Business Process Alignment - The difference between speed and velocity

Okay, so you’ve automated your business processes. Purchase Requisitions are online and being approved in SAP ERP. Customer discounts are being processed and approved in Salesforce.com. New Employee appointments are being managed and approved in SuccessFactors. Capital Expenditure (CAPEX) requests are being approved through a SharePoint-based document approval workflow. No more paper! Automated workflow notification emails and tasks are being generated at an amazing rate. Job Done!

Have you checked-in with your CFO lately? Has business agility and effectiveness really improved, or are you just doing the same old thing faster? Not uncommonly, in order to expedite process automation initiatives, processes are standardised, simplified and automated. A single-source of organisational structures is being referenced and everything follows a predictable and consistent pattern. You’ve achieved an elegant technical solution, taking advantage of the process automation capabilities of your various application platforms and should be adored by senior business executives and decision makers. But somehow, they remain underwhelmed, overwhelmed and hesitant in funding your next big process automation opportunity. Why?

The difference is in process speed vs process velocity. Speed is scalar quantity referring to how fast a process is capturing requests and churning out notification emails, decision tasks, and reminders. Speed is readily achieved through process automation. Velocity is a vector quantity that measures the rate at which a process delivers its business objectives. Velocity is achieved be enabling collaborative business processes that provide executives with deep contextual insight for timely and effective decision making to support business outcomes. A high speed process can accelerate a traditional paper-based approach by instantly routing inputs and information between participants. In contrast, a high velocity process expedites this process to achieve a strategically aligned outcome in the shortest possible time. High speed processes are achieved by eliminating paper. High velocity processes require a focus on expedited decision making.

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