The APQC Blog
All Posts
Where Organizations Struggle with Process Improvement
Decision making, even with the best intentions, can be difficult, particularly when you have competing opinions and priorities. For example. What is the best course of action when you get a bonus check from work based upon your performance or the organization’s quarterly performance?…
What are End-to-End Processes?
Over the last four years, the need for end-to-end processes has become pervasive. In fact, it’s been the number one priority in BPM challenges and priorities since 2018. To further emphasize the drive to end-to-end, our need to holistically view how work gets accomplished was reinforced by the…
The 2 Biggest Challenges to Process Framework Implementation
Every two years APQC conducts a survey that explores process frameworks. How do people use them? What are their benefits? And where do folks get hung up during implementation? So, what did we find in this year’s survey? Overall, the applications and implementation of frameworks is…
All Great Processes Use a Framework
Process models take a variety of forms, and while I will not address them all, the two aspects of process modelling we see most often come in the form of process documentations (process maps, knowledge maps, RACI, SIPOC, etc.) and process frameworks. However, lets agree that regardless of…
Process Frameworks: The Backbone of BPM Efforts
Process work can be time consuming, fraught with conflicting perspectives, or teams don’t know where to start. One common way organizations can overcome these challenges is by using a process framework, like APQC’s Process Classification Framework® (PCF) as a reference guide. Process frameworks are…
What Makes A Process Effective?
One of the coolest digital inventions for the primary education system has been student/parent portals/apps. Whether you are a nosey parent OR trying to teach your child responsibility for their actions, grade portals are a great way to monitor and manage their performance. For example, my…
3 Ways to Make Organizational Agility a Reality
After a year of chaos and disruption, organizational agility is in the spotlight. Organizational agility is the ability to quickly identify and execute initiatives for opportunities and risks that align with the organization’s overall strategy. APQC’s research finds that an overwhelming majority of…
5 Biggest Benchmark Problems and How To Fix Them
As you may have heard from us a few times, benchmarking is a top tool used by leadership teams to support decision making. So, to dig into that topic, APQC surveyed over 200 professionals—across functional boundaries—to understand their benchmarking challenges. Benchmarking plays a vital…
Better Measurement: The Knowledge Worker Pickle
APQC’s founder, Jack Grayson, believed that true productivity encompasses both effectiveness and efficiency: “Efficiency measures if you are doing things right. Effectiveness concerns itself with whether you are doing the right things.” We have spent decades focusing on one half of the…
How to Start Benchmarking
The goal of benchmarking is simple: To learn what works and how to avoid unnecessary mistakes. The challenge, and where the confusion comes from, is how to apply benchmarking as an effective management tool within an organization. Benchmarking has been a widely used management tool for…