When asked, senior corporate leaders will say that they care about business process management, but statistics don’t bear this out.
A BPTrends State of The BPM Market – 2020 survey of 129 predominantly European and American companies revealed that about 50% of participants were interested in process work. Yet only 40% of those positive participants were interested in some form of transformation. The indication is that most senior managers felt that their businesses were already running efficiently.
Fast forward to 2022. A lot has happened in the past two years to affect business operations. They may have experienced shortages of people and goods. Consumer needs may have changed drastically as well.
Corporations today still recognize the value of business process management and the results it can produce. Interest has risen somewhat, yet it is also still not a priority. Stats show that:
- barely over 60% indicated an interest in BPM
- only 25% of those interested have taken steps to model business processes
- only 2% of those interested say they have had all of their processes modeled
Why is it so difficult to get senior management engagement?
Some 55% of senior managers suggest that it’s because they have multiple processes competing for their attention.
About 50% of these senior managers say they take responsibility for steering their company, yet only 15% say they have actually engaged a BPM group.
The other 50% move responsibility onto department managers to decide if and when to initiate piecemeal BPM efforts.
What could make BPM a greater priority? Risk. If your process knowledge is literally walking out the door during The Great Resignation, there is no greater need for BPM analysts than right now.
Forbes reports that more than 4 million Americans have left their jobs, and as much as 95% are considering it. Unless documented somewhere, employees are taking as much as 15 or 20 years of the knowledge of how to run the business out the door with them. Experts say the trend will continue throughout 2022.
Has a key employee made a passing comment about retiring? What will the loss of that knowledge cost your organization? If critical business processes live in the minds of the employees, instead of in the organization’s analog or digital library, don’t wait to contact BDM Squared.