A changing process

Joerg Heistermann explains the importance of adapting to market changes and establishing a process-driven culture in order to stay ahead of the competition.

“Business process management is a critical success factor in today's ever changing environment”
-Joerg Heistermann

The financial services sector has been through major upheaval in recent years. How can FS companies use technology to manage through such challenging periods?
Joerg Heistermann. Those organizations that have solutions in place to constantly measure, analyze and adapt their business processes are the ones that will emerge from a crisis in a better position than their competitors. They can be first in identifying emerging risks and they can react at a stage early enough to survive or to stay ahead of the competition.
Now, in the aftermath, financial services companies need to focus on their core business processes in order to provide fast, high-quality and cost efficient services to their customers. If they haven't already done so, financial services organizations need to establish a process-centric business, which will help them put better controls in place for managing risk, increasing efficiency and preparing for the next market trend or even the next crisis.

What are the specific challenges faced by financial services organizations seeking to implement change?
JH. The financial services industry is characterized by highly specialized and detailed workflows. But still too often these workflows are not fully digitized yet or are not managed at a cross-enterprise level by dedicated end-to-end process owners.
To establish a process-driven culture that can manage change efficiently, organizations need full support from senior management and efficient process management solutions.
One of the best ways to initiate change is the rotation of employees. In addition, financial services companies need to make sure that all the process knowledge within the company is stored digitally in a central repository in a way that the employees can access, understand and adopt it. The more an organization can make their business processes transparent, the easier it is to measure how they are performing as well as identify the potential risks.
 
How important is it that FS companies are able to respond quickly to shifting market and operational conditions? How can this be achieved without compromising organizational efficiency?
JH. In today's competitive business landscape, efficiency is the precondition while flexibility is the critical success factor. Thus, it's not flexibility or efficiency - rather flexibility AND efficiency. The better a company understands and manages its core processes the more competitive a company is. With a central repository and an efficient process management solution, one can adjust the company's processes easily to new regulations and optimize them by defining a better way to do it.
 
In the wake of the financial crisis, there may be a temptation to play it safe and not seek continual improvement in processes. Would you agree that this attitude is misguided?
JH. In the world of global competition, there is no room to stand still for financial services organizations. Either companies understand and control their core processes or they don't. If they don't, they will not adapt to market changes quickly enough and eventually be out of business regardless of an economic crisis. Business process management is a critical success factor in today's ever changing environment.

Joerg Heistermann was appointed to CEO of the Americas on March 1, 2009. He started his career as a project manager at GMD, Germany's national research center for computer science. He later held progressive management and board positions at Deutsche Bank (Frankfurt & New York), Mannesmann, KarstadtQuelle New Media and Neckermann.