With leadership in the global market Apple continues to innovate and be ahead of its competitors continues to blaze the trail and clock profits of over 30% without its founder at the helm. Stop and think for a moment — what makes these Organizations so successful over a long period. You will soon understand that besides a clear vision and technological strengths, the Organization is built differently.

The modern day Organizations are not focused on the Organizational structure, but are built to keep changing and evolving all the time in tune with the customer requirement, evolving technology and the external environment that includes all factors affecting the Organization, technology, its people, product etc. The Organizations that are focusing on its customer and innovation depend upon business processes to manage the Organization leaving the management free to work on their ‘Breakthrough technologies’.

In the coming years, there will be no place for Organizations that continue to exist based on the old Organizational philosophies and systems. Be it a Multinational or a small scale industry, the management has got to be process oriented not only in its production and quality areas but in overall business that includes all functions, departments and resources.

Though the yester years Organizations do recognize the new wave and wish to change, it is not going to be that easy to change overnight. First and foremost it is important to recognize that change is something that people naturally and unconsciously resist. In the case of an Organization having to change entirely and embrace a new form of existence does call for a very strong and planned approach to initiate the change, to ensure the change happens and to ensure that the new changed outlook is sustained all through the Organization until it becomes a natural habit.

Change Management Process View

First and foremost, the need for change has to be recognized by the leadership. If the Organization has two distinct entities of leadership as separate from Ownership, then both have got to realize the need and consider it important for the future and survival of the entire Organization and their business. Therefore the stake holders for the change management process would be the Management.

Once there is acceptance of the fact that Change is necessary, there has got to be a definite idea and vision of how the new changed Organization needs to be. This new vision should be drawn up by the leadership/management and communicated to each and every single individual within the Organization. It is important to ensure that every individual contributing to the Organization becomes a part of the change management process, failing which the entire project of change will not succeed.

Once the vision and the plan for change has been established, it is important to assess the current situation and environment to identify the possible barriers, risks and obstacles to the change process and draw up a plan of action to mitigate the risks, to remove the obstacles and barriers that are likely to impede the process of change.

Change management in an Organization is not easy. It calls for engaging the professionals who can assist the Organization draw up the vision, to set the goals, plan the process, manage the transition, provide the training and retraining and help the Organization transition to working as the new entity.

The path of transition to Business Process driven Organization has got to be initiated from the top management who will have to redraw the vision and the goals for their Organization. Change management process is not easy and has got to be driven by the top management through planned and sustained programs that are based on training and retraining the resources until the new culture and process is established.

Most Organizations engage the services of external Management consultants who are specialists in building Business processes and managing the transition for the client Organization. They would however need to involve the experienced resources of the client Organization to be able to understand the specific business needs and draw up detailed processes accordingly.

Multi National Companies like IBM & HP etc have departments and resources identified to work internally as full time process analysts, auditors and risk assessors who’s primary job would be to keep working on refining the existing Business processes as well as draw up new business processes in line with new requirements.

Drawing up business processes involves understanding every little nuance or transaction involved in each and every department or function and building a process around each activity, defining the sequence of process, as well as detailing who, what, why, how and when the transaction or the process is to be carried out.

Each process would also have the predecessor as well as successive process owners defined and interconnectivity established clearly.

Each department can have anywhere from a few to a large amount of processes depending upon the business functions.

An important department like Finance can have detailed processes under Financial planning and accounting. Financial planning processes would involve clear cut processes in the areas of Budgets and controls, costing process, financial planning for the year, inventory control, business planning, financial forecasting, and many more important processes defined and laid out in the form of process manuals.

Financial accounting processes would involve business process as well as process controls through the systems.

Every detailed function like Payroll, Taxation, Accounts Receivable, Payable, Invoicing, sales accounting, Cash Management, Fixed asset management and many more functions as necessary for the business would be covered under the Financial Accounting Business Process.

It is through such well defined Business processes that the large Organizations manage to carry on their day to day business operations and expand their business across the world.

Managing thousands of employees, hundreds of business processes with multiple manufacturing locations across geographies and managing procurement functions engaging hundreds of vendors across the world as well as concentrating on product development and marketing across the globe is made possible thanks to the Organizational design having been drawn up based on business processes which in turn is driven through integrated IT software and systems that enable standardization and integration across all locations possible and feasible.

Business process and Organizational design have provided them with the ability not only to control global operations but more importantly to provide the same superior quality and commitment as well as service to the customers all across the world. This is essentially the differentiating factor that makes a Dell or an IBM stand apart from the rest of the competition.

