1. Outside-In is a philosophy and method of managing an organisation by understanding and
delivering Successful Customer Outcomes.
2. Outside-In Process optimizes value-delivery to customers. By fusing customer-driven process with customer-centric strategies, O-I creates successful customer outcomes (SCOs) – the foundation for achieving sustainable growth and profitability in an increasingly buyer-driven marketplace.(Customer ProcessOne Council, May 2010)
There are many accreditations in the process space. This BP Group community is sponsored by www.bpgroup.org which in turn advocates the Certified Process Professional qualification ( http://www.certifiedprocessprofessional.com ).
There are five levels of recognition: • Certified Process Practitioner (CPP-Practitioner) • Certified Process Professional (CPP-Professional) • Certified Process Master (CPP-Master) • Certified Process Advanced Master (CPP-AdvMaster)
A significant part of that hands-on learning is focused on Outside-In and includes discussion of various methods such as CEMMethod
There is a rapidly developing cadre of people and organisations delivering Outside-In training, consultancy and advisory services with case studies, presentations and podcasts at http://www.oibpm.com
The Annual BP Group conferences have a strong flavour of Outside-In with notable organisations who are the pioneers of Outside-In present and delivering case studies, tutorials and workshops. Not least of which is Steve Towers book – Outside-In, now in its fifth edition ( http://www.outsideinthesecret.com )
Despite all the issues documented in Part 1, there have been companies who have regularly ‘bucked’ the trend and posted great business results, grown significantly and sustained that growth.
Outside-In has been built on the approaches and lessons learnt from those companies who have managed to beat the competition and moreover delivered market beating results on a sustained basis. The approaches and techniques have been developed to be easily applied even to those organisations that have already been through numerous change iterations and believe they are as efficient as they could expect to get.
For example SouthWest Airlines posts 58 consecutive quarters of profit when most of their competition made huge losses – in the case of Delta this has been billions AND more than once ‘achieved’ in just a quarter! Apple have introduced innovative new products and regularly posted impressive results and increasing market share when organisations like Motorola who used to be one of the main players in the mobile handset market have dramatically suffered despite having gone through numerous iterations of business improvement.
Great question posed in Lean Six Sigma and Process Excellence by Vijay Bajaj. There are several indicators and one of the leading is the amount of internet interest. So let’s look at some stats courtesy of Google.
(Blue BPM, Red SixSigma)
So at first glance BPM is in the ascendency, SIx Sigma declining, however let’s factor in Lean for the same period against BPM.
This time we see BPM flat against a more volatile Lean, however Lean had its greatest interest back in 2007.
A much more interesting trend, which impacts all three aspects of Process Excellence is the recent emergence of Customer Experience Management. WIth progressive PEX types pushing the boundaries of process Outside-In rapidly, the migration to “the customer experience is the process” seems well established.
Is CEM the natural evolution of PEX? It certainly seems so.
ITWebBPM is South Africa’s premier event featuring the latest and most incisive business process management learning and next practice.
It was a pleasure meeting so many people from the African continent (and further afield including Finland, Germany and the USA!). Watch the overview video, and if you would like a copy of my keynote, panel sessions or workshop do let me know (steve.towers@bpgroup.org).
Linked-In http://bit.ly/joinbpgroup helps us all exchange information and is a very useful resource as part of being a successful business professional.
International process improvement expert, Steve Towers, advocates an ‘outside-in’ approach.
How business process management (BPM) is applied in the organisation is what makes the difference between ordinary businesses and high-performance organisations (HPOs), says international process improvement expert, Steve Towers.
Towers, who is preparing to release his eighth book, says his research into the characteristics of HPOs has resulted in the book and a new set of tools aimed at maximising BPM to enhance business performance. “In BPM, there is a lot of focus on Lean Six Sigma, the technologies and the processes. Basically, companies are doing things right, but they are not doing the right things,” says Towers.
Their metrics may tell them they are managing their processes correctly; they may be showing high levels of performance and efficiency in line with their traditional metrics, but despite this, they may still be going bankrupt. This is because they are measuring the wrong things,” he says. “They may be very busy – but are they doing the right things in the 21st century context?”
Towers says the most critical measure is that of total customer experience. “Companies cannot focus internally,” he says. “HPOs focus on the customer experience. It’s not just about what happens internally; it is also about what happens before that process and what happens after.” Towers has long advocated an ‘outside-in’ approach, rather than an ‘inside-out’ one. This way of thinking is customer-centric, something organisations have to be in an increasingly competitive business environment.
