, have a look at the window and see a Google or Amazon drone knocking at the window glass trying to sell them at half the regular price the product they are so proudly and profitable selling in their close, protected, comfortable niche for years when not decades. 

This is not a nightmare, is just happening quarter after quarter in many different sectors they have been till now feeling fully protected forever with apparently indestructible barriers (distance, taxes, lack of information, human-local service required, language, regulations, size, excellent personal service or whatever, …). What happens that has destroyed this Arcadia? We could easily say: “Is the technology stupid”!

The question is: What do we have to do to compete with business born already 100 % automated? Surrender? Go on vacations? Retire yourself to the mountains? Just waiting this fashion will pass away? Change to another sector not yet under threat … for a while? 

The answer is very easy, innovate in business process automation, fight with the same arms, use your advantages being small flexible, quick deciders, imaginative … 

“But this requires very sophisticated knowledge out of our scope and supposes big investments affordable only for the biggest corporations, …”

Excuses! Look at the next figure:

 

You need only to install an additional technological piece between your current silos of information and your users, the BPM Layer, and make an intelligent use of your business knowledge and innovation skills by continuously applying the OPEX > BPM > µBPO value chain to your operations reducing your indirect personal costs by a 70 % as we resume in this last figure:

“But Sir, to follow your recommendation we would need to buy the different software and hardware pieces, integrate it, contract consultants technicians to develop our BPM applications and support all this infrastructure on a 24/7 level of service but we can’t afford this!” 

Not at all! Go BPaaS (Business Process as a Service), everything served from the cloud paying a monthly fee just for the demanded consumption of the required resources. With no investment at all, no delays, no minimums, no complications, no short-mid-long term compromises, paying on a monthly basis not more than one fourth (< 25 %) of the tangible savings obtained. 

Does it sounds good? Go ahead now! Don’t lose time, remember, a drone is on the way to your backyard, if you allow it to invade your business niche by not drastically improving your operations now, with no delay.

BPaaS served from the Cloud combined with µBPO strategy is becoming the coolest IT trend for attaining and sustaining Operational Excellence

The high demand from the organizations to attain an maintain competitive positions by cost effective optimization of their business processes, is leading to an aggressive adoption of Business Process as a Service (BPaaS) solutions for horizontal as well as vertical business processes. 

Through the creation of a feature-rich integrated platform delivering consistent business outcomes, BPaaS solutions on the Cloud are automating business processes by creating easy accessible workplaces using few internal Information Technology (IT) resources and much less internal IT infrastructure. 

 

As all type of organizations realize the necessity for increasing the agility of business processes, along with cost control measures, they are more and more discovering and exploring how to deploy cost effective BPaaS solutions for greater flexibility, informed decisions, and accelerated performance along with simplified operations. 

These BPaaS business solutions are crucial for increasing the transparency and effectiveness of business operations, and they lead and support the implementation of the “Extended Organization” concept. Indeed, these business solutions create virtual networks amongst employees, managers, directors, stockholders, agents, partners, distributors, suppliers, customers, students, fans, citizens, users, applications, systems, machines, sensors and other internal and external actors involved in the business ecosphere extended to the IoT (Internet of the Things) concept.

These nets of automated but previously formalized, normalized and optimized relations applying OPEX (Operational Excellence) methodologies, are being capable to deliver high value process outcomes and other benefits including: 24/7 global operations capabilities; real-time process monitoring, traceability and audit; simplified-optimized operations; supervision only by exception; and accelerated performance. 

In addition to the above, BPaaS solutions redefines the traditional Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) solutions by blending it with cloud technology and then allowing a very surgical outsourcing, not by full departments or processes as it was usual till now, but for just some specific process task at determined moments when it is convenient to outsource them in order to reduce its cost, insure specific SLAs for specific customers, cover internal resources defaults or satisfy non-planned picks on demand.

With the globalization of markets and the advent of the Cloud technology, organizations of all sizes are on the way of adopting BPaaS solutions to refine their business agility and to build cost effective business practices and, therefore, Business Process Management (BPM) solutions by applying the Optimization > Automation > micro-Outsourcing value chain, that we can summarize on the BPaaS concept, are not just expected to break through the initial cautious approach, but are also being considered as a solution for gaining the competitive edge through cost effectiveness and consistency of business outcomes across all processes.

In fact, this vision is confirmed by the consensus of different forecasts for global Business Process as a Service Market and Cloud BPM that is to grow by a factor of around 7 times during the next 5 years, which represents an average growing factor of 32 % per year.

 

µBPO or µOutsourcing culminates the proceedit’s value chain forwards to a sustainable Process Excellence

microBPO is the last step in the proceedit’s value chain (Optimization > Automation > µOutsourcing) that takes profit of the capacity to externalize a single task of a specific instance of each of our automated business processes depending on real-time automated decisions based on work-load picks, holidays, absences, less cost, …

To apply a microBPO strategy, the different process tasks are classified in three categories: the ones that always have to be done internally, the ones that shall always be done externally and the intermediate ones that can be outsourced or not, depending on the circumstances and guided in or out by predefined automatic process rules.

Many advantages came from this approach: of course, savings when outsourced tasks are clearly of low added value and mechanical, homogenization of the process cycles times and then having less troubles in accomplishing always the contracted SLAs, capacity to absorb expected or unexpected picks on demand or valleys on resources available to perform the process tasks, make easier to go to 24 / 7 hours operations, preparation of contingence plans (accidents, strikes, …).

microBPO is the hardest part of the whole trip because it needs to reinvent all business and it hurts a lot in the organization, but there is no other way, if you want to sustain a competitive advantage against businesses that have been born nearly 100 % automatic, real competitors of the “physical” companies. 

Therefore, when it appears that the company has done everything (optimize and automate) the hardest part begins, try to outsource as much as possible and as cheap as possible (while maintaining quality and SLAs) but not always varying a lot depending on the circumstances of the moment, trying to obtain the most profitable combination of internal and external resources, a real never-end challenge.