In order to offer complete control over the product and service to its customers, IBM used to manage the service support in house globally.

In recent times of course, IBM sold its Laptop and Desktop business to Lenovo and outsourced the entire service business to Geodis Logistics. However IBM has ensured that the business processes and controls are retained and interfaced with its functional units.

This outsourcing of the parts management, delivery and service has been possible only because the entire function is defined, managed and controlled via specific business processes. IBM has not only devised detailed business processes to manage its business operations, but spends an equal amount of time and focus on auditing the business processes to ensure the process is followed, the processes are valid and the business risks arising out of process failures are identified and managed.

Continuously the Organization evaluates its processes, removes redundancy and keeps strengthening the business processes in line with the changes in its business.

Understanding how the business processes and business functions are organized in such a set up validates the significance of the business process to the Organization. Though the departments are managed by functional managers, the functions related to a particular business report to the Business Unit head.

Thus the business unit has sales as well as service functions reporting into the head. The service unit involves the technical service engineers, the sales support staff, the parts distribution managers forming one unit to service the business unit. In addition, each of these functions would be managed by and reporting to each functional head such as Head of Service Delivery, Technical Solutions Head as well as Inventory and Logistics Manager etc.

The Organizational design includes horizontal work flow with vertical staffing structure. It is the Business Process and systems that ensure smooth and seamless overlapping, integration and optimization of the functions and aligning all groups on dual reporting system and ensuring that every function is focused on the end customer.

The service parts managers are functionally responsible for procurement, inventory and logistics of the service parts components. Overriding this functional expertise is the need for the Parts Managers to be in line with the local Customer needs, the local Country situation, the Customer criticality and field support requirements and plan his function accordingly.

When Customer fulfillment becomes the primary objective even for the inventory controller and the Parts service group, every single function in the Organization gears up to work together with the single aim of servicing the customer. When this happens at a Organizational and global level, the Organization naturally becomes a global leader.

Managing global markets, different countries, different types of customers, providing superior quality and service reliability to every single customer consistently and sourcing millions of parts from across the globe, managing multiple production bases, managing innovation and product quality besides managing thousands of employees and managing the changes both internally and externally to emerge as global leaders has been made possible due to the Organizational design and functioning depending upon on Business processes and systems to manage the business operations.

BPI success depends upon several factors. First and foremost, the program initiative and ownership has got to be from the top management and those business unit heads who manage and drive the business operations. When the BPI exercise is sponsored, owned and facilitated by the Business Owners and Senior Management, the program can be implemented effectively. BPI exercise calls for investments as well as resources and time in the designated area of implementation. These Business Unit leaders are best equipped to choose the objectives and the priority areas for implementing BPI program aimed at maximizing the business impact gained.

Most Organizations form the EIT or Executive Implementation Team under or including the Business Unit head as the sponsor. This team owns the responsibility for the implementation of the BPI program.

The next critical element or the factor that figures in the BPI program is that of selection of Business Process Leader or Owner. The effectiveness and the efficiency of the process ultimately depend upon its Process Owner. The Organizations of modern times are not hierarchical and functionally organized like the traditional Organizations.

In an increasingly complex business environment, amidst globalization, the Organizations operate with increasingly complex network of business units with matrix management as well as Functional line management that manage businesses across multiple locations situated in different continents, multiple markets and cultures. Such business operations involve extensive use of technology and software tools that aid and drive the business processes, using thousands of people engaged in business operations. In such situation, any critical process would have linking with several other processes and functions across many departments.

Therefore if a process has got to be improved, implemented and stabilized, it is essential that the process is owned by one single process owner who is able to make that impact across all the intermediaries and mesh all sub processes to ensure the new improved process compliance is maintained one hundred percent.

Choosing the right process owner is very critical and important for the BPI program. The EIT team owns this responsibility of choosing the Process Leader for each of the critical processes that it selects for the project. Selecting the suitable candidate would need examination and ascertaining several key factors with regard to the right candidate.

First and foremost, it is always better to choose the candidate who naturally happens to be the beneficiary of the process. If the sales manager of a business unit stands to gain from the improvement in process of Warranty Management system improvement or Customer Relationship Management process, then the said Sales Manager should own the said process.

The functional leaders of the Warranty Management group or the Customer relationship group can assist the Sales Manager in the implementation as they too are responsible for the process but the overall ownership should lie with the sales manager of the unit.