To align processes with HPO best practice, says Towers, organisations need to ask ‘who are our customers and what are their needs?’ “Don’t start with the technology or the process,” he says. “By focusing on the customer first, you may discover you have been focusing too much on unprofitable customers, for example. Once the target customers are identified, you have to define what it is they need. This is often not articulated well – they may not know what they need before it exists, and often the focus is mistakenly placed on what customers think they want – not what they actually need. HPOs actually produce products and services in advance of customer needs.”
Towers highlights revolutionary technologies, such as the Apple iPod, which met customer needs at a time when customers themselves did not realise all-in-one digital music management was something they wanted and needed. “HPOs use systematic approaches to this,” says Towers. “They are scientific about assessing customer needs, and measuring what customer success looks like. Classically, companies use subjective approaches like net promoter scores to assess customer satisfaction. But this is not necessarily good enough. This is a very subjective way to measure customer experience.” Towers says: “Companies need to get scientific about customer experience – they need to measure the right things, using the customer experience ratios used by HPOs.”
ITWeb BPM Summit 2013
Now in its fifth year, ITWeb’s BPM Summit reveals how to drive breakthrough business performance by focusing on practical advice, technology updates and case studies. The summit will help BPM practitioners to improve their skills, advance their BPM projects, and deliver truly transformational BPM to their organisations. For more information, click here.
Towers notes that assessing customer experience by asking ‘how do you feel?’ is subjective and reactive – it takes place after the event. “HPOs know that evaluation of customer experience has to take place at the time of the action, delivering immediate feedback that allows enterprises to manage and control the interactions as they happen.”
This new approach to measuring customer experience to deliver business benefits could help fast-track organisations’ growth in SA, Towers believes. “In BRICS nations, companies are now setting new benchmarks on what performance looks like. They have the potential to take these concepts, run with them and become world-class performers. In line with this, South African companies stand to play in the big league if they adopt more effective process management,” he says.
Towers will deliver a keynote presentation at the upcoming ITWeb BPM Summit on market-focused approaches to strategic business improvement. He will also elaborate on these approaches in a workshop aligned with the event, when he will outline his findings on HPO differentiators. The tactics of HPOs, to be revealed in his soon-to-be-released book, will be shared with SA ahead of world audiences. Towers will also give insights into the metrics behind customer experience ratios – the new measure for customer experience.
For more information about this event, click here.
At a recent performance appraisal this comment was made seriously, “If you pay me for doing dumb things, I will get really smart at doing dumb things”.
Do you measure people with ‘dumb’ metrics – activities and outputs, or with Outside In measures of results and outcomes? If Balanced Scorecards (BSC) and Strategy Maps fail it is largely as a consequence of having dumb metrics in there – activities and outputs.
So how can we measure the right things and encourage success? Instead of people rushing to deal with a call (because all calls must be less than 2 minutes) how do we measure the meeting of a customer need – effective resolution of a query? Using the appropriate process and performance metrics within an articulated Enterprise Architecture is a good starting point. This presentation leads us to the how of that. Enjoy.
Any interaction with the customer is a MOT. There are of course many different types of interaction and we can summarize them as follows:
Person to Person –
Person to System –
System to Person –
System to System –
Person to the Product or Service –
Product or Service to Person –
Let’s review examples of each.
Person to Person. In a shop. Buying a ticket at a manned ticket outlet. Meeting a supplier. Anything in fact that involves a direct interaction between people.
Person to System.
Navigating an Automated Voice Response system. Paying for a parking ticket from a machine at the airport. Interacting with a cell phone.
System to Person.
Receiving a voicemail on your phone. Showing your passport to an automated immigration check. Requesting money from a ATM.
System to System.
The interaction between your machine and a server when you send an email. Your car navigation system interacting with a GPS system.
Person to Product or Service.
Operating a vacuum cleaner. Noticing your fences have blown down after a storm (this interaction is with your insurance policy).
Product or Service to Customer.
Receiving parcels from Amazon. Driving a hire car.
As you can see there may be nested MOT’s and they often occur in sequence. For instance Calling an automated call centre (PS), then following key presses (PS), talking with a Customer Service Representative (PP) and finally the call being closed by the automated service (SP).
A process is shaped by the types of MOT, their frequency and the relationship between them.
The CEMMethod is widely used as the means to help organizations progress Outside In. This slideshow shares the most recent updates to this popular framework, with 38 techniques included to enhance your capabilities, individually and enterprise wide.
Access more informaiton on how to lean and apply the CEMMethod from here.
