Ever had an out-of-town person pull his or her car up along side you and ask for directions? Of course, most of us have. Well, that’s kind of what’s been happening ever since CSC’s Howard Smith and I penned Business Process Management: The Third Wave, in 2002. People have been asking me for BPM directions.

But it was only recently that I learned to give the most concise BPM directions, thanks to my sister. You see, my older sister lives in the quaint Greek enclave town of Tarpon Springs on Florida’s Gulf coast. Famous for Greek sponge divers and restaurants, the town is full of roads that meander around canals and coves. One day, my sister told me the story of an out-of-town person asking for directions to one of the restaurants, and the reply stunned me: “go straight, and keep on turning.”

Of course! Those are exactly the directions I’d always wanted to give to out-of-towners new to BPM territory. Many BPM newcomers are easily led to believe that it’s kind of a straight line to adopting BPM, kind of like what they experienced in the past with the purchase of packaged software such as ERP and CRM systems. You just install the darn thing, as difficult, expensive and time-consuming as that may be, and, with a big bang, you rip and replace the old, and are off and running with the new.

Not so for BPM, as business processes come in all shapes and sizes, and they have a nasty habit of wanting to change frequently in response to a rapidly-changing real world. In addition, when another part of the real world rears its ugly head, called “exceptions,” then things get really interesting. Let’s lay out a simplified spectrum of process types, categorized by the degree of exception-handling required:

¤ Straight-Thru Transaction Processing (Integration-Style BPM)

¤ Structured Workflow (Traditional Workflow-Style BPM)

¤ Ad-Hoc Case Management (Every Case is an Exception)

¤ Human Interaction Management (Innovation Processes)

Straight-Thru Transaction Processing (Integration-Style BPM). In fact, many early BPM initiatives were really all about back office application integration. In these cases, BPM systems became the next generation of enterprise application integration (EAI) software, and essentially a tool for IT developers, not necessarily business analysts. Straight-thru transaction processing is analogous to a hole in one in golf, and there are few exceptions with which to deal. It’s all about efficiency and adherence to strict business controls. Addressing these kinds of business processes represents back-office, tactical forms of business process management.

Structured Workflow (Traditional Workflow-Style BPM). Rerouting work and requesting permission are two kinds of structured exception handling that has made traditional workflow so useful. Workflow has grown increasingly flexible, especially when combined with business rules engines that give business analysts considerable exception-handling capability. Dynamic as workflow capabilities may be, these are primarily notions of system-to-human (S-2-H) automation, where workflow structures are predefined and treat people as cogs in an assembly line, shoving tasks from station to station, with routing of tasks based on various exceptions that may occur. It’s still like the game of golf, where the straight-thru processes represent a hole in one every time, while the workflow processes require dealing with fairly well known exceptions: sand traps, collaboration with other players, and consultation with a referee from time to time. But the ultimate workflow destination is predefined: knocking the ball into the hole.

Ad-Hoc Case Management (Every Case is an Exception). Now, it gets interesting when every process is an exception. We can turn to Derek Miers’ forthcoming book,[2] to get a handle on ad-hoc case management, “Put simply, it is just not possible to automate all aspects of most core business processes (the aim of so-called ÔStraight Thru Processing’). The requirements of these exception processes just do not lend themselves to standardization. For example, in healthcare or financial services situations, the need is to facilitate and support employees as they carry out the work, automating and retrieving information where possible. In these sorts of situations, the most effective approach is usually to have a generic process maintaining the case in hand, supported by any number of supporting processes that are bound to the parentÑas determined by the judgment of the user and the needs of the work, instead of being predetermined.” Indeed, the role of the human, the knowledge worker, prevails in this category of process. It’s kind of the reverse of the system treating the human as a cog in the workflow machine; now the human treats standard processes as cogs in a higher-level, human-directed, ad-hoc process.

Human Interaction Management (Innovation Processes). “Going where no process has gone before” may be the most descriptive way to categorize the innovative, agile and collaborative human-driven work processes. Such processes are not human-to-system; neither are they system-to-human. Instead, they are human-to-human interaction processes. Such work processes require human judgment, negotiations and commitments to determine next steps; the process structure emerges rather than being presupposed as in workflow processes. That is, these work processes change their structure and participants as work progresses. These work processes typically cross organizational boundaries, especially as companies embrace open innovation for competitive advantage. Support for human interaction management requires technology underpinnings unlike those of integration and workflow-style BPM; it requires a human interaction management system (HIMS) that can handle “commitment processing” versus “information processing.”

So there you have it. There’s no “one such thing” that you can call “BPM,” at least as far as process categories and supporting tools. For straight-thru process categories, integration-style BPM is just fine. Workflow-style BPM is fine for routing tasks and making routine decisions.

But then, perhaps in a manner similar to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the value of BPM moves from efficiency to responsiveness as we move on to the ad-hoc case management categories of business processes.

Finally, it is the ultimate in dealing with exceptions, that exceptional state called innovation, that represents the highest-value level for companies that want to self actualize. And that is all about technology support for human interaction management.

No doubt, most companies first dip their toes in the BPM waters with back-office, straight-thru processing initiatives. Sure, they gain efficiencies.

But in today’s world of extreme competition,[3] with globalization and commoditization striking fear in the hearts of CEOs, responsiveness now trumps efficiency.[4] The real payback for BPM isn’t about tinkering around with some tactical back-office processes, it’s about responsiveness and innovation in the face of total global competition.

So, after starting with straight-thru processes, keep on turning, turning to the other process categories as they offer ever greater promise for competitive advantage.

There is no BPM destination just around the cove, as there is a Greek restaurant at the end of the winding roads in Tarpon Springs. Yet I can now give you precise directions for your BPM journey: go straight, and keep on turning.

About the Author: Peter Fingar 

PETER FINGAR is an internationally recognized expert on business process management, and an author of nine books acknowledged for their thought leadership (see www.mkpress.com). His groundbreaking books include "Business Process Management: The Third Wave," the seminal book that defined the concepts of BPM and helped launch a new industry. He's a practitioner with over thirty years of hands-on experience at the intersection of business and technology. He has held management, technical and advisory positions with GTE Data Services, American Software and Computer Services, Saudi Aramco, EC Cubed, the Technical Resource Connection division of Perot Systems and IBM Global Services. He has taught graduate and undergraduate computing studies at universities in the U.S. and abroad, and has given keynote talks worldwide, including Gartner’s BPM Summit. He can be reached at www.PeterFingar.com