Secondly, the Process Owner should be able to understand the business trends and initiate the changes to the business process. He would need to initiate discussion with the management for changing the operating policies or the process in order to meet the necessary business requirements.

Needless to mention that the Process Owner would need to be a good leader, a very good motivator, negotiator and be able communicate effective through the teams and lead from the front.

It was in the early times after the Second World War that we saw the evolution in terms of industrialization that brought about systems and methods aiding mass production. Next few decades saw the emergence of various systems and methods of manufacturing being practiced and the best being benchmarked in the industries.

In 1980s we saw a major movement with reference to Quality Management and the various systems including Just In Time, TQC, Statistical Process Control, Quality Policy, Quality function deployment as well as Continuous Process Improvement, the various Quality processes such as Taguchi Method, Poka yoke system, quality processes defined by D.Jurang etc helped shape the industries and manufacturing methods.

Later on the ISO standards as well as six sigma quality systems etc came into being and are being followed currently globally. At this stage we saw the shift of focus from producing in bulk to producing quality, controlling the defect and finally went on to realize the need for controlling the process. It was also realized that controlling the process included focusing on people and investing into people’s process too.

By 1990s the world saw the introduction and faster evolution of Computers that slowly and steadily took over all of the manual tasks, resulting in development of MRP and ERP systems that streamlined and controlled processes across all functions and changing the way the Organizations function, the production takes place and the entire supply chain functions associated with the Organization.

At the same time, the power began to shift from the Organizations and Marketers to the Customers. Customer satisfaction and Customer Loyalty began to be the benchmarks around which the Organizations began to build their businesses that included their manufacturing, planning and delivery processes. Computerization and Service Orientation managed to re-build all the models of Organizational function and business practices across all fields.

As we have entered the globalization era, the functioning of Organizations and businesses have become increasingly competitive and dynamic. The nature of competition, the nature of production, the market features and technology coupled with focus on R&D are redefining the way Organizations function and think.

On the financial front too, Organizations have become responsible for and answerable to the share holders. As the challenges for Organizations in the new world characterized by intense competition and competitiveness and fast changing scenarios on all fronts increase, survival, growth and profits demand continuous involvement in redefining management thought and business processes.

When we talk of processes, we are not only referring to manufacturing processes but overall business processes that contain the manufacturing and other functional processes as a part of the whole. In the fast evolving world, no Organization can continue to operate with old and antiquated processes and no amount of investments into the old processes will help. Similarly automating an old process is not going to be of much help.

Today a customer walking into an airport, hotel or a cafe expects a complete experience that involves not only the physical service or the product but the ambience, the process as well as the way he or she perceives the Organization through the experience. Just the pricing of the product or service no more holds good and it is the Customer’s perception of the Company, the service and total value of his experience that drives his buying habit.

In current times, organizations have had to rethink on the human resource management and bring in best practices in HR management too. Only by creating a culture and environment that boosts employee morale, involvement and output by providing employee welfare and satisfaction, Organizations are able to attract and hold on to the right human resources and this plays an important part in making the organization achieve a competitive edge.

Technology, Globalization and evolving markets as well as changing scenarios with effect to product development and resource availability etc are pushing managements to think differently. The question of survival or the Organization is connected with many dynamic factors and the only way that Organizations can survive and grow is by continually working on their business processes.

As the Organizations focus on improving their business processes, they find everything including functional processes, resources, finances, systems as well as the culture, thinking pattern, values and vision changing. Like a living organism that keeps growing with continuous changes as a part of evolution, the same is true in case of Organizations too.

Today it is the business processes that define the way Organizations exist, function and obtain the competitive edge to compete and finally to be sought after by the Customers. Only those who are able to continually work on improving the business processes find their path for survival and growth in the future times.

Organizations as well as their processes as well as their markets, customers and products keep changing. In current times, technology is playing vital role in the way Organizations operate.

Reliance on people has been replaced with automation. All of the operational processes are now system driven and seamlessly integrated bringing together all the functions and departments to function seamlessly as one unit.

Organizations have to watch out for new trends in the product and market that is relevant to them, and adapt themselves to the new business requirements as well as technology be it on Product development side or on the Operational process side. The time available for Organizations to change with the times is very short.

Besides, the only way to improve efficiency of operations and ensure control over costs of operation is to continually keep improving processes and adapting technology wherever possible. Organizations therefore embrace quality systems, standards and BPI processes to bring about desired changes in their processes and improve quality of operations.

