HerculesX supports the entire CEMM approach to customer alignment and process improvement – the same approach that underlies the Certified Process Professional program that has received worldwide acclaim. The Open Beta program provides free public access to HerculesX through September 31, 2008.

Closed beta testing of HerculesX was conducted with people from 4 continents and 12 countries. “You’ve got a great product that deserves all the recognition and socializing it can get!!” commented Nikki Alberts of HBOS Australia while Theo Priestly (Head of BPM, UK Consultancy) states “these guys are blazing the trail in online, on-demand BPM with their HerculesX tool. Its value is in its simplicity and no other tool I’ve seen can document your processes and show you how close you are to true customer alignment so clearly without heavy investment.”

Delivering HerculesX as “Software as a Service” (SaaS) provides a low-cost, pay as you go, no maintenance and no software to install use model. This approach makes HerculesX available to a larger audience while increasing results for everyone using the tool.

“This is a critical milestone for us,” stated Bennu Group CEO Terry Schurter. “HerculesX dramatically improves both the degree of success and personal productivity of the people who use it. In what is called ‘Intersectional Innovation’ (as referenced in the book The Medici Effect by Frans Johansson) HerculesX breaks new ground on multiple levels in how we align and optimize our processes, and how we interact with the tools we use in doing that.”

CEMM (the underlying Method of the Certified Process Professional Program) presents a new way to understand process, identify opportunities and implement changes that simultaneously create Increased Revenues, Decreased Costs and Enhanced Customer Service (the Triple Crown). HerculesX is the first product to support the entire CEMM approach.

“HerculesX is a new breed of software application. Instead of forcing you into doing things a certain way, HerculesX focuses on helping you get things done. Through its simple design and minimal rule set, you can begin to document, analyze, and improve any process immediately,” said Alex Morse, Bennu Group Chief Architect.

The HerculesX Open Beta program is available at www.herculesx.com

About Bennu Group
Bennu Group is the world’s leading business process and performance transformation company. We deliver the business and technology-related insight, tools, methods and training necessary for our clients to make the right decisions, every day. From CEO’s, CIO’s and senior executives in global corporations and government agencies to business leaders and practitioners; we are the first choice of our clients throughout the world.

In Association with Bennu Group partners EBTRAC of KSA Bennu Lead Coach Don Smith (fourth from the left) led representatives from the Middle Easts major corporations through The Customer Expectation Management Method (CEMM) and how to optimize, align and innovate any process to achieve Triple Crown benefits (reduced costs, improved revenues and enhanced service simultaneously) through Successful Customer Outcomes.

The Middle East series is such a resounding success (this was the fifth course in the area in 3 months) that EBTRAC with Bennu will be running additional sessions over the next few months..

Upcoming Middle East seminars and workshops include Bahrain, UAE, Egypt and KSA

The content of the CPP programme is available from this link.

The study of human nature tells us that change elicits a primordial response of fear or at least caution. Change means things are not going to be the same and our basic instinct is to pull back into a defensive response of fight or flight because if things are not the same then whatever is different could pose a threat to us!

But there are learned change responses or behaviors as well. Some change we welcome, like new versions of our favorite products. This isn’t always true of course, but certainly products that have a high rate of advancement often elicit anticipation. What will the newest gadget or game system look like? What will I be able to do tomorrow that I can’t do today?

Change can also become addictive. Once a certain type of change is registered by us (people) as exciting versus threatening we are drawn to that change. Job changes, partner changes and location changes are examples of change types that can actually become addictive.

Why does change sometimes become addictive? That’s where things get really interesting. Again, back to good old human nature. While we (people) nominally seek stability in our lives lack of change can lead to boredom. What really wakes us up and brings us to life? When something HAPPENS. Something different. Something that is NOT part of stability.

Human Response to Change is Contradictive

Human nature in respect to change is actually contradictive. While we often outwardly seek stability, we internally thirst for change. It’s our nature. That’s just the way it is.

The best place for us to be is where we have a balance of stability and change. That’s a big part of CEMM and one of the foundational concepts responsible for its phenomenal success. The practice of CEMM as taught in the Certified Process Professional program helps us to operate safely within the balance of stability and change. It helps us to observe anything that can be defined as a process from a unique perspective while granting us the permission to challenge those things we instinctively know are not the Right Thing for us to be doing.

A resulting dynamic from this change aspect of CEMM is the key to the future of CEMM. What we are finding is that CEMM practitioners are moving into a state of personal and organizational balance. Organizations are becoming more agile with change being a natural behavior (rather than an imposed directive) without the need to challenge the stability of the organization. We don’t need to Reengineer processes wholesale – instead we become engaged in an ongoing process of continuous improvement that actually enhances stability by clearly aligning these activities with a common process goal.

“Change Balance” Fosters Growth while Maintaining Stability

This change balance is in itself a huge change for us. It’s the first time we’ve had a place to go for help in striking the balance between change and stability that is right for us, the context of our organization, and the external forces (market, economy, etc.) that are the loci of the change pressure we all feel. As these factors change, our CEMM activities change as well keeping us in balance regardless of how things are different (or the rate of change).

So perhaps we should start thinking about CEMM as being the gyroscope of the business – the thing that keeps the organization whole and successful while all of these external forces whirl and swirl around us. That description is probably a lot more accurate than you think.

Customer alignment, advanced process improvement, rapid but balanced change, retention of focus throughout, new observations that help us immediately do the Right Thing for the Right Reason… these are just some of the benefits available from practicing CEMM.

