BP Group Weekly news includes Outside-In webinar.. (more)

> NEW < Outside-In monthly magazine at: http://bit.ly/cmW3Mv

+ Webinar +
Successful Customer Outcomes webinar, Thursday - join here - https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/909507898

++ New Professional forums ++
CPP Masters - http://bit.ly/aLWwz3
CPP Professional - http://bit.ly/9vjncf
CPP Practitioners - http://bit.ly/d7ytxJ

+++ Certification Update +++
Eleven new classes - USA, Europe, South Africa, Australia, Japan & Korea - Review and book at http://www.bp2010.com -
* The original and most advanced programme in the world *
* By professionals for Professionals *

++++ Hot topics ++++
DICK LEE - Why do only 2% of companies understand that migrating from inside-out (company-centric) to Outside-In (customer-centric) requires major process change, which triggers major organizational change? http://bit.ly/bSRkPA

ASSAD MIRZA - Why does Lean/Six Sigma fail?
http://bit.ly/c5Xbbf

+++++ New CPP Masters +++++ CONGRATULATIONS!
These folks have now achieved CPP Level 5 and accordingly are now Certified Process Professional Masters (CPP - Master):
David Motterhead, Kenneth Mortimer, Marjolein Towler, Charles Bennett, Martina Beck-Friis, Maria Mollersten, Stephen Nicholson, Craig Reid, Janne Ohtonen, Erika Westbay, Paul Bailey, Rosalind Slaughter, Jayanthi Venkatachalam, Stephen Ferguson, Sandra Vincent-Guy, David Johnson, Neville Inglis, Adam Keens, Gerard Gillespie, Benoit Dubouloz, Caroline Holyhead, Sofie Smolders, Steve Graham, Simon Love, Helen Littlechild, Pete Marshall, James Holloway, Mark Anderson, Karen Rawlins, Mike Vernon, James Bath, Nikki Hastings, Sharon Lynch 

Next week - new articles, software reviews and the 2010 Annual Survey (our 18th annual survey)

Ciao, Steve (hopefully 'see you' Thursday!)

The Successful Customer Outcome - Illusion or Practical toolkit?

Einstein pointed out "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." and that is central to todays challenge.

Accordingly we advocate using the Successful Customer Outcome (SCO) Mapping approach which goes beyond accepted wisdom and begins the process of linking EVERYTHING to the SCO. It is an easy to use technique that creates specific measurable outcomes at a personal. process and business level.

We include the SCO Mapping approach in CPP Level 2 ( http://www.bp2010.com ) however if anyone wishes to review, discuss and participate we're hosting a free to attend webinar on April 15 -
Join here http://bit.ly/dAWoYb

BP Group Weekly news includes IMMEDIATE webinar, Outside-In software announcements and 2010 launch of the BP Group Sundowners.

Latest news items including new webinar, new Outside-In software, top discussions and establishment of the BP Group sundowners. Now 3,500+ members on LinkedIn - see the update here - http://bit.ly/9oEsTu

New Academic articles with the theme Outside-In http://bit.ly/cZ3QsN and http://bit.ly/9mSOuc (thanks to Patrick Geiger and Mark Barnett)

Your Three Favorite Business Books

You may well have already spotted the current 'what are you top three business books quesiton' at LinkedIn which has been running a few days.
Here are the interim scores on the doors:
OK, after 40 votes and 5 days we have 25% of the votes going to:

> Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell - 3 votes
> Good to Great - Jim Collins - 3 votes
> Who Says Elephants Can't Dance - Lou Gerstner - 2 votes
> The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen Covey - 2 votes

Honorable mentions to authors with more than one mention:
Peter Drucker and Gary Hamel

I have extended the submissions by  a week, and you can see all the submissions to date at Join the survey here

Thanks to contributors so far:
Dick Lee, Frank Leather, John Wurl, Juan Soto Irigoyen, Keith Hoyle, Kenneth Mortimer, Michel Theriault, Nic Harvard, Shani Shoham, Shimon Aizen Hasegawa, Sudip Masoji, Suresh Venkata

Next week we will run the scores after two weeks and it will be a great pleasure to award the winning contributor(s) with a special BP Group prize :-)

BPM, Simulation & Customers - mutually exclusive?

Interesting discussion thread this week on the BP Group LinkedIn is certainly provoking a debate - see http://bit.ly/4Er8N6 for the latest.

The debate was sparked by Mark Barnett (SVP Process Bank of America) who delivered an eye opening presentation at the Lean Six Sigma and Process Improvement summit in Florida in Janaury 2010. A key contributor to the merger and acquisition program of Countrywide involved the use of process simulation to test and validate certain assumptions. The result? Well let Mark tell you in his presentation here > http://bit.ly/czBdtc - biggish file< 

Jim Sinur (Gartner)  has dusted off his thoughts on process simulation (seehttp://bit.ly/dvIUv0) so I think we can now officially call Simulation 'flavor of the month!'

