At the 14th of October the second BPM theme day for the SAP user group was organized in the Netherlands. More than 260 participants visited this BPM theme day although it was at the same day as the SAP World Tour (with 400 participants) was held.This means that BPM is getting more and more important for the SAP customers.
The agenda highlighted the main topics of the day: the cooperation between BPM and SAP and the added value of BPM .
The theme of the day was: Will the CIO be replaced by the Chief Processing Officer?
 |
In particular, the integration of the Business Excellence department and the SAP Competence Center was addressed within the keynote and several parallel sessions.
The BPM framework was used to create the agenda of the BPM theme day:
| Topics | Speakers |
| Keynote : From CIO to CPO | Professor of the University of Amsterdam |
| Track 1 Customers | |
| From functions to processes | Chief Processing Officer - Heineken corporation |
| How to organize the business with an SAP implementation | QA manager - Cofely |
| From process description to BPM | BA - hospital Maastricht |
| From strategy to maintenance | BA - Army NL |
| Track 2 How to develop a vision on BPM architecture | |
| How can we make BPM more consumable? | SAP NL |
| What are the benefits of BPM ? | IDS Scheer NL |
| SAP Enterprise Architecture Framework and TOGAF | SAP NL |
| Enterprise BPM vision 2010 | IDS Scheer Corporate |
| Track 3 How to utilize BPM | |
| The power of combining Lean Six Sigma, BPM and SAP | Six Sigma - Master Black Belt |
| The synergy of BPM, Process Performance Management & BI | IDS Scheer NL |
| From Business Process Modeling to Business Process Monitoring | SAP Solution manager |
| Risk-driven approach to an Internal Control System | SAP NL |
| Keynote : The SAP BPM roadmap | SAP NL |
| Forum discussion : The future of BPM within SAP | Speakers |
Forum discussion Questions;
During the forum discussion at the end of the day the following 5 provocative statements were discussed:
1. Netweaver BPM is a 5th generation programming environment which will replace the SAP workflow functionality.
2. BPM will be used by for maximum 10% of the business processes, all other processes will be handled by the traditional SAP environment
3. The implementation of a holistic BPM vision will not be implemented because the objectives of the SAP competence center and the business process excellence departments are too far away.
4. The ROI of BPM is not clear, therefore BPM will be another hype.
5. The business processes will determine the required ICT functionality, therefore in the future CPO will be directing the CIO.
Forum discussion results:
After a lot of discussion the main results were from my point of view:
1. For now Netweaver BPM is using the ESR (Enterprise Service Repository) and SAP workflow is using the SAP transactions, but in future the Netweaver BPM environment could be replacing the SAP workflow environment.
2. BPM should describe all E2E processes and not only a percentage (~10%) of the processes within the BPM Netwaver Composite Environment or other BPMS execution environments. The business process description is actually much more important for process improvements then just the technical process descriptions.
3. The SAP competence center should be more aware that the business is paying the ICT bills (ICT will become more and more a commodity) and the cooperation is vital to improve the business results. The Business Process Expert should be able to discuss more and easier with the business by using SAP Enterprise Modeling (ARIS) to close the gap between business and ICT.
4. The scope of the BPM roadmap should be clear, based on this scope a generic ROI calculation is possible which can support the business to make the right decisions.
5. The CIO should integrate the business process excellence initiatives within his organization in this way he will get full support of the Business Process Owners and BPM governance manager(CPO).
Conclusion:
The Dutch SAP User Group thinks that the CIO will not be replaced by the Chief Processing Officer because of the skills required to manage a SAP competence center and ICT infrastructure, however he should focus on the alignment with the Business Excellence programs to ensure his creditability. BPM skills will become more and more crucial to survive.
