This week (May 17-19), some 250 people from 13 community colleges in the Tennessee Board of Regents (TBR) system will meet in Nashville (in person and by WebEx/phone) for workshops to kick-off an unprecedented business process management (BPM) program. The effort was brought about by the Complete College Tennessee Act of 2010 (CCTA) TCA 49-8-101(c), through which the TBR was tasked with merging the community colleges into a “comprehensive statewide system” of coordinated programs and services. With respect to the legislation, the BPM project has two major goals to (1) bring significant standardization as to how the institutions conduct business and interact with students in order to provide a common and pleasant experience no matter which institution they choose to attend, and (2) realize savings and efficiencies for the taxpayers through consolidation of services and overhead.
Holistically, the BPM project will provide to the TBR the most comprehensive and systematic methodology on how to improve and standardize the way in which the TBR community colleges conduct the business of education. BPM is a process-centric approach for improving performance that combines information technologies with process and governance methodologies. From a strategic standpoint the process is intended to also deliver:
§ Business “Value” – Creating value for both students and stakeholders. In addition to improved bottom-line performance and enhanced student loyalty, satisfaction, and graduation rates, BPM will indirectly facilitate the goals and objectives of the CCTA with increased innovation, improved productivity, and elevated levels of staff effectiveness and satisfaction.
§ Process “Transformation” – The re-alignment of operational processes will make them more effective, more transparent, and more agile. This will enable the solving of problems before they become major issues and reduce errors as well as detect them sooner so that they can be remedied faster.
§ Management “Enabling” – The bringing together of all of the systems, methods, tools, and techniques of process development and management into a well architected system will provide management, staff, and faculty the visibility and controls necessary for steering and fine tuning.
The Kickoff Workshop(s)
In the kickoff workshops on the 17th – 19th, all participants will first attend an “Overview of Business Process Modeling” session that will introduce the goals and objectives, terminology, methodology, technology, and how the project will be conducted. It will lay out the work ahead in the project and provide expectations, schedule, and other information for functional users that are new to BPM.
In the subsequent workshops everyone will be divided up into the six functional areas that they represent: Finance, Accounts Receivable, Human Resources & Payroll, Registration & Records/Academics, Financial Aid, and Recruitment, Admissions & Enrollment Management. In these functional workshops processes will be identified and prioritized along with discussions on their critical issues, impacts and impediments, ROI, and their strategic and/or operational significance. These groups will identify, validate, and prioritize the key enterprise processes they are responsible for so that they may be addressed in the functional workshops. Discussion will center on three key components of the business processes in their area:
· Critical Issues – what are the issues of concern within each process area related to process execution, coordination of hand-offs between processes, roles responsible for process execution, and the technology used to support the process?
· Process Impacts – why are the processes important to the various process stakeholders (students, faculty, staff, management, leadership, etc.)?
· Process Value – what value can/will be realized through the improvement of the process?
Functional Process Modeling Workshops
After the kickoff workshops have concluded, functional groups will reconvene about every other week for workshops where the business processes that were identified earlier will be collaboratively redesigned by teams consisting of members of all of the community colleges. These sessions will be consultant facilitated with the goal of modeling what the processes will look like in the future state/ideal state.
Infinity Process Platform: the BPM Technology Catalyst Tool
This project will utilize a new BPM tool from SunGard called Infinity Process Platform (IPP). This software provides out-of-the box functionality for process diagraming, modeling, execution, analysis, and integration to simplify the creation and management of business process models. IPP enables the consistent management of business processes with automation, integration, monitoring and reporting. A product overview and data sheet can be found at: http://bit.ly/ickYl8
Advice, Resources, Ideas, Suggestions?
Such an extraordinary project isn’t without substantial risk. Any advices, resources, ideas, suggestions, etc. from projects of similar size and scope that could help mitigate risk and help ensure the success of the project would be greatly appreciated.
