SETTING THE AGENDA: CURRENT AND DESIRED LEVELS OF PROCESS MATURITY

We now have all the tools we need to set the direction and priorities for
improving the maturity of the business processes. Figure 3.14 shows a simple
model used to illustrate the current and desired levels of process maturity.
Current levels are the province of each company�s management. The recent
surveys done by CSC and Supply Chain Management Review suggest that few
companies rate themselves much beyond level 3 in their current state of development.
The assessment of the desired levels of process maturity is driven by
a number of features, in particular:
_ The value that can be driven out by investing in greater maturity
_ Market pressures that demand levels of customer service
_ Responsiveness that can only be achieved by more collaboration
Now we know where we are and the destination we want to achieve. Next
we need some view of costs and time scales. The technology maturity matrices
that were presented in Chapter 1 give part of the view of the likely costs and
time scales to achieve the desired levels of maturity. The additional costs are
those of the effort required to introduce the changes.
The process of analysis now enables us to establish a likely net contribution
of value from the increasing maturity of each process based on:
_ Value created, from the process maturity transition matrix
_ The likely cost of delivering the supporting technology, from the technology
maturity value matrix
With the rough order-of-magnitude costs and benefits, we can establish a
supply chain process transformation program that is:
_ Value based
_ Prioritized
_ Time based