* Participate in survey about how convergence affects business processes
Over the past couple of years, a constantly recurring theme in this newsletter has been how convergence is allowing the redefinition of business processes. In fact, we’ve gone so far as to state that the “killer application” for convergence is redefining applications.
But until now, we haven’t tackled the “Layer 8” aspect of these converged applications; that is, how do you handle the human side of redefining the applications and their related business processes.
Steve and his IT Business colleague Jim Metzler are currently conducting a survey to gain a better understanding of this interaction. Jim comments on the results to date:
“Many of the preliminary results of the survey that analyzed the use of real-time communications to improve business processes were just what I expected. However, there were more than a few surprises.
”For example, the survey identified the areas of business that would benefit the most from process redesign. Sales and customer service were the two top areas. This seemed perfectly reasonable as companies are always striving to improve processes that directly affect customers. However, it was surprising that operations came in third, clearly ahead of supply chain management.
”I was also intrigued and satisfied to see that over 80% companies were committed to improving their key processes. However, it was surprising to see that as companies look to redesign their business processes, improving the quality of decision-making is a not a very important motivator. It was also a bit surprising that with all of the discussion of how government regulations are affecting business, responding to government regulations was not an important trigger for modifying business processes.
”One final observation is that there is widespread interest in using a third party to assist with modifying business processes. However, there is virtually no agreement on the type of company that would be best suited to the task.”
The study is currently in the data collection phase, and readers of this newsletter are invited to participate. As an incentive for participation, people responding to the survey will receive a summary of the results:
https://www.webtorials.com/survey-04-5.htm
