Each year APQC surveys process professionals to understand their priorities and challenges for the upcoming year. For at least the past three years, the top three priorities and challenges have remained the same – process management, continuous improvement, data and measurement. Do you think 2025 will be the year we see a shift, or do you think they’ll stay the same for another year? This blog recaps what I’ve heard throughout 2024 and covers my thoughts for the year ahead.
During 2024, I hosted roundtables, conducted surveys, and had many conversations with APQC members, and through these interactions I heard some common themes – digital, benchmarking, streamlined approaches, continuous improvement and KPIs.
Digital
Process professionals continue to ask how organizations are investing in digital capabilities as well as use cases within process management for things like artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI. In February, we conducted a survey to better understand the role of digital tools and technologies in the process area.
Here are a few highlights from the survey findings:
- 96% of those surveyed said their organization has digital investments planned in the next 18 months, in areas such as data management, advanced analytics, AI, and intelligent automation.
- 40% of survey participants noted they have identified specific use cases for AI, while 16% are not currently addressing the internal use of AI technologies.
- While most organizations are not currently investing a lot of money in AI (only 9% have made significant investments), 79% of respondents feel that there will be an increase in investment in the next 12-18 months.
We are asking a handful of the same questions including where organizations plan to invest in digital tools and technologies and the challenges faced when implementing new technologies, and I’m eager to compare data and see how trends have either shifted or stayed the same. My prediction is that organizations will continue to invest the same, if not more, in digital tools and technologies, and there will be some more established use cases on how they plan to use or are already implementing AI within the process function.
Benchmarking and Continuous Improvement
Often, organizations mention they are working to streamline process management work across functions. Some centralized process programs have the benefit of streamlining operations in a centralized fashion; however, organizations that are more hybrid or decentralized have a bit heavier lift when it comes to implementing standards organization-wide. Based on our 2024 process programs research:
- 44% of organizations follow a centralized approach, while 14% are decentralized. 29% follow a federated, or hybrid approach.
- Organizations that are centralized tend to see themselves as more effective than those that are federated or decentralized.
- Decentralized organizations are the least likely to have an annual roadmap or documented strategic plan for process management, while centralized and federated organizations see more connection to organization strategy and process management.
Benchmarking is another topic that I hear a lot of organizations mention. They are either knee-deep in benchmarking efforts or trying to figure out how to benchmark. Some organizations benchmark internally or externally, while some organizations benchmark both internally and externally. Our 2024 process programs research found that one-third of organizations don’t benchmark at all, while 31% benchmark both internally and externally.
The type of benchmarking efforts will vary by organization – whether it’s practices or KPIs, organizations can learn a lot from APQC’s research and case studies so they don’t reinvent the wheel every time they want to start something new, or need to determine where their organization is on the scale of process management maturity.
While benchmarking typically falls as the least important topic in our priorities survey, I think it’s a critical sub-topic found in the number one and two priorities – process management and continuous improvement. As the marketplace is becoming more competitive, I’m interested to see if benchmarking moves up from the bottom spot in our 2025 survey.
KPIs
Key performance indicators (KPIs) is a topic I hear on almost every interaction I have with process professionals. Organizations are either working to establish KPIs, finding ways to get buy-in for the KPIs, or looking for ways to improve their KPIs. On our 2024 survey, we had a large number of questions about operational KPIs and organizations noted the top five operational priorities:
- Improve performance
- Ensure quality and consistency
- Optimize resource allocation
- Reduce cost
- Boost revenue
Additionally, survey participants noted they look to the following criteria for selecting KPIs:
- Direct impact on organization objectives
- Historical use by the organization
- Ease of collection/analytics of the data
- Ability to track trends over time
I’m interested to see if the trends are aligned with the 2024 data.
In Summary
2024 has been a fast year, and I can’t believe we are already talking about 2025. I have had great conversations throughout the year with process professionals – both in person at our annual conference, and virtually through various meetings, roundtables, and webinars. I look forward to continuing conversations in 2025 and learning more about where the process management discipline is headed.