Expert tasks Nigerian companies on technology driven business

Staff Development Officer, Technical Training,MTN,Oyebanke Osunsanya making a presentation of MTN’s BMP during a practical session at the JK Micheals/Oracle Breakfast meeting, with her is the Lead Project Management Consultant for JK Micheals, Dr. Bello Omololu.

If Nigerian companies must catch up fast with Chinese and India firms that have invaded the economy, they must therefore consider Business Process Management (BPM) that is technology driven.

The reason is that if Nigerian owned organisations deploy technology driven BPM in the management of their business process they would be able to achieve operational excellence, reduce cost of operation, increase profit margin, and standardised their processes.

Speaking to the ICT.BizAfrica  shortly after addressing top executives of selected Nigerian companies at a breakfast meeting in Lagos, Lead Project Management Consultant for JK Micheals, Dr. Bello Omololu said that a BPM that is backed up by technology would help in organisational flexibility, agility and assist in regulatory compliance.

He told participant at the meeting which was organised in conjunction with Oracle that the nation’s business landscape is gradually being eating up by the Chinese and India firm whose acumen for business was yet to be matched by most Nigerian owned and managed organisations.

According to him, with a technology driven BPM a company can be transformed into a world class organisation saying that Oracle has one of the best solutions a unified BPM technology known as the Oracle BPM Suite 11g, which has the capability to break barriers.

He said that the Oracle BPM Suite 11g integrates different components of an organisation, which can help to put their process in a seamless way adding that every other system in an organisation can ride and talk to the Oracle BPM thereby making the process in the organisation to be effortless and flow in seamless manner.

He disclosed that there is the training aspect of the BPM and another where “we can simulate and the break points, delivering, and you can even make corrections before you move into your business”.

He further said that the rules of the organisation as well as the roles of personnel within the organisation can be built into the business and roles so that when there is a change within the system the organisation can easily change the rules and then move on.

“Sometimes you want to integrate a new technology into the organisation and if you are just working without a BPM backbone, you see a situation where it takes a longer time to integrate new technology, but with the BPM backbone it can be done very fast and change your technology, and that is where Oracle comes,” he explained.

According to Omololu organisations across the globe have moved from the old ways of doing business to  new ways saying that the rigid structure has given way to fluidity and flexibility, authoritarian reporting to dynamic relationships, monolithic to highly complex and tightly-integrated components while relationship between customers, suppliers, and staff have changed.

In his presentation, making reference to the 2004 Gartner Survey that touched 154 completed BPM Projects, he said that organisations that use BPM had 95 per cent rate success adding successful projects had no less than 10 per cent internal rate of return.

He also said that 78 per cent had greater than 15 per cent while a wide numbers included 100 per cent rate return stressing that 67 per cent of the projects were completed in less than 6 months just as 50 per cent of the projects were completed in less than 4 months.

On the cost implication, he said that 77 per cent of the projects had returns greater than $100,000 per project while 55 per cent of the projects had returns in the $100,000-to-$500,000 range value of the companies that had BPM projects underway.

He disclosed that industries where BPM is applicable are development and manufacturing, finance and Banking, consulting, telecommunications information system, computer manufacturer, education, service industry, automobile and government.

He further said that SMES also have solutions that can drive their business stating that what the SMES need, was to “understand the process of doing their business, so it is only after that they can then model their process to be able to win within the competitive environment they find themselves”.

On its relevance to mergers and acquisition, he said: when you are trying to merger two different banks with difference rules and roles you have to synchronise the two processes so that it stands as one, if not there is going to be a hang-off bottleneck such that one process is done in one way and another in a different way. And that is why there are failures in a process wherever there is a merger and acquisition”.

Sales Consultant for Oracle, Mr. Peter Boglo while reviewing the Oracle BPM Suite 11g said that when business conditions evolve faster than the company’s ability to change and respond, business performance suffers noting that with BPM there are possibilities for organisations to optimise business processes and align them with organisational goals and strategies while also empowering staff to work smarter leveraging on the systems and information.

He said that BPM delivers for organisations that use operational excellence, process standardisation, continuous process improvement, business and IT alignment as well as business transformation.