8 Essential Requirements for Managing Unstructured Processes on the Salesforce Platform
While Salesforce provides a variety of tools to automate structured business processes, it does not provide the same level of functionality for “unstructured” processes (better referred to as “situational” processes – an unstructured process is an oxymoron). Thus, Salesforce tools must be augmented by tools that better support the increasingly complex, dynamic, and fragmented nature of work.
Designing a business process on the Salesforce platform involves mapping out all the steps required in the process, accounting for all possible paths, exceptions, events, etc. At some point, we declare the process design "complete." This works well for processes that are structured, stable, and predictable.
But of course, in the real world, things are not always well structured and predictable. The problem is that the minute something happens that is not fully supported by the defined process, process participants are forced to jump out of the process into the chaotic sea of email and spreadsheets.
The Process Spectrum
There is a broad spectrum of processes – from the fully automated processes that Salesforce tools support, to the completely ad hoc processes on the other side of the spectrum.
Structured processes are designed to execute the same way every time. You can analyze them ahead of time, work out a pattern, then execute the same way every time. The key thing here is that executing routine work the same way every time can be limiting; we want processes be standardized and efficient, but there’s little room for creativity in these processes.
BPM industry analyst Sandy Kemsley describes it this way:
In order to standardize and automate routine work, it takes some amount of analysis and implementation up front, but the high volume of repeatable processes makes that effort pay off.
Knowledge work, on the other hand, doesn’t have the same level of predictability as the routine work; instead, the knowledge worker needs to be able to decide what action to take next on a particular piece of work, and when to send it on to someone else. Since the processes don’t happen the same way each time, it’s more difficult to manage them using standard structured BPM methods as with routine work. If you had to map out every possible path that could be taken in this sort of situation, it would take forever to get something implemented, and it would never be complete. In other words, it would be too expensive to even try to do that sort of modeling and implementation for a process that is truly knowledge work. Furthermore, not only is it not possible to remove all of the runtime variation in knowledge work, it may be that variation – and the ability to manage it – that brings value to the process.
Many end-to-end processes contain several phases, each of which may be at a different point on the process continuum and may be more or less likely to be subject to unpredictable exceptions.
Supporting Situational Processes
The objective is to introduce a measure of structure and control into the everyday interactions between humans to assist them in reaching a common, predefined goal.
To model a process that has varying degrees of structure, we need a toolkit that supports the nature of the process.
In this environment, it is responsiveness, not efficiency that is the goal. So it’s not so much a matter of automation, though automation has a role to play – rather, it’s all about facilitation.
Here, change is the organizing principle, not a problematic intrusion.
With the right framework, uncertainty ceases to be a threat and becomes an opportunity. By facilitating the ability to dynamically shape processes to match each unique situation, companies can gain a significant competitive advantage.
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