Beyond Reengineering
With the above;
Create loosely coupled business processes, and tap the potential beyond the enterprise boundary.
Flexibility, cooperation and financial capacity has quickly become the company's key business objectives, but if these goals can not really implanted in the core business processes and corporate culture, just slogan.
The old business processes can not geese are swans, development across the boundaries of the new company business processes is imperative. 'Loosely coupled business processes' (loosely coupled Business processes) is a step towards a new direction.
Extend processes beyond the enterprise
Traditional business processes and roles are often constrained by the boundaries of enterprises, rely on specific information for specific management, which in the management of common reality. On the contrary, in the 'loosely coupled business processes' in the will span multiple companies, such as supply chain management, an industry across several levels; customer relationship management is necessary to introduce a professional third party to do customer support. Managers and their subordinates must show sufficient flexibility in order to play the greatest potential of these systems.
The characteristics of new business processes
'Loosely coupled business process' is often defined by entity: Which companies should join? Respective roles? And the initial results. For example, within a specified time to what matters must be completed? This business process is more selective use of data, when poor performance in the enterprise can advance warning. It is because of these characteristics, 'loosely coupled business processes' involved in the roles, rules and methods of updating, only very different from traditional business processes.
Eager to implement the role of business process reengineering managers soon discovered that if a business process, there is no clear 'head' --- a powerful, has the responsibility to achieve the desired business benefits to senior management, in order to obtain any how difficult it is progress. However, the coordination of multiple business activities between enterprises even greater challenge, because power is too dispersed. Range of business processes become more and more widely, the number and types of companies have increased the effective role of non-coordination can be handled by one person, you need a lot of people to complete.
The apparel industry supply chain, for example, imagine the difficulty of coordinating multiple business activities it: raw materials supply, specialized textile and weaving, cutting and sewing, packaging, and logistics services, to be strung with a very flexible way of all these service providers, designers and buyers can meet individual requirements. Li & Fung, a sales reached 3.2 billion dollars in Hong Kong trading company, under the pressure of competition is a rising star, it is to write the song's orchestral complex business processes Chapter.
Li & Fung and designers, buyers cooperation, each garment production line to determine the exact combination partners. And Li & Fung in the process of cooperation, all the other companies are service providers, in the entire part of the supply chain to contribute their expertise.
Business management business process rules of the traditional method is to specify which activities must be completed, and then tell managers the detailed information as possible, so that business processes to ensure efficiency, security and predictability.
The 'loosely coupled business processes' is not clear details of the business process activities, but stressed that the end product at different stages of the process characteristics. It does not attempt to control every step of the activity, but through the selection of qualified service providers, the establishment of a reasonable reward and punishment system to ensure that their performance.
Cisco Systems is 'loosely coupled business processes' in customer relationship management applications, an example of application of these principles in the management of the Cisco Connection Online, organize and mobilize the power of hundreds of professional channels to provide customers with personalized service. First, Cisco Connection Online customer needs assessment, and provide to customers through a range of service providers identified, providing services including: consulting, configuration, implementation, installation, training and operation of Cisco equipment. Cisco's service provider clearly the desired results, giving them appropriate incentives to ensure high quality, but Cisco is not in the whole process every step of the control of suppliers is very dead, on the contrary, it has been their The success of the framework gave full trust.
Method with its advantages of flexibility, 'loosely coupled business processes' dig out more and more significant potential for operational improvement, because this approach emphasizes the process of phased requirements and the performance and requirements of these stages were up, so its Designers will be able to provide a catch-up goal.
Toyota for the automotive industry and major suppliers to create a cooperative business processes first of its kind, in its main assembly plant has a dedicated focus on meeting room provider, every week, Toyota will be the performance of the various suppliers posted out of control with the requirements stage, this approach caused a lot of pressure to the supplier, because the actual performance and expected performance gap is clearly out there, they must quickly reduce and eliminate these disparities.
Information technology support
This new management approach is particularly necessary efforts to promote IT team, because they can release the hidden economic value of technology to enable enterprises in an increasingly competitive environment to succeed. To take advantage of this opportunity, IT teams have to learn to play a leading role in a new, positive role to play in the enterprise, to change their CEO and other senior managers and the way to deal with.
Today, most businesses lack the new technology applications and management skills, skills of the 'node start' (node ??enablement), it is the existing IT resources as a potential network service resources; skills of the second is' node management '(node ??Management), management of nodes in order to ensure validity, reliability and problem-solving skills; skills of the third is' service grid outsourcing' (service-grid Outsourcing), determine the correct combination of authorized services, from professional suppliers get the service, and ultimately support the applications. These skills must be effectively integrated into the more traditional IT skills to go, such as system architecture, network operations, database management, security management and application integration.
Loosely coupled business processes, 'including the increasing number of companies to ensure effective coordination is an important challenge is how to optimize the development of many enterprises' shared meaning (shared meaning)' the concept. In some cases, IT teams can develop their own company's unique ability to support the 'loosely coupled business processes' running. Such as General Motors dealers to provide some of its key financial and inventory management, application information, hoping to allow them to share certain services.
As large companies like General Motors and small companies in the time, often find themselves strong IT function is an asset to small companies to share the wealth as a major reason to attract them.
'Loosely coupled business process' for both information dissemination and knowledge to build a broad platform. Can help IT teams capture and release information needed to make the process work of the participants found the gaps and lack of resources, information flow can be designed
Improve the process for all participants in the short term and long-term business performance of the business learning opportunities.
Web services technology in various applications to provide a more loose connections between, to help us with greater flexibility and better cooperation to respond to business needs. But the Web services technology, but is a way to loosely coupled in today's globalization, deregulation and trade liberalization, produced under the pressure of competition, in turn loosely coupled approach, you need to cross over the identity of service providers, master a different approach to managing business processes, if we can successfully complete this change, you can easily adapt to the challenges of flexibility and cooperation.