We can very well state that quality is an attitude of the Organization and its management. Those managements that value quality embrace it as one of the founding principles to build their Organization, processes and products. Similarly BPI projects too can be successfully implemented in the Organizations only when they are owned by the Organizational leadership or management.

Business Process Improvement projects when sponsored by the Business Unit heads enjoy the credibility in the Organization and pave way for successful implementation. The managers and the management have an important role to play in identifying the business critical processes that need to be improved, in providing resources and investments for the project and to remove the obstacles and hindrances that are likely to arise during the project implementation.

Apart from the management and its role, the success of the project is also dependent upon the Process Implementation Team. For the successful implementation, it is necessary to form a task force taking members from all of the functions or the concerned process which is being reviewed.

Selection of candidate would need to be done on the basis of the skills sets, the attitude and the leadership of the candidate as well as the current work profile of the candidate.

Only those candidates who have the desired skill set in abstract reasoning, logical thinking and leadership capabilities. More importantly these members chosen would have to have the attitude to work as a team member too.

It is these PIT members who will have the detailed process knowledge of their respective areas and thus will be able to contribute to the process improvement and more importantly play a key role in implementing the newly designed process.

Once selected, the PIT members would need additional training to be able to start with the project. First and foremost they would need to be trained in BPI concept and methodology.

Further they would need to be trained in some of the basic problem saving and team working concepts and tools including Team dynamics, Brain Storming techniques, Data collection and analysis methods, usage of charts and graphs etc. Detailed training in 7 Quality Control tools including Statistical Controls, Histograms, Pareto Diagrams, Scatter Diagrams and Fish Bone or Cause and Effect diagrams, Force field analysis and Mind Map techniques and other techniques that would need to be used in the project.

The Organizations which understand the cost of quality and embrace quality as one of their basic foundations to build the Organization build a work culture and processes which calls for using Quality and Statistical tools in the daily operations.

In such situations, the employees would have already undergone training and be used to using the QC tools. In such Organizations, implementing BPI Projects can be faster and easier than in cases where the techniques have to be first learnt and practiced by the PIT Team members before embarking on the BPI Project implementation.

Organizations are very similar to living Organisms. They too go through a definite life cycle and different stages of development. As in life, change is the only constant factor especially in the operations of each and every organization.

Organizations are constantly engaged in the process of changing and fine tuning their internal processes in line with the external environment, customer expectation as well as competition and other developments in the field. Changes required to be carried out might involve change of processes, adaptation and implementation of new technology and so on. Besides implementing new process changes or technology, there arises requirement for regular review of process efficiency in order to ensure that the operations are running at optimum efficiency and contributing positively to the output.

Why BPI

Business Process Improvement projects help Organizations to initiate changes, to overhaul the existing processes as well as to implement new technology and way of working. Thus whenever a need arises to work on the internal operations, BPI projects are initiated by the management.

Planning for BPI Success

For BPI projects to be effective, they have got to be initiated, owned and sponsored by the senior management at the level of Business Head. Apart from sponsoring and providing the required support in the form of resources and budgets, it is important that the correct message about the project, the achievable and the expectations are communicated through all the departments and especially to the particular department which is going to go through the BPI exercise. Understanding the BPI Project and aligning with the BPI goal is essential on the part of the employees who are involved in the operations.

BPI Project Set Rolling

The next factor that is important for the BPI project is the formation of the PIT Team. The Process Improvement Team should consist of members who are well versed with the business operations on hand as well as be equipped with the required skills to manage the process. Training the PIT team in BPI Tools and techniques involving techniques of problem solving, statistical analysis etc are very important.

First Step – Process Mapping

The first step of the BPI program consists of studying and understating the process in detail and drawing up a detailed flow chart of the chosen process. Block diagrams made at the first instance help freeze the boundaries of the process in question as well as identify the input and output avenues that are related to the process. Most often the processes are often inter-related and over lapping, therefore identifying and freezing the boundaries of the processes meant for improvement is critical.

Process Walk Through

At the next instance, the process would have to be dealt with in detail. The PIT team would need to walk and talk with every operator, identify and examine every task in detail and make detailed flow chart as required. Depending upon the process criticality and complexity as well as the geographical location and spread etc, appropriate functional flow chart type can be chosen for depiction of the process.

Process Review

Once the process has been mapped using the flow chart, the next logical step is to understand and review the entire process that has been mapped. Reviewing and studying the process gives us clue to identifying the shortfalls and identify the areas that need further attention for improvement. At this stage, the process should be critically examined keeping in mind the critical characteristics of the process.

