. BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS UNLOCK THE REAL BENEFITS FOR THE SUPPLY CHAIN

Supply chain processes (along with other business processes) can be analyzed
in the context of the organization�s strategic imperatives and evaluated from the
perspective of both strategic importance and complexity and dynamism.
The strategic importance dimension relates to how crucial that process
is in achieving the organization�s competitive strategy. The higher the
rating, the more influence the process has on achieving the strategic
imperative.
_ Complexity is a measure of the number of steps and/or participants in
the process with reference to the number of organizational or departmental
boundaries the process crosses. The greater the number, the more
complex the process.
_ Dynamism is a measure of the frequency of changes to the process that
the organization would ideally want.
_ The complexity and dynamism axis is an aggregation of these two
factors.
The key strategic processes are those in which an enterprise would:
_ Invest most management time and resources
_ Reorganize around, to minimize handoffs and make the processes flow
most efficiently
_ Retain as core to its success and which should remain in-house at all
costs
The processes of least strategic importance are those that may be considered
for alternative sourcing. The processes to the left of the chart are those that
would typically be delivered through packaged solutions. Those in the middle
of the chart would be delivered through work flow and/or rules engines. The
most complex and dynamic processes, to the right of the chart, will, in the short
term, largely remain manual.
An examination of the current and desired future states of the cross-enterprise
processes reveals where the key opportunities lie and shows the prime
targets for joint investment.

Many of the legacy processes prove to be overly complex and receive too
little management attention compared to their strategic importance. The map
immediately shows the priorities for process transformation:
_ Investing in processes according to their strategic importance will ensure
the greatest return in that investment.
_ Eliminating unnecessary process complexity and dynamism will maximize
people�s productivity and reduce both the time to execute and the
number of errors that occur.