BPMNEXUS: BPM success stories: the highs, the lows, the lessons learned

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An example for a newcomer....

Situation:
A “non-BPM” project for replacing about 30 separate publishing systems by a more modern electronic publishing system. The particular difficulty in this project was the project members’ perception that their business processes are so special that it is not possible to find a single system which is suitable for everyone. As a result, the project did not progress at all despite two years’ of heated meetings.

Task:
Unblock the project.

Action:
Together with the project members, we carried out a quick BPM modelling of the most important business processes and derived an agreed list of about 20 common services which covered the majority of needs for everyone. The difference between many of the processes analysed was only in the logic of using those services (e.g. different sequencing, different routing, etc.).

Result:
This agreed list of common services and the ability to easily combine services into processes were used as selection criteria for a new electronic publishing system. The project was completed and the new electronic publishing system has been selected.

Note:
You may say that this is not a good example of BPM. I think, that without a commonly agreed BPM reference model it is not possible to compare BPM projects.

Thanks,
AS