The business process characteristics that must be kept as reference for the critical review of the process in detail include – The Process flow, Process Effectiveness, Process Efficiency and Cycle Time.

When the process is reviewed with reference to the above characteristics, the problem areas automatically get highlighted and provide the team the required inputs to be able to streamline and correct the process as required. Secondly the process characteristics provide us with the base line to be able to measure the process ‘As It Is’ and measure the improvement when the project implementation has been completed.

Along with review of the process with reference to the process characteristics, it is also important to review the process documentation in detail. Most often the process documentation may not be clear or contain errors. The process being followed in actual may be different from the process described by the documentation. In most of the cases, the processes on the ground change over a period of time and the documentation may not go through a timely review and therefore may not be updated.

Using the flow chart, studying the process in detail with reference to the process characteristics and review of the process documentation for accuracy and matching with the physical process being followed help the BPI team to arrive at the phase where they start getting the actual picture of the entire process and its related problems. Identification of the problems when done well solves half the problem.

Success of BPI project depends largely upon two factors:

1. First and foremost, the BPI project depends upon its sponsors who should ideally be drawn from the Management and the Business Unit Heads. Sponsorship and facilitation as well as ownership and sponsorship of the project from the top ensures that the right communication reaches all employees concerned and paves way for smooth implementation.

2. The second factor that is critical to the project is the PIT. Process Improvement Team consisting of the Process Owner and the Team that is selected owns the project and takes on the responsibility of taking the project forward.

Project Implementation Team

It is the Project Implementation Team that is mainly responsible for managing and driving the project using the EIT or the Executive Team consisting of Management to sponsor and facilitate the program.

Depending upon the Project and the process, it is better to limit the size of the PIT team to around twenty at the most. The members of the PIT team should be selected from amongst the department leaders or those that are leading the process from each of the concerned department.

PIT Training and Activities

PIT members who are chosen from the operational teams would need to be oriented and trained in BPI techniques. They come equipped with the process knowledge. When trained and equipped with the BPI techniques, they will be able to take the responsibility of designing improved processes and implementing the improved process.

The brief activities of the PIT Team would entail:

• Process Mapping – Walking through the detailed process, talking to each and every operational member to understand the process, collect information on the current timelines for each and every activity and tabulate the quality requirements of the current process.
• Gather details of the resources and costs involved in the current process.
• Identify process owners, dependants, customers and other people who are affected, interact with and involved in the process.
• Apply BPI techniques to refine the process or automate the current process.
• Draw up implementation plan for introducing the improvements that have been designed after review and discussions.
• Establish measurement and reporting criteria for the newly introduced improved process.
• Develop model implementation plan including reporting and monitoring plans.
• Draw up Status monitoring and review plan.

Sub PI Teams

Depending upon the size of the project and the complexity of the process that needs to be improved, the implementation plan may warrant forming additional sub implementation teams that are smaller in size to focus on certain sub processes.

Typically when a process improvement involves automation or introduction of new technology or total change of process which needs to be implemented and transitioned without disturbing the ongoing operations or with least down time affecting the business operations, it becomes necessary to have smaller teams that can focus on the specific part of the process or on the critical sub processes.

Functional Specialist or Process Specialist

In cases where the team requires a functionalist specialist to be involved in contributing to the process improvement, such specialists may be engaged for specific tasks. These specialists may come from within the Organization or may need to be hired.

In cases where the process is being transitioned to an ERP system driven process and is being automated, the need for the functional IT specialist becomes necessary for the process discussions and implementations. In such cases, the ERP vendor would need to bring in his functional specialist to participate in designing the improved process.

The above are but a few of the critical components of a BPI team. Depending upon the span of control and the scale of the project, suitable sub teams, groups and additional resources may have to be deployed as the case may be.

In case a improved process implementation is scheduled across several business units at the same time and if it involves more than one geographical location, then the project management team would have to be structured suitably to ensure effective control, monitoring as well as local ownership at all locations.

BPI programs aim to bring about permanent changes to the processes through a sustained and planned implementation program.

Business operations consist of a maze of processes that are intertwined, overlap ping, extensions and combinations of functions and departments. All departments and functions have got to work in tandem with seamless integration to ensure that the business objectives are met within the stipulated time frame and with utmost efficiency.

Business Process Improvement can be successful only when it is spearheaded by the management and the concerned business unit heads. The management forms an Executive Implementation Team which in turn chooses the important and business critical process which needs to be addressed in the BPI program besides of course drawing up, approving and enabling budgetary sanctions and resource allocations required for the program. Thus the management becomes the sponsor of the BPI program and owns the responsibility of communicating the same all through the organization.

