^The APQC Blog

What do a Ferris wheel, a bowling alley, and a rock wall have in common? Believe it or not, these are office luxuries at companies such as Acuity, Infosys, and Adobe Systems. And these add-ons aren’t unusual; there are plenty of organizations that have created jaw-dropping work environments. Need a quick nap at work? No problem, the company Autodesk has rooms designed exclusively for napping. If you enjoy office happy hours consider working at the company Red Frog, which features an in-house bar. For the adventurous employee, the vertical ladder chute at Google might be appealing.

If you’re reading this blog, it’s probably because you’re a process person. You understand that almost every business need can be addressed through better management of how people do their work. But for everyone that gets it, there’s often several that don’t.

And I believe they don’t get it because they have a basic misunderstanding of what process management is. How do I know? Because I listen to their excuses…all the time.

My favorite reasons executives are dismissive of process management include claims that:

During one of the general sessions at APQC’s 2015 Process Conference a couple of weeks ago, the question came up, “How do you quantify the benefit of knowledge management (KM)?”

One of the top competitive issues facing companies today is the need to become an agile, digital business. Yet, most companies are failing to make the transformation. 

Risks to IT systems and their potential effects on the supply chain have been of concern for organizations, and this shows no signs of going away. A 2014 APQC study showed that many organizations have experienced some kind of IT disruption that affected the supply chain and that organizational leaders are concerned about a variety of IT disruption risks.

That same study indicated organizations use different practices to manage risk, including:

The following conversation is derived from my recent sit-down with Accenture Strategy’s David Axson, one of America’s leading thinkers when it comes to the transformation of the finance function. Mr. Axson will share his latest research and advice on APQC’s financial management webinar Finance 2020: the Rise of Analytics Competency on December 9, 2015. Wrap up the year with an eye on the future of finance. Register here http://bit.ly/1lHvGJK

According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, retail e-commerce sales for the 3^rd quarter of 2015 were 7.4% of total retail sales—a 15.4% increase from the same quarter a year ago. What does this mean for the traditional brick-and-mortar retailers? It means they are facing stiff competition from organizations with shorter, faster, and cheaper supply chains.

Last month, I had the pleasure of co-presenting at WTG’s 13^th Annual Logistics and Supply Chain Summit with Oliver York, replenishment analyst within product order management for The Coca-Cola Company, for a session on incorporating Millennials into the supply chain field.

At APQC we often discuss the benefits of process management (PM) and knowledge management (KM). From our perspective, the two disciplines are intricately intertwined. After all, processes require the knowledge and experience of an organization’s employees to be successful and knowledge management is most successful when it aligns with and supports the business of the organization, which often is represented in its core business processes.

Hey folks, Tesmer here. We’ve been super busy this year working on great things for you in the Process Classification Framework^®(PCF) world, including updates to all of the industry specific frameworks, a brand new cross-industry framework, and MosaiQ^TM