Best Practices: Essential Capabilities For Advanced Business Process Centers Of Excellence

To turn initiatives into sustainable programs that continuously improve and transform processes, business process professionals must establish centers of excellence (COEs) as quickly as the organization can support them. Advanced COEs in areas like ERP and BPM drive process innovation from the customer perspective, support business transformation led by senior executives, while also optimizing investments in process resources across the enterprise. When implemented as a shared service, or distributed across functional units and cross-functional processes, COEs connect business stakeholders with skilled process pros, service suppliers, and IT vendors through five essential capabilities: 1) clearly articulated portfolios of business process services; 2) formalized relationships with business stakeholders and suppliers; 3) effective working structures for delivering the portfolio; 4) efficient service management processes; and 5) integrated quality assurance. Best practices and case studies show that while business process technologies, methods, and tools may differ from initiative to initiative, mature COEs employ similar organizational and management practices for greatest impact.