APQC was fortunate enough to interview Tim Hueneman , a Senior Principal with Trexin Consulting (www.trexin.com), specializing in business architecture and process management. He blogs at BPM: Theory to Practice. Tim talked about the challenge of connecting ‘Big Data’ and BPM.
APQC: You wrote in March about the intersection of Big Data and BPM. Why in your experience do organizations sometimes not realize new analytics from big data need great process management for the project to be successful?
Tim Heuneman: Analytics need to be actionable to be useful –all the data experts would tell you that. As more and more data is captured and dissected and analyzed, the action part of the equation can easily be overlooked or mismanaged. And the actions are of course parts of your processes, whether people think about it that way or not. There’s also the data management side – that itself requires process management. But the “insight to action” part is the real gap.
APQC: You mention that some managers tend to be ‘data people’ while some are ‘process people’. Since we are talking process improvement what are the most important things a process person needs to know about data to make sure a Big Data project succeeds?
TH: I think process people need to learn to be part of both camps, to bridge the two topics. Get some knowledge about analytics and the use of Big Data. Understand that there can be a lot of noise in data that isn’t useful. Just like with process statistics. So the data needs focus to get at relevant results. Expect that “Aha!” moments will come, and managers will want to react quickly. These moments can be unpredictable. Also, I would say don’t get hung up too early with the “how” or all the possible process variations.
APQC: What are the keys to making sure the technology you use for Big Data connects with and improves your business process?
TH: At an operational level, you can design specific questions that the data analysis can answer, giving you the guidance for making decisions within process logic. For that, ideally you would have integrated technology platforms. Beyond that, I think it’s more about the technology being cost-effective and useful. Good analytics as an input to process analysis and improvement.
APQC: Without naming names can you tell us about the best examples you have seen where BPM and Big Data combined to deliver the desired results? And where it didn’t?
TH: I think it’s still rare for BPM and Big Data to be part of the same initiative. Having said that, I have seen success in fraud detection – in the financial industry. With much more data available than in years past, and available relatively quickly, the processes for fraud detection and investigation were really improved. That includes both automated and manual processes.
Here’s an example where the results weren’t there. A company tried to analyze decades of customer, manufacturing, and supply chain data to improve their planning and forecasting. It was unwieldy and didn’t end up changing how they did the work.
APQC: Finally, what do you anticipate the relationship between BPM and Big Data will look like in 5 years?
TH: I think the massive research-oriented Big Data work will still be pretty much disconnected from BPM. But I think more and more Applied Big Data, if I can use that term, will be integrated with BPM efforts and BPM technology.
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