Red Cloud Road: How Strategic Process Management Drives Competitive Advantage

Strategic Process Management (SPM) goes beyond traditional Business Process Management to redesign enterprise management around workflow, incorporating a systematic development, design, and improvement methodology that is integrated with enterprise strategic planning to deliver sustainable competitive advantage. Since 1993, SPM has been field-tested in over 300 enterprises across a wide variety of enterprise sizes, shapes, and industries. This book lays out a comprehensive understanding of SPM, including how to re-organize around workflow, how to implement sustainable improvement, how to measure what matters most, how to manage change, and how to achieve the substantial benefits Strategic Process Management can bring to the enterprise.

Enterprises make substantial investments in facilities, information technology, people, knowledge, and equipment to provide resources for enterprise operation. These resources enable the production of solutions (products and services) that deliver the firm's value proposition. What is typically missing, however, is a comparable investment in business processes and workflow management. Because of this weakness, those other resources are less productive and enterprise performance significantly suffers.

Actively managing workflows provides improved outcomes that directly impact competitiveness. When the focus is shifted to a workflow-based enterprise view with a commitment to building strong business processes, leadership will see benefits that include focused accountability, greater customer value, cost savings, increased productivity, revenue growth, lead-time reduction, improved quality, and strategic alignment, all within a framework that makes it strategically sustainable.

Strong business processes drive enterprise performance. For the first time, Strategic Process Management lays out a comprehensive methodology that teaches leadership how to harvest the hidden value process management and corporate strategy together can deliver.

Process maps, like SOP's, document what work is completed. More importantly, unlike procedures, process maps drive continuous improvement throughout the whole organization. By engaging staff to define processes creates stakeholder ownership and pushes process thinking to become an integral part of the organization's culture. The people who do the work define the work, including subject matter experts fully integrating critical knowledge into the processes. Process mapping provides the opportunity for drastic simplification and improvement, builds the foundation for key business initiatives, and eliminates traditional organizational boundaries to create a seamless enterprise. Best practice is established on a global scale where enterprise performance management, resources, and strategy are fully aligned.