^The APQC Blog

Fifty years ago this week, Apollo 11 landed the first humans on the Moon. This remarkable achievement dominated newspaper headlines and was watched live by 20 percent of the world’s population. It positioned the United States as the winner of the space race and turned the spaceflight’s commander and pilot, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, into household names.

Last month I talked about how process frameworks can work like magic when implemented correctly. But, what I didn’t mention was how difficult it can be to pick which framework to use. With both cross-industry and industry-specific frameworks readily available, and several function-specific frameworks such as SCOR and ITIL, the choice of which framework to use can be perplexing.

APQC asked educators about things educational organizations overlook when trying to improve processes, struggles that made process improvement vital to their district, and the biggest benefits of improved processes . These experts will be speaking at APQC’s Process & Performance Management Conference October 3-4 in the Aligning Improvement to District Goals breakout session track.

Finding qualified talent is one of the biggest challenges for employers today. Our research shows that employers are in search of innovative ways to fill open positions. Chemical company BASF has found, and is having success with, a number of talent acquisition innovations. Recently, I interviewed BASF’s Heidi Gerhard, director of leadership, organizationl capability and culture, about how the organization has transformed its approach to hiring in ways that allow it to secure the best talent in a tight labor market.

Digital transformation is top of mind these days for not just finance, but across the enterprise. In fact, three-quarters of those responding to a recent APQC process and priorities survey said that they were undergoing a digital transformation in 2019, with the top justifications being to increase organizational efficiency, improve the customer experience, and enable better data management.

Last month, I had the honor of recognizing 13 of the best KM programs in the world at APQC’s 2019 KM Conference. These organizations worked their way through APQC’s evidence-based assessment for KM and submitted their data to be benchmarked against the 12 categories of KM capabilities. There were nine organizations recognized for KM business unit achievement and four organizations recognized for KM enterprise achievement.

Everywhere you look, companies are experimenting with digital transformation. According to APQC’s Measures of Digital Transformation research, around half are in the early stages of digital implementation: 17 percent are running pilots, 4 percent are evaluating recently completed pilots, and 28 percent are deploying their first wave of digital projects.

What is a Process?

Some people think branding is just “window dressing” for a KM program, but they’re wrong. A strong brand clearly conveys what KM is all about and why employees should care. An outstanding brand gets people excited and helps them feel personally connected to the KM effort. But as a quick Google search of “brand fails” will tell you, branding can be tricky. Big brands have made some major missteps in recent years. I won’t recount specific incidences here, but it’s easy to see the root cause behind most of them: not understanding the target audience.