I’ve found in my practice at medium to large businesses that there are, just like any market, a bell curve of early to late adopters. Geoffrey Moore eloquently talked about these in his ground breaking book Crossing the Chasm. In my role as business analyst during the discovery process, I make sure I look out for who is who. This is essential to long term success with business process automation initiatives.
Large businesses are a collection of people in a more or less hierarchical ordering (CEO, VP, Director, Manager). Each unit can be thought of as a separate business with customers and suppliers, and each with their own “CEO” or “Vito” (very important top officer, who can make stuff happen or veto it). Many contributors in Vito’s sphere of influence can promote a business process improvement project, but without Vito’s assent, adoption of the initiative, resources will not be invested in it (time with the subject matter experts), which will severely hamper a project’s success.
On the other hand, there are always those that are very excited about improvement and automation of processes. You should look for this person within a department headed by someone who understands the value of business process automation. Make one workflow shine for the department. Show it off to the entir e department. Next, build a process that crosses from that department to another (or corporate-wide). This will begin pulling the late adopters forward.
A picture tells a thousand words, and so does a successful workflow used by the entire enterprise.
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