What are your 3 favorite business books of all time?
http://bit.ly/9rYUYD

BP Group weekly update

Today's BP Group LinkedIn membership count is 3,191
263 Ongoing Discussions

Our theme this week - who said this? (A FREE training place to the first correct response)
"You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need!"

So with that in mind

** New Presentations ** Erika Westbay (Nature Conservancy) & Paul Pennanen (Amerisure)
Lean Six Sigma & Balanced Scorecards

** Most Active discussion ** Mark Barnett (Bank of America)
Is Process Simulation of any Value?

** Other discussions **
John Corr - iPAd winner or loser?
Dick Lee  - Customer Experience
Marjolein Towler - Toyota - demise caused by Lean?
John Walker - Are there only consultants into BPM?
Steve Towers - Process is an Effect
Ian Clayton - Who started Outside-In?

** Podcast **
15 minute review of Outside-In interviewed by Gienna Weiss.



** 2010 Certification & Training programme**
http://www.bp2010.com
(New cities - Helsinki, seoul and Japan!)


Cheers
Steve Towers
BP Group Founder

*Your BP Group Board of Advisors*
Dick Lee - USA (North),
John Corr - UK,
Sunil Dutt Jha - India & SE Asia,
Steve Towers - USA (South)
Charles Bennett - Middle East & UK
Kenneth Mortimer - Oceania.

*Your BP Group Managers*
David Motterhead - Australia,
Erika Westbay - USA,
Janne Ohtonen - Finland
Nick Harvard - UK
Stephane Haelterman - Belgium

What are the roots, the origins of Outside-In Process Thinking?

On the BP Group LinkedIn area - http://bit.ly/8oK2wB - Ian Clayton (see http://bit.ly/5ioaUo) posed this interesting question?

Customer centricity, or market driven thinking is far from new. As a service management professional I have habitually started there - with the customer experience, their 'delight zone', their satisfaction levels.

I'm writing on the overlap and synergy between OI-P and Universal Service Management (USM) - borne out of Product Management. Can anyone suggest the heritage for OI-P... where was the phrase first coined and by whom?

As a die-hard advocate of the Outside-In way of being this is my understanding

The first book to clearly state Outside-In is the Outside-In Corporation (2005) and author Barbara Bund introduces us to the main themes, albeit with a marketing-sales emphasis. You can review this seminal book here http://www.theoutsideincorporation.com/

The actual of origins of Outside-In thinking however go way back into scientific management, and in fact Frederick Winslow Taylor "The first step in gaining control over an Organization is to know and understand the basic processes." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Winslow_Taylor ) FWT's discussions around efficiency directly involved the need to be quite specific about the delieverable in objective and measurable terms and how they contributed to the overall product or service offering. We now call that the Successful Customer Outcome with a set of metrics that underpins its definition.

In recent times Virgin Mobile were one of the first companies to truly venture into the territory as we now understand it. In the book (I must claim an interest) published in 2006 - Customer Expectation Management (Towers/Schurter) we tell the story of how they emerged, understood the needs of a 'new' customer, and accordingly after 2002-3 organised themselves around a set of principles quite different to any existing model. You can link to an article and the book from here http://bit.ly/8cYXhB

The phrase Outside-In has been used in marketing terminology (for instance I came across its use at Salford University, England when I was studying for a marketing diploma in 1983.) I don't think the sentiment is therefore in anyway a new one. The times have changed now however to make the theory and practice a route to success for major corporations grappling with the issues of the 21c.

There are several emergent approaches and methodologies, some pure breed others adpated from earlier roots. The BP Group promotes the CEMMethod(tm) as the means to the end ( http://www.cemmethod.com ) and it is a broadly accepted approach by people who have completed the Certified Process Professional (CPP) qualification since 2005-6. See the latest syllabus at http://www.bp2010.com

So is there anything new really?
What is certain the time for OI is here and now (reference the 2009 brand value research of Millward Optimor where the leading brand names are all progressing decidely OI strategies). Companies in every sector are experiencing a Copernican moment and moving the customer to the center of their respective Universes.

You can link to the latest in this discussion at The Outside-In Process Group

 

Align your processes with Business Strategy?

Some very well meaning people should haul themselves into the second decade of the 21st century. A thread over on the ABPMP (yes I am a member) says...

I quote "For anyone who has not done so, I believe it's well worth your time to have a look at the standard for strategy ("The Business Motivation Model"):
Also an OMG standard, but you probably don't want to read about business stategy in UML(!). I believe a good number of your questions about 'alignment' can be answered simply by looking into the core concepts of strategy."

Arrgghh.

Let's get really clear here. if you business strategy is dumb you will align to the wrong things (go ask GM about that).

Much better to align to Successful Customer Outcomes (and they become your strategy) ala Proctor & Gamble and J&J.

A very recent article on this theme in HBR by Roger Martin, Dean of Rotman School of Management "The Age of Customer Capitalism" - Page 59. You can see the synopsis and link here > http://hbr.org/ < or visit Roger's site at http://rogerlmartin.com/

I would also recommend Roger's book for the readers amongst us..The Design of Business. A refreshing read from someone up there in academia :-)