A Business Process Management (BPM) approach with our customer Business Orange Service

On last Wednesday, we met our customer Business Orange Service in order to see whether we could fit with their current network lifecycle project. We expected to meet them in a well known world that is business integration, end to end processes from the make to order, the network building with workflow tasks until the final customer billing. We expected them to explain us how their business works and which are the main features and processes they really need to achieve their goals. In short, we were expecting from them an ERP approach.

Unfortunately we landed on an unknown land ("Terra Incognita" ) and our host mainly discussed about process concept (BPM) as :

Managing endlessly all the processes along the chain

Synchronizing between processes ,sub processes and linking chain ( a set of processes that are reusable)

Defining the rules between process and sub processes

Assigning the resources needed for processes and managing by Workflow the task assignment

Optimizing the link between processes and task in order to produce the service at the right date wished bey the customer

Maintaining the actual predictability ( What + Who + When ) when the process is instanced and each time it’s possible.

Decomposing existing process modelling into process and sub process to enhance re usability at several levels

Creating the appropriate range of synchronized task in order to produce a service (addition, change, modification, cessation, migration, move)

Supporting lean and six sigma business strategies

All this point above are not inconsistent with the ERP approach (although their own approach was more focused on the flexibility requirements than the ability to organize and structure processes as ERP use to do) but what struck us, I and my colleague is that we didn't discuss really about their business but only about abstract processes and sub processes concept without touching the field reality. May be it is a part of the new reality i mentioned in this blog a few weeks ago and therefore we have to adapt ourselves to this new kind of approach( interesting anyway ! )

But at the end of this meeting they really killed us by powerpoint !!!