Risk within the supply chain has become a growing concern for many organizations. Although natural disasters such as tsunamis and inclement weather often get the most attention, organizations should also be concerned with risks that can impact the systems supporting their day-to-day operations. One…

This month, the Busines Performance Innovation (BPI) Network published a report, Innovation: The New Competitive Equation. The report examines innovation strategies and roadblocks in today's enterprise. According to the report, 79% of survey respondents currently rate their companies'…

As we started to prepare for 2015, APQC surveyed over 300 business excellence practitioners to understand their common challenges and priorities for upcoming year, including project management. What we found was that project managers continue to struggle with several project portfolio challenges,…

Lessons from SAS, One of the World’s Best Workplaces. Business analytics and software provider SAS is well known for using HR analytics to improve its own performance as well as its clients’ performance. Jennifer Nenadic, Manager of Enterprise Analytic Services at SAS, will be sharing HR…

I was recently able to speak with Jim DeLoach, a managing director at Protiviti, about how the implemention of the updated Committee of Sponsoring Organizations (COSO) Internal Control – Integrated Framework (Framework) during 2014 has been an important endeavor for many public companies in their…

In the first three installments of this blog series we’ve discussed practical and tactical steps to: Standardize your process descriptions using APQC’s Process Classification Framework Determine who truly owns each process step And identify the knowing/doing gap in your processes The…

In my last musings, I pondered the impending death of knowledge management but never really came to a conclusion regarding its health: that is, whether or not we find it today on life support. The reason was due to a trip down memory lane, but that’s simply because I see that the parallels between…

As a trained researcher, I’ve always been fascinated with using quantitative methods to predict human behavior in a number of settings. Although different business functions such as finance, logistics, and marketing are more mature in their use of predictive analytics to guide their business…

APQC recently talked to Beth Houlis, manager, knowledge management and information technology at Liberty Mutual Insurance, about the challenges her organization faced in building a knowledge management program from the ground up. Beth discusses the keys to making a business case, getting funding,…

Knowledge sharing networks and communities of practice are way more fun than organization restructuring. Networks and communities flatten the status structure and create cross-silo knowledge flows without the pain and disruption of reorganizing. I was reminded of this following my Big Thinkers, Big…