Through growth, acquisitions, divisions, and reorganizations, documenting internal processes is imperative for retaining organizational knowledge and maximizing efficiency. Global technology giant Royal Philips has used its APQC membership to create and sustain a process management program that keeps productivity high, despite organizational change.
We asked Peter Keukelaar, IT quality lead at Philips, what he finds most valuable about APQC.
Describe an initiative that benefitted from your APQC membership.
I am using APQC's Process Classification Framework (PCF)® as a baseline for modeling the processes in our organization. Despite the fact that our organization and its governance and management structure are changing, the process structure and standardized core remain constant. Employees may become members of a different organization or a different part of the IT community, or they may have a different manager or position, yet they still know what to do and expect from each other. Using a process view instead of an organizational view helps people find their role and understand their responsibilities. Agreeing upon and standardizing a process helps us become more agile and reduce costs by simplifying our tools.
What tools, expertise, services, or information do you use the most?
In addition to the PCF, I go to APQC’s Resource Library for research on improving processes, looking for benchmarking studies and white papers on specific subjects so I can dive into areas.
The benchmarking information helps me focus on the right processes to address, so that we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. And it helps me showcase to management that we are already efficient in certain processes and explain where we have room for improvement.
How trustworthy is the data available from APQC?
APQC has a great network across organizations. The knowledge you get is a globally accepted standard. It’s quality, reliable information. APQC continuously looks at innovations and developments in the market and investigates if those can be useful and beneficial. That’s one of the areas where APQC is strong.
The people I know from APQC are all highly skilled professionals, and I value their opinion.