Demystifying the term PROCESS: customer-relevant and unique purpose

In this fourth post on the topic "Demystifying the term process", I’ll explain requirement 5 of the 10 requirements that something must meet, before we can use the term ‘process’ in a mature service management context, according to the Unified Service Management method :

1. A process describes what has to happen successively, not the who or how.
2. A process can be interpreted with a verb.
3. A process can be counted.
4. Processes are not depending upon practical conditions (?).
5. PROCESSES HAVE A CUSTOMER-RELEVANT AND UNIQUE PURPOSE.
6. A process can be divided into sub-processes, but that does not change the process.
7. A process model organizes the processes.
8. An integral process model includes all service management activities.
9. In an integrated process model, each activity occurs only once.
10. All activities are steered using process control.

In the first three posts of this newsletter, I already demonstrated that many so-called processes are actual practices. But even if you do not add People or Technology to the Process dimension, many so-called processes do not qualify as customer-relevant.

?The service management context of USM is the customer- and business-driven level of maturity, as indicated with the green arrow in the image on top of this post. Value creation is the ultimate meaning of any service provider, and therefore maturity should be measured in terms of the value that the provider creates for the customer and not in terms of the traditional capabilities. Although providers talk about value creation all the time, most of them are still struggling somewhere between level 2 and 3, and many don’t even reach that level – just like their customers. This is mainly due to the dominating technology focus of these providers and the fact that for the last 3 decades, they have mostly followed a practice-driven approach, which has not provided a sustainable service delivery strategy. As Einstein said, they will have to change that approach, or else his famous statement “If you do what you did, you get what you got” will keep these providers stuck at the position of the red arrow. And maybe they can make a lot of money there, but they will not create a lot of value.

A customer-relevant process doesn’t deliver intermediate results

The providers at levels 1, 2 or 3 tend to call anything a process, as long as it’s a sequence of activities – whatever the output is. However, if the output of that process is not (yet) relevant to the customer, it doesn’t qualify as a process for the customer, because its output is at best a semi-finished, intermediate result that doesn’t influence the customer’s business (yet).

From the perspective of the customer (levels 4 and 5), only a process that delivers an actual customer-relevant result is a process, the rest is at best an intermediate step of a process.

?For a customer who seeks value from a provider, this is not enough. Moreover, this has been the main reason for the Business-IT Gap of the last decades: providers with an immature, mostly technology-focused proposition for customers that seek business improvements.

Example

Dell is a well-known provider of desktops, laptops, and other computing equipment. They may be scored at a level 5 of the traditional Capability Maturity Model, and they can be expected to do very well in terms of Operational Excellence. But in the USM Value Maturity Model, Dell will score a level 1, 2, or at most a level 3, because Dell has no idea to what end the customer is using this equipment in their business. Dell may be a very profitable company, but they do not act on level 4 or 5.

Intermediate results fail to qualify as processes

A provider that calls ‘Software Development’ a process doesn’t relate to the customer’s business, as software is merely a piece of technology (level 1), not even a system (level 2).

IT Asset Management is not a customer-relevant process, because this is an internal activity of the provider and the output is only relevant to that provider. Besides, IT Asset management is mostly described as a practice.

Supplier Management, Knowledge Management, Service Design, Service Validation & Testing, Deployment Management, Strategy Management and many more processes are not customer-relevant processes, because they are internal activities of the provider and their output is only relevant to that provider.

Providers that offer IAAS, PAAS, or cloud-based SaaS, are merely acting at the system level (2) or at most at the service level (3).

Customer-relevant processes

Processes that are customer-relevant will need to have a customer-relevant input (a triggering customer request) as well as a customer-relevant output (the business-relevant response to that request). Requirement 5 of the 10 USM requirements will highly limit the number of processes that can be called processes at the customer-driven or business-driven levels (4 and 5) of the Value Maturity Model.

In the rest of this newsletter topic, I’ll demonstrate what can be qualified as a customer-relevant process. If you can’t wait for that, you may start reading the USM book or any of the free downloadable e-books , or take a USM Foundation course or a free online USM workshop - whatever you prefer, and learn what you haven't learned at school.

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