Providers of BPM solutions promise payback to the clients through cost savings, elimination of errors, reducing hand-offs through integration of applications and data, aiding decision making through analytics and aligning corporate goals and process outcomes. This is only possible when BPM tools are applied over well defined processes. BPM yields great results for the organizations which have process orientation. For organizations that do not have process orientation and where processes are only loosely defined, BPM solutions will only add to the repertoire of IT features and to the confusion and chaos in the organization. The success of BPM effort will be directly proportional to the strength of underlying business process design and process orientation in the organization.

Process orientation is such a critical factor in the success of BPM effort that it cab be said to represents the basic discipline required by the organization to adopt BPM solutions. How does one assess as abstract thing as “process orientation” in any organization? Process orientation is basically about keeping the customer at forefront while designing the process, knowledge of process times versus elapsed times, understanding of hand-offs involved or interface issues between various activities in the process, are the things important for customers and business get measured and the way people interact – collaboration versus coordination. By observing the way the work is conducted in an organization the extent of process orientation can be assessed with reasonable accuracy.

Customer focus is basically a cultural issue, which indicates how important the customer is to the work that is being carried out. Questions like, do the people know the customer requirement and concerns from the job that is being done, who is the priority – the boss or the next person in the chain, do people have important jobs to attend as customers wait for an appointment, and how do people treat internal customers will definitely enable a company to understand the extent to which people have customer focus.

How well are the processes defined in an organization can be understood by probing some of the basic things such as: Do the people know what the common goal that they are working for is? How their work ensures best end result? Can people name the process they work for? Do people have the measure of efficiency and effectiveness in their mind as they carry out the work? Do people realize the difference in processing times and elapsed times in their work? Are the practices same as standardized procedures or written norms? Are the failures analysed to eliminate the root cause or superficial solutions applied in an ad-hoc manner? Do people know how their goals are aligned with those of the organization as a whole?

If the answer to the above questions is affirmative then an organization can be said to have the process centric approach in its day-to-day business. This kind of process orientation will certainly help implement BPM solutions where processes are much more simple and streamlined rather than fragmented, invisible, un-named and unmanaged. Before applying a BPM solution to a process it is extremely important that the organization take care of these issues to avoid the disappointment and distress of failure.