BUS303: Strategic Information Technology

As has been highlighted previously, BPM has the potential to drive innovations, especially as the world becomes more digital; however, this undeniably brings with it new challenges for the effective application of BPM and necessitates a rethinking of the role of BPM in organizations. Harmon categorically states, "today, it is hard to remember what the world was like without computer systems".

Computers moved from tools used to automate business processes to communication media facilitating new business processes. We have invented technology and adopted a process approach in one way or another. Technology is being adopted and reengineered to fit demands. Performance management is being conducted, and people are trying to achieve targets but fail to achieve their full potential because of a lack of understating of "soft" issues, which may have been considered as irrelevant but which now can be seen as crucial for the successful implementation of BPM. In the health care sector particularly, we find examples of projects that are failed because in some measure the concept of integrated information system is far from being realized. In fact, the health care sector in Europe seems to demonstrate that it is still relatively underdeveloped with respect to IT systems when compared to other industries. Furthermore, content and structural issues unique to the health care sector make process modeling difficult as the "time" element in health care is based on care demands, which only help to increase variability. This leads to the conclusion that BPM needs to be innovated itself before it can be a successful driver of innovation in an organization. Harmon suggests that the way forward is to integrate the three broad traditions of BPM – management, quality control, and IT.

The major argument here is that systems have developed and became so complex that we cannot allow for one of the traditions to be ignored. The challenge of the digital world can not just be seen as a challenge but also as a future prospect. While information and communication technologies further push the need for a process approach, the development and implementation of these systems help stakeholders make decisions through the continuous availability of information for management. In business involvement, not least health care, smart decisions need to be made, as it is clear that we can ill-afford to waste resources and experiment with bad decisions. Evidence needs to be used to take decisions at all levels – tactical, operational, and strategic. Thus the future prospects of the new digital age will follow the model inputs–processes–outputs and objective data will automatically follow. The objective data will be intelligently molded to help reach better decisions.

The complexity of any system inherently means that multitude of processes at different levels are present that need to be linked vertically with strategic intent as well as horizontally with operational decisions. If one would take the health care system, for example, for every part of any decision, there are implications vertically and horizontally. For example, if a decision is being made on the scheduling within the operating theater, implications will reverberate throughout other wards, such as the accident and emergency and other departments, such as imaging. For these process, changes to be tackled effectively and comprehensively, a robust process management system approach needs to be implemented, which is supported by the technology while taking into account other nontechnological capabilities, such as governance, culture, and human resources.

This drives innovation through the use of BPM while also innovating BPM by considering the transformation of organization structures and ensuring cultural adaption, thereby avoiding a silo mentality in decision-making and ensuring wider visibility of the decision-making process. Application of decisions support systems across the entire supply chain processes of health care delivery will enable us to clearly find answers to the what, who, why, and how for managing system effectively. These will enable us to reach the right tradeoff between efficiency and patient responsiveness in strategic, tactical, and operational levels with the dynamic involvement of the stakeholders. This will also help integrating clinical and managerial processes in health care delivery. In Table 2, we highlight the seven key steps that we believe are needed to drive BPM forward as an effective within health care.

The seven steps to drive BPM forward as a tool for health care innovation 

I. Clear consensus about what is "quality of care" in 2015 and how it can be linked to the digital age. 

2. Train health care professionals to become aware of what they want to achieve – giving more focus on defining clear concepts and end points. 

3. Engage IT experts to develop tools as a means to reach the end points. 

4. Reinforce the principles of transparency discipline, commitment. alignment, motivation, and integration across the health care industry supply chain. 

5. Bring focus back to the multidisciplinary approach – pushing all professionals out of their comfort zones regardless of their area of expertise – IT, managerial, or clinical. 

6. Implement transformational leadership within the organization to bring about change. without losing focus on patient outcomes. 

7. Ensure that the driving seat remains within the hands of professionals to avoid complete dependency on technology. 

Table 2 Seven steps in the way forward for BPM implementation

Abbreviations: BPM, business process management; IT, information technology.