Design and implement. Implementation and transformation is focused on the management and execution of the individual BPM initiatives. This phase requires ensuring that all constituencies understand the business case, gaining commitment from stakeholders and users, establishing project plans, and accurately tracking actions and training.

Ensuring an understanding of the vision and business case requires communication, a critical element of any change program. To be effective, you must communicate clearly and often. For example, when IBM set out to create a services culture within its global services division, leaders found they had to communicate their vision at least seven times, on average, to gain a consistent understanding among stakeholders. Leaders should use every channel available to them, such as e-mail, newsletters, conference calls, webcasts, and posters to communicate the BPM vision and business case. Harvard Professor John Kotter's guiding principle on this subject is simple: "Use every possible channel, especially those that are being wasted on nonessential information."

Gaining buy-in from the stakeholders, to the first-line manager to top executives, is essential. Change can be achieved through commitment and/or compliance. Both have their place, but it is important to choose the right path for the change to be successful. Commitment requires winning hearts and minds through leadership, time, and communication. Compliance involves an investment in process administration, monitoring, and if necessary, enforcement.

Tactics to build commitment can include creating project teams, managing stakeholders' needs, communicating change, and transferring knowledge and skills. Tactics for compliance are reducing headcount, changing the organization structure, introducing new administrative processes, and/or changing sign-off processes.

Individual projects and initiatives should be aligned to milestones in the change program. This means turning attention to the definition of specific business enablers that will deliver benefits, and having project teams identify how BPM benefits will be achieved. It requires understanding the benefit logic behind the initiatives, beginning with a financial impact assessment and moving to include connections to technology, process, and organizational enablers that will ultimately drive change and benefits to the organization. Should one or more enablers not be delivered to the organization, or if they are delayed or constructed to a different -- and more limiting -- specification, benefit streams and the realization of anticipated outcomes can be severely impacted or eliminated.

The next step is tracking the timely achievement of the project team and management actions necessary to drive business benefits. The on time, on budget delivery of business enablers -- as outlined in detailed project management plans -- are critical to meeting objectives. This work step is tightly integrated with overall change program management activities, including detailed reporting of team status, and issue identification and resolution. The project management office plays the role of tracking and managing key issues, such as who is responsible for the delivery of which business enablers. What is the completion or delivery date? What are the dependencies? What contingency plans and/or corrective actions are required?

A process must also be created to ensure that benefits are actually achieved and delivered to the organization. Performance reporting mechanisms should be established by the project management office, reporting progress against agreed-upon key performance indicators. These reports should be monitored and reviewed with project sponsors and benefit owners to agree upon benefit delivery, identify post-implementation issues, and confirm corrective actions. The transfer of knowledge through training is important. It underscores new ways of working and the new skills needed to facilitate change, mediate resistance, articulate causes, and engage resistors. Communication and training drives the users' understanding of new job roles, work instructions, and competencies needed.

Enhance and evolve. Enhancing and optimizing the BPM journey requires monitoring BPM system effectiveness, providing ongoing training, continuously improving upon the system, and prioritizing upgrades. Monitoring the BPM system requires obtaining feedback from front-line managers and second-line managers, as well as business advisors. Their feedback provides insight into the need for potential organizational change interventions, which ensure that benefits continue.

Ongoing training can reinforce the BPM journey, individual roles, and strategic goals. It can also help to keep bad habits at bay. Training is an opportunity to engage leaders at all levels of the organization in the development of both change leadership skills and the technical skills needed to launch and successfully manage BPM. The training itself must be continuously updated and refreshed to remain relevant and aligned to the business. By offering ongoing training, the organization encourages ongoing knowledge sharing, exchange of best practices, and constant integration of BPM into the business model.

Regardless of the success of any implementation and transformation, there is always room for improvement. As projects are undertaken and completed, the process of assessing, monitoring, and improving business performance should remain constant. Sustaining improvement requires accountability, effective communication, close collaboration, and trust. It also requires the elimination of organizational silos and the clear and unequivocal support of top management. Six Sigma principles can aid organizations in this continuous improvement through focus, speed, and organizational resilience.

Not surprisingly, ongoing improvement triggers change. When looking to further enhance BPM, returning to the value realization cycle can help to prioritize upgrades. Taking a new shareholder value baseline and focusing on value drivers will indicate where new value can be generated. Determining the list of business enablers and prioritizing by projected impact will guide the next step in the BPM journey.

An aggressive approach to elevating BPM to an established discipline in the organization is critical to an organization's success. It is also fraught with peril as it fundamentally challenges the underpinnings of how the business is managed. Adopting a change management strategy in conjunction with the BPM journey will help ensure that desired outcomes and benefits are achieved.

Jim Bramante is the global and Americas leader of the financial management practice within IBM Business Consulting Services.