Hi joebert,
I am glad you took the time to respond my topic with such a great case study. What you underline is that to own a process-centric enterprise you must involve people, steps, procedures and deliverables. All together represent the elements we encounter in any organization.Thus, it seems we already have the pieces of the puzzle.
First of all, our colleague, kmajoos, bring out the social cost dimension. With specific training, people will discover there is no rocket science involved in handling the tasks given to accomplish the business process assigned to them. This is one very important argument considering that human resources are not always easy to manage. Maybe a process owner, member of the modernanalyst community, will be kind to share his/her experience in managing the people that deal on a daily basis with business processes.
Second, joebert talked about centralised and decentralised organizations. Maping the core or the important business processes help both senior managers (to have greater control if organization is centralized) and middle managers (to make more decisions if decentralized). How? BPM is useful because you can actually "see" and take control of operations in a tight-loose environment.
Third, if solution frameworks (CMMI, Zachman, COBIT, COSO, ITIL, eTOM, IAA, et cetera), are approached correctly, BPM offers the opportunity to reach improvement and furthermore, business performance.
Last, but not least, I must mention again SOA, now a common practice. In our customer-oriented economy we must deliver the demanded products and services as efficient as possible. For example, you tailor a business process to deliver the desired products to the customer. In the process, you need the IT systems. If those systems are not readily available, you have a problem. Sometimes, a big problem. But, in a SOA system, the IT functionalities are offered as a service to the entire organization. Now, the link between SOA and BPM is simple: leverage IT functionality to serve at any moment people, steps, procedures and deliverables (the components of an organization). So, SOA and BPM yields remarkable results.
When I opened the Thread, things were not so clear. But, after all being wrote, I think we have a good big picture of what is needed to transit from functional silos to a process-centric enterprise. For this reason, I am curious if Adrian is willing to post a poll with the following question: "What is missing from the organizations you worked with, as a BA, to become a process-centric enterprise?".
Thank you for the patience to read it all.