THE EVOLUTION OF PROCESS MANAGEMENT WITH

MARSHALL SIED
Marshall Sied is the co-founder of Ashling Partners, a technology-
enabled services firm that drives efficiency gains and business process
improvement through Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and targeted
Artificial Intelligence (AI). Sied has deep experience in helping
organizations use technology to improve business performance and
promote positive, innovative changes to their workforce. In May 2018,
APQC spoke with Sied about what’s driving organizations toward
advanced technology and how process teams can evolve to lead their
organizations toward smarter, more strategic digitalization.
Marshall Sied
Co-founder,
AUTOMATION AND THE NEED FOR SPEED Ashling Partners
In APQC’s 2018 Process and Performance Management Priorities and
Challenges survey, 88 percent of respondents said that process management teams have to
change their capabilities to stay relevant. According to Sied, there are two overarching drivers of
this sentiment:
1. the speed of business, and
2. automation.
The speed of business is accelerating, and process management is struggling to keep up. Leaders
see that they need to experiment, test, and learn quickly to meet ever-changing customer
needs. They don’t want to put in the time to do traditional, iterative process improvement.
While these two drivers hit certain industries such as insurance and manufacturing first, the
need for speed and the allure of automation is now impacting almost all companies.
Organizations are looking at the potential of automation for horizontal processes that touch
different departments, service lines, and regions.

Many executives see automation as a shortcut to improve processes. “We believe that’s a
shortsighted approach, because there are major repercussions downstream in the form of
inefficiencies and, even more importantly, data quality issues,” said Sied. He recommends that
process management teams take an active role in stewarding the organization’s automation
efforts. This helps the organization perform more efficient automations and also allows the
process team to serve a more vital, strategic role.

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 PROCESS MANAGEMENT NEEDS TO EVOLVE
Process teams need to embrace advanced technologies to
accelerate the work of process improvement. The most
common use of advanced technologies for process is using RPA We’re leaving the RPA era and
to automate high-volume, frequent, repetitive tasks. This entering intelligent process
produces immediate, tangible ROI in terms of cycle times, costs, automation.
and accuracy. However, according to Sied, RPA is just the first
step. Ultimately, emerging technologies can help process —Marshall Sied
management teams be more strategic and provide increased
Co-founder, Ashling Partners
evidence of their value to the organization.

“A lot of RPA vendors have made enhancements around natural language processing, computer
visioning, and machine learning, so now we’re leaving the RPA era and entering intelligent
process automation,” said Sied. “You could potentially make process improvement
recommendations that you weren’t even aware of based on leveraging those cognitive
capabilities.”

Process teams can use emerging technologies to improve their process discovery and design
work. BPM software providers like IBM Blue Works Live, Signavio, and ProcessMaker offer
solutions that allow process teams to capture and analyze multiple elements (process models,
diagrams, workflows, data), run simulations, and create dashboards to help leaders understand
process performance. These solutions help process teams communicate better and work faster
with constituents. Teams can also use emerging technology for process mining. “You can use
process mining solutions like Celonis that leverage crawler technology to see when people are
not adhering to a well-defined business process,” said Sied. “We typically see that in much
larger, multinational organizations [at this time], but the technology is there.”

HOW PROCESS TEAMS CAN LEAD THE CHANGE

Automation is an imperative for almost all organizations, but many struggle with scalability.
They start initiatives in pockets across the business, but fail to leverage economies of scale
through a truly enterprise-wide program. Organizations need to have a governing body that can
manage automation from end to end. “Process management teams are very well-equipped to
be the Sherpas of that change,” said Sied.

Sied recommends that process management teams encourage leadership to create a process
automation Center of Excellence that is responsible for managing automation end to end: from
evaluating use cases and defining ROI to governing process data and regulatory adherence. To
build buy in for this initiative, he advises that teams ramp up their collection and analysis of
process data. “Within process management, there is a great opportunity for teams to analyze
areas for improvement and work on new solutions to input those improvements incrementally,”
said Sied. “Showing this contribution to improvement is the story we should strive to tell in
process management.”