In the second stage, the EIT appoints a BPI Champion or a Process Owner is selected for the chosen process. Along with the Process Owner, a Process Improvement Team is also formed. This team consists of the Departmental Managers and facilitators of the process. The PIT team headed by the Process Owner undergoes BPI training to equip themselves with the concept, the methodology and the tools to be used for the BPI program.

Once the initial training has been completed, the next step that follows is to build a initial PIT Plan. The PIT plan consists of:

• Drawing up the block diagram of the selected process for improvement & determining the Boundaries
• Build Statement of Assumptions
• Drawing up the PIT Plan

Block Diagram

As explained above, any business operations will consist of several business processes. It is important to identify and determine that particular business process that is to be taken up for improvement. Each process will need to be identified with the boundaries explaining at which point the process begins and the point at which the process ends. Besides the process will also involve inputs and outputs to several other processes, departments or functions too. These will need to be identified in detail and the clear boundaries of the process on hand will need to be identified.

Selection of Process & Identification of Boundaries

Example Fig. 1: Parts Management Warehousing Process

Example Fig.2: Part Picking Process in the Warehouse

Take the case of the above example. The Fig. 1 represents an overview of the Warehousing Process. The second Fig. 2 shows a detailed process flow of one of the activities that forms a part of the Warehousing Process. (Highlighted in Fig.1). As such in a proposed BPI program, several such processes can be taken up for improvement if they are found to yield efficiencies and make business impact.

In each of the processes identified, the Process owner draws up the starting point and ending point of the process that is being taken up for improvement and walks through the process with the process leaders in detail.

The PIT plan drawn up will contain information on the selected process, the boundaries, the start time and end time of the project, the details of process owners, the resources required and the action plan for the process improvement.

The initial PIT plan serves as a guide post for the entire program. As the PIT team gets involved in review of the process in detail, the operating assumptions and the entire process itself can undergo changes in line with the customer expectations or the set goals.

Business process improvement exercise involves the entire Organization, all its departments and processes across all geographical locations and business units. Launching a Business Process Improvement initiative would need the active support and sponsorship of the top management. Generally seen, BPI involves five distinct stages as under:

Preparing for BPI Program to be unveiled in the Organization calls for the following actions:

Program Initiation

As in the case of any strategic decision making by an Organization, the BPI program would first need to be discussed, adapted and initiated by the senior management of the Organization. Normally the Companies call for a meeting of the senior management directors and the Business Unit heads who will ultimately own the BPI process. The meeting called for would cover discussions on the following:

• Over view of BPI Concept
• Relevance of the BPI program in the Organization at current times
• Establish the objectives and possible areas that would be improved with the BPI Program and the consequent overall benefit to the Business Unit

The meeting should be concluded with an approval of the program and the acceptance of sponsorship by the Business Heads. The meeting should also form and finalize a Task Force or an Executive Improvement Team and define the total responsibility of the team to initiate, implement, monitor and conclude the entire BIT program.

Appointing BPI Leader or BPI Team

Once the BPI program is underway, the entire implementation can take from a few weeks to more than a year to run its complete course depending upon the business processes involved. Though the Business Unit Heads own the BPI program, they would not be able to focus on the program and be engaged in designing and implementing the program.

Therefore it becomes necessary to have an experienced senior manager or an equivalent rank individual with the right background, qualification and skill sets to be appointed as the BPI Leader for the entire duration of the program. This BPI Leadership would be a full time job lasting the entire tenure of the program duration envisaged.

An ideal BPI leader should have the necessary technical as well as overall business operations exposure and experience in the Organization with the right soft skills and attitude to work with people across all levels and lead the teams.

It would not be practical to expect the BPI champion or leader to be able to initiate, design and implement the entire program on his own without the relevant training and orientation. This is where the management would need to engage external business process consultants and practitioners to work with the BPI leader on designing the program. It also helps to send the BPI champion to attend few BPI training sessions to equip him to manage the program.

Thus the stage needs to be set at the Management level to recognize the need for BPI program, to make a conscious decision to adapt the program and to initiate action to form a Management team and initiate the first action of appointing a BPI champion in the Organization.

Depending upon the size of the Organization and span of activity, the management may choose to appoint a team of two or three members as BPI Champions.

Needless to mention that once the BPI plan has been accepted by the senior management and the Business Unit heads, the consequent costs involved in the program would be provided for and earmarked for the said purpose.