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BPM is looking more and more like a series of Russian nesting dolls: with sub-processes within processes, and services within sub-processes and on and on. Continuing this trend, Commonwealth Bank of Australia found that in order to effectively roll-out BPM in an enterprise-wide fashion, they needed to start managing the process of managing processes.
"By making the very process of automating processes more efficient, we found we could protect our investment in TIBCO's BPM technology and reduce the learning curve for our staff," says Jim Roditis, senior manager of the bank's Image and Workflow group. "In doing so, we have gained the capability to cut at least one or two months off each of our individual BPM projects, reducing the overall cost."
Commonwealth Bank has created what it calls an all-purpose "e-request" form that it views as the hub of a portable, and reproducible process methodology. Such a methodology fosters wider adoption of BPM throughout the enterprise, by making it easier and cheaper to roll out new projects. There is of course, a process for creating new business processes too, and capturing and automating this process helps to drive adoption through-out an enterprise.
The first test of Commonwealth Bank’s “BPM for BPM” came in designing a new process for requesting retrieval of archived bank vouchers. Transaction slips accompanying each deposit, withdrawal, or other transaction are stored in two systems depending on their age, with newer forms imaged and archived electronically and older forms stored as hard copies in secure offsite storage. In addition to the performance gains cited by Jim Roditis, the bank can also track the performance of projects after rollout and make changes quickly and easily, and track and allocate the fees involved in different processes.
The form has subsequently been deployed to conduct other tasks, including managing the notification of deceased estates and processing personal loan applications. In future plans, Commonwealth Bank plans to use this approach to automate the duplicate statement request process, register online customers, and augment its credit card application process.
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