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K08856 ©2018 APQC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
 BUILD THE PROCESS MA NAGEMENT TEAM OF THE FUTURE
Change management has long been a part of process work.
But the pace of technological change means that tomorrow’s
process teams need to be even better at it. Process teams Design thinking is a great way to
need to be able to learn technology quickly and adapt to new work with cross-functional, multi-
ways of working—and they need to be able to help others in disciplinary teams, especially in
the organization adapt to these changes. “Continuous
education is the biggest mindset and skill that you need to
current state analysis and
drive this future era of process management,” said Sied. process mapping.

In addition to consultative, change management, and —Marshall Sied

continuous learning skills, Sied further recommends that Co-founder, Ashling Partners
process teams integrate the following skillsets.

1. Project management and evaluation—leaders increasingly want a project approach to

continuous improvement: they want a clear business case, risk assessment, value criteria,
and measurable ROI. Sied recommends that process teams learn and leverage these project
management skills from the organization’s project teams or project management office.
2. Process frameworks and continuous process improvement—process frameworks are the
foundation of process improvement. Process teams need to carefully select, adapt, and
communicate process frameworks to identify improvement opportunities within the
business.
3. Design thinking—is a human-centric, solutions-based approach to problem solving. Design
thinking focuses on the customer and integrates Agile’s iterative, fast-paced project
management methodology. “Design thinking is a great way to work with cross-functional,
multi-disciplinary teams, especially in current state analysis and process mapping,” said Sied.
4. Business process management (BPM)—remains a relevant skillset. Process teams need to
have a firm grounding in BPM to ensure that strategic initiatives align with available
resources. “What we like about BPM as the foundation is that automation and technology
are part of its natural cycle, but it also helps to expose shadow business processes,” said
Sied.
Both BPM and design thinking can help process teams get qualitative input about processes that
are undocumented or deeply siloed. This is vitally important for organizations that choose to use
technologies to perform process mining and/or automation.

Skills You May Not Need

As process teams embrace new technologies, coding and other computer science skills may
actually be less relevant. Vendors are offering solutions designed to be used by process teams—
not the IT department. The increased availability of drag-and-drop, easy-to-use solutions means
that process teams may not need to invest in deep coding skills in order to thrive in and beyond
the RPA era. “If I’m looking at the order of magnitude, coding is lower down the list of needed
skills in terms of where we see the technology and the process management profession going,”
said Sied.

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K08856 ©2018 APQC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
 MESSAGE TO PROCESS TEAMS: BE THE CHANGE
When asked about what advice he would give to process
teams, Sied said, “You want to be the change—embrace the
change, own the change, and be assured of the change.” Transformation involves the
Automation and other forms of digitalization are on the intersection of people, process,
horizon, and process teams shouldn’t keep their heads in the and technology. Process
sand. Process teams should welcome this change as an
management is in a very good
opportunity to be more creative, work smarter, and deliver
more value. position of having visibility over
those three pillars.
Sied recommends that process teams start by learning as
much as they can. “Take an RPA course. Sit through a design —Marshall Sied
thinking workshop. Invite folks in your digital or IT Co-founder, Ashling Partners
organization to join you and think about the impact of
automation in both your processes and ways of working,”
said Sied.

By taking a positive and enthusiastic approach to emerging technologies, process management

can position itself as a leader within the organization. “Transformation involves the intersection
of people, process, and technology,” said Sied. “Process management is in a very good position
of having visibility across those three pillars. It’s an exciting time.”

ABOUT APQC
APQC helps organizations work smarter, faster, and with greater confidence. It is the world’s
foremost authority in benchmarking, best practices, process and performance improvement,
and knowledge management. APQC’s unique structure as a member-based nonprofit makes it a
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worldwide in all industries. With more than 40 years of experience, APQC remains the world’s
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