^The APQC Blog

Budget season can be difficult for financial professionals. The combination of resource allocation under strict deadlines creates an unenviable, annual responsibility. While budgeting may be difficult, it does not have to be an ordeal to suffer through. Proper planning and targeted budget scope can help reduce the time organizations spend on budget iterations before finalization.

As I sat thinking about companies that have been making headlines for finding innovative ways to deliver orders on time, Amazon comes to mind. Many have heard the headlines about Amazon’s drone’s, its one-hour delivery service, and rapid expansion into transportation logistics. Next week at CSCMP’s 2015 Annual Conference  the session It’s Still Day 1 For Amazon fulfillment is taking place.

‘What could possible go wrong’ when you ignore process tenets? Everything. 

The world’s worst kept business secret is that most acquisitions fail.

I know I am not Steve Jobs. But I am a pretty good version of myself. According to Nick Tasler, change management consultant and keynote speaker at APQC's upcoming 2015 Process Conference, that might be ok.

Below is a video made by Carrie Tracy, senior knowledge manager at RelayHealth (McKesson Corporation), previewing her breakout session at the 2015 APQC Process Conference October 29-30. In this great cartoon, she gives a sneak peak of her session, including the concerted process design that has enabled RelayHealth to optimize internal knowledge transfer so that learners retain the correct level of information while instructors understand the audience and deliver the right information to the right people at the right time.

What are the challenges in integrating Lean and financial planning analytics to achieve breakthrough process improvements? Brian Higgins, Principal at Management Resource Technologies talked to APQC about that and how Management Resource Technologies created over create over $30 million in financial improvements.

Have you noticed how hard it is to get rid of things even though you never use them? Think about the last time you cleaned out your closet or garage. Are you still holding on to an out of style sweater or a bicycle you never seem to get around to riding?

Psychologists call this common human weakness “the endowment effect” because we endow things we already own with more value than we would otherwise. It makes it very hard to let go of something probably not serving you anymore.

What is the key to creating and maintaining a quality benchmarking methodology?

APQC recently talked to Kathryn Kendall and James Moore of MSS Management Consulting about best practices for quality benchmarking. Among the topics discussed were mistakes people make, engaging senior staff, and identifying right KPIs.  

Kathryn and James will present “On the Road to Quality with Benchmarking Best Practices” a breakout session at APQC’s 2015 Process Conference on October 29-30.

Over the years thousands of people around the world have downloaded APQC's Process Classification Framework® (PCF) . Most of them have a clear problem they're trying to solve, while others are just curious or are doing research. One thing we have clearly understood over time is generally what people are doing with the PCF once they download it.

Due to the popularity of its recent webinar Best Practices in Data Visualization, APQC conducted a short poll to guide its thinking on additional research content in data analytics and visualization. This infographic is a summary of the findings on the top data analytics and visualization topics and the context areas (e.g., process management or knowledge management) for the topics.