Business Process Harmonization: Science and Art (I).

I have gone through the process of business process harmonization in big companies and I´ve learned some lessons I would like to share. We understand Business Process Harmonization as the “elimination of differences and inconsistencies in their activities, inputs, outputs or owners among processes that share the same goal in order to make them uniform or mutually compatible”(1).

Typically, the companies initiate a Business Process Harmonization (BPH) project as a result of:

•    A Post-Merger and Acquisition process
•    Implementation of a enterprise wide system (like an ERP)
•    Difficulties in the interoperability of Regions
•    A expansion strategy
•    Definition of a common model (or Company-Way)

The benefits of a BPH are:

•    Improvements in efficiency
•    Decreasing operating costs
•    Increasing internal control
•    Reduce IT spends
•    Improve interoperability across regions
•    Speed in the implementation on new operations
•    Achieve synergies

There are essentially two ways to define and implement a BPH:

I have used both path, but I consider Path B as my preferred. Why? Look at the following table:

If you want to seize the opportunity of process harmonization to redefine and implement best-practices, Path B should be the choice.

Sources:
(1)    “A literature review in process harmonization: a conceptual framework” http://cms.ieis.tue.nl/Beta/Files/WorkingPapers/wp_379.pdf