^The APQC Blog

I was able to talk to Ronald G. Ross Co-Founder & Principal, Business Rule Solutions, LLC and
Executive Editor, Business Rules Journal, about how to build a better business process model and why having too many rules can be a problem.

What is the main reason people still focus on making traditional process models?

The workplace of the future won’t be a place at all. It will be anyplace, anytime, by any technology. Of course, the mantra of “always on, always connected” is well known by many already so why aren’t we there yet? It’s about the business rules; the rules that have yet to be written. To wit, one organization creates an email moratorium rule in order for people to focus on other things. Another goes even further by attempting to eliminate email altogether. Another creates a rule that says instantaneous responses to colleague requests are expected.

It is probably old news to you, but I was taken aback to read an article in Wall Street Journal (WSJ) written August 4, 2014 by Laura Stevens. It said that Fed Ex and UPS use the U.S. Postal Service to deliver many of their ground packages, and Amazon is leveraging our dear old USPS, too. According to the WSJ, “For FedEx alone, the post office delivers an average of 2.2 million packages a day, or about 30% of the express-mail company's total U.S.

Harold Strawbridge, Director of Innovation of Inglis talks about the keys to building the right kind of process map such as asking the right questions, finding the right people to do it, and keeping people engaged in process improvement.  Harold will be a presenter at the 2014 APQC Process Improvement Conference October 16-17.

You can find Harold on Twitter @strawbridge3rd.

The complex nature of doing business in a global market can be a challenge for organizations’ supply chains. Supply chain experts have encouraged organizations to become adaptable so that they can maintain an advantage over competitors, and many companies have responded by stepping up their efforts. Organizations are turning more toward data visibility, data analysis, and collaboration to enable them to better anticipate market changes.

I recently talked to Claude Legrand, managing partner of Ideaction, Inc. to find out what makes companies leaders in innovation and what makes other companies struggle.

APQC: What sets successful companies in innovation apart from the rest?

Legrand: Knowledge about the innovation process is the key differentiator between innovative companies and other companies. Companies that innovate systematically understand how innovation happens; they innovate on purpose and in very structured and organized ways.

“I’ll build a computer and download my knowledge in it,” says Scarlett Johannson in the new movie Lucy. Yes, this is a sci-fi film with a fantastical premise, but when I heard this line my brain went straight to thinking how mobile technology can enable effective knowledge and content management. Let me tell you how I got there.

Though Agile’s roots are in software development organizations, changes in the business environment (e.g., growing power of customer, rapid pace of technology, and shorter business cycles) are driving organizations to look at additional ways to apply Agile. Components of Agile’s methodology (e.g., customer collaboration, rapid production, and flexibility) allow organizations to address many of the changes in the business environment. This infographic explores some of the key characteristics of Agile that can be applied to other functions like project management or marketing.

The most memorable words of advice I’ve heard for people leading change is to play out your hunches; roll with the punches; and make the best of what comes your way. It’s catchy and easy to say, but much more difficult to figure out the science and art of “hunches and punches.”  How do KM leaders get leaders at all levels in the organization ready for changes that inevitably come from building a program focused on helping knowledge flow? 

APQC recently published an article entitled End-to-End Mapping of an Order-to-Cash Process. The idea was to illustrate the workflows in each stage of the end-to-end process as well as depict how upstream activities can have an impact—positive or negative—on the ultimate speed at which inventory is converted into cash.