In September APQC conducted a survey to provide a better understanding of how some proposed structural changes, specifically centered on the procurement and products and service delivery sections, to APQC's Process Classification Framework® (PCF) would affect its end users. This infographic looks…

Corey Vickers, Logistics Category Manager at Chevron, previews his 2015 APQC Process Conference breakout session on the use of the LDSS solution. Chevron has been able to improve coordination and gain efficiencies resulting in tens of millions of dollars of reduced costs, and gain enterprise-wide…

Like many of you, as the weather cools and the summer fades, APQC is knee-deep in strategic planning. Since APQC has access to many best practices, we try to follow them. One is to conduct a premortem on planned investments, a technique borrowed from project planning, in which one attempts to…

When a large organization rapidly grows through acquisition, it acquires more than a new book of business. It also acquires the many processes each newly acquired company has been using to do its work. Very often, these processes are different from the way the parent company has always done things…

What is the key to improving an organization’s manufacturing activities? My colleague Andrea Stroud and I recently spoke on a webinar focused on the steps organizations can take to assess the current state of their manufacturing processes and identify areas for improvement. Many manufacturing…

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…

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…

‘What could possible go wrong’ when you ignore process tenets? Everything.  The world’s worst kept business secret is that most acquisitions fail. Depending upon what metric you use to evaluate success, mergers miss their intended goals as much as   85% of the time. With a…

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. In a recent interview, Nick shared with me that we don’t have to be charismatic to be a…

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…