BPM-EAI

So here we are talking about various different changes coming in future:

1. Establishment of value added and operational functions – by means of this, we are separating out the value added activities of ICC and operational activities. Value added activities are the ones that directly add to value enhancement of what ICC is delivering to business while operational activities typically focus on managing the operational processes and maintaining the Integration eco-system. Establishment of two separately identified functions helps setting appropriate goals/KPIs for those functions which can drive the focused improvements in respective areas. For example, operations functions are more about operating with efficiency where focus will be to reduce the operational cost, improve the service levels and make the operational process systematic which can give greater predictability as well as  faster responsiveness for operational needs.
   
2. Automating, standardizing and accelerating the operational functions – concept is very clear. Here we are talking about reducing the time, money and effort spent on the mundane operational activities by streamlining, systematizing and orienting the  focus on the outcome of these activities. Idea is that the money spent on the operational activities is typically doesn’t contribute to business benefits but it still needs to be done. So by streamlining and systematizing, we have a opportunity to make the operational efficiency better (to add to benefit of service levels) and consequently channel the saved money into functional that contribute to business value creation. My observation has been that lot of enterprises ignore the operational functions from efficiency focus and try to address mostly the activities that are solution development life-cycle or support core program of work. This works fine when portfolio is small and nimble. However, as portfolio becomes large, focus of automation, systematization and operational efficiency has to go beyond those core and address many other operational processes that together add up to overall cost/throughput and lead-time perspective.
   
3. Diverting funds from ‘operational expense’ to ‘value added activities' – Now this is interesting. So far we mostly spoke of standard improvement kind of changes. Here is what matters a lot from budget innovation angle. As part of the competency center strategic financial management planning, ICC must use the efficiency improvement on the operational side to divert the money saved into more strategic or what we call ‘value added’ activities. This way, It has two fold advantage, first that ICC doesn’t need to put off its strategic improvement in the value added activities because of funding issue and secondly, for the funding, it doesn’t need to have too much dependency on the central corporate funding. So this becomes self-sustained funding model that ensures that the competency center is able to build strong base of value added capabilities.
   
4. “Self-service” capabilities of ICC – As core processes and operating capabilities of the portfolio mature, ICC will need to take them to next-level by making them self-serviceable. By having the self-service capability, lot of these functions/processes doesn’t need a large ‘subject matter expert’ layer between the process and end-user to make the output happen. For example. If Environment provisioning is self-service enabled (which possibly involves virtualization of the infrastructure, process/workflow-managed provisioning control etc.), environment users can generate their environment specifications online, request the environment availability for their work that gets provisioned like the same way as provisioning of services are done for the external customers. So in essence, ‘service orientation’ of the such internal focused processes gets at par with the external services orientation and that makes the ICC truly efficient and smart. This whole concept of self-serviceable eco-system is very powerful and has countless possibilities to bring sophistication into the ways how portfolio runs. It not only saves money for the enterprise but gives leapfrog jump to the overall service delivery capabilities of the portfolio. I will be dedicating a series of blogs later completely onto this self-service eco-system of the ICC.

So in nutshell, next generation ICC will be able to differentiate their funding models/operating standards and investments across operational functions and value added functions. Not only that, using self-service capabilities, ICC will be able to bring new dimensions of improvements and service levels with value added functions.

In the next blog, we will explore the ‘smart sourcing’ strategies for the next-generation ICCs. That has been an area of interest for lot of our clients and not many have realized how smart sourcing options can give them opportunity to ‘think Business’ and not get stuck with ‘delivery complexities’.