CEMM is elegantly simple and from that elegant simplicity we harvest an array of benefits unlike anything we have experienced before. CEMM is not just for people wanting to Do the Right Thing. CEMM is for people who want to eradicate the barriers to success in days and weeks rather than battle for internal change over months and years.

Want more?

Join us in Dallas Texas in May (or at one of our other Open Courses).

Or get going right now with our Online Training

Where we are transforming the world, one person, process and organization at a time.

The upcoming CPP open course in Texas is a very unique event. The course, lead by Bennu Group CEO Terry Schurter will also see visits by Steve Towers (SVP - EMEA Bennu Group), Alex Morse (Bennu Group Chief Architect), John Corr (Managing Partner CloseQuarter) and Alexandra Durcikova (Professor University of Arizona and Certified CPP Coach).

Dallas BPM Training

Along with the regular course program we will be using HerculesX in this class for at least one team. In case you don’t already know, HerculesX is the software product we have developed to support the activities we teach in the CPP program along with taking the use of the CPP techniques out to process groupings up to and including the enterprise.

I think its interesting when we start to cross that bridge into a new place with the development of software to support CEMM. Designing software to support a very context-based human set of activities is far different from traditional software development. Traditional software development in the BPM disciplines - and enterprise software in general - normally builds from the concept that the software “does work.”

HerculesX is developed from the premise that people do work and software (if properly designed) helps people get more value-added worked done with a very limited learning curve. That has lead us to several observations that directly contradict the “status quo” in software development.

For example, what business rules should be enforced within a software application (and if you haven’t thought about what embedded business rules are in most software you should really do so)?

What about the “language” of the software application? I’m not talking about geographical language definitions (english, spanish, german, french, so on) I’m talking about the “language” you have to know to use the software.

What assumptions about how people will use the software have been made and included in the software (this is an example of business rules folks)?

Just as we have applied intense rigor in challenging everything we know in developing our advanced (and incredibly simple) process method (CEMM) that is the basis of the Certified Process Professional program, so have we done with HerculesX.

Now let me tell you the business rules challenge is not an easy one! It’s so much easier to develop software that is rules-based as compared to software that enforces only those rules that are ALWAYS applicable. You know the old saying, there’s an exception for every rule. Well in most cases that is true and in HerculesX you won’t find many - if any - of the rules that can have exceptions. HerculesX is designed as a tool to help people increase their productivity and success in applying CEMM. If a rule doesn’t directly contribute to this goal without exception you probably won’t find it in HerculesX.

HerculesX also doesn’t use any new created language (like BPMN, BPEL, Klingon, or whatever). Why on earth could we possibly think it is useful or wise to created more languages? Has common sense truly become uncommon?

It’s hard enough to keep communication flowing among people in a reasonable way even when we are all using the same national language. What do you think happens when we introduce a new created language? Yeah, not a pretty picture. It’s a great way to create a new members-only club but it’s a really stupid thing to do if our interest is in creating business value.

How will people use the software? Do you think everyone will think, act, and do in the same way? Or will there be many minor variations and a number of major ones?

Right. There will be lots of variation and any assumptions we make on how people will use the software are subject to that tried and true observation that when we “assume” we flirt dangerously close to making and “ass” out of “u” and “me.”

So the proper design doesn’t create any new language and has the exact subset of rules that will allow people - in all their variation - to successfully use the tool in their own way. That’s the bottom-line and that is what we have done with HerculesX.

We’ve identified a great venue for our May class in Dallas (a couple of minutes from DFW airport). We’ve got the Texas Room at our selected venue and we’ve still got some room in the class for you. It’s going to be a meeting of the Who’s Who in the BPM/CEM world so its also a great networking opportunity. Plus we get to play with HerculesX :)

I hope to see you there!

Regards,

Terry Schurter
CEO - Bennu Group

If you want to book last minute and join several hundred Process & Performance explorers, guru’s and Masters visit www.iqpc.com/uk/processexcellence/2020

Several Bennu Group people will be there so make yourselves known to Steve Towers or John Corr and they may even buy you a drink in the wonderful Queen Elizabeth 2 Centre.

Business Process Reengineering attempted to march boldly into this war zone by stating beforehand that entire processes would be redesigned. That didn’t work for two reasons; 1) it created immediate confrontation and 2) it was still based on existing assumptions.

These issues were the genesis of Business Process Management which came forth with the remit to use the process concept under an improvement umbrella rather than a wholesale rewrite. Yet for most but a small circle of enlightened people (the original cast of BPM’ers before the term BPM actually took hold) the assumptions are still the same.

BPR died a fast and furious death due to its confrontational nature while BPM chugs on banging its head against a glass ceiling (existing assumptions) and would already be floundering even more except for a twist.

It turns out that in BPM most of the momentum has now switched to software (modeling, workflow, and techie standards) in place of the purpose (and understanding) of the originating executives and gurus who were solving business problems.

So what is the answer?

Well, we can only start where we are and this improvement/business success stuff is an endless journey with points of interest to note along the way. So what we need is a way to unchain ourselves from existing assumptions while doing so in a way that avoids starting internal turf wars.

That is a fundamental part of CEMM – and one of the key reasons why it fills such a huge gap in existing practices. Sufficiently subtle enough to avoid triggering internal wars with the freedom to begin challenging those heretofore sacred assumptions, the structure of CEMM is specifically crafted to allow organizations to embark on an ongoing journey of continual change, evolution and revolution.

Woven into the fabric of CEMM are two other components that are all important in eliminating the glass-ceiling that is part and parcel in all the other approaches available to us. Reduction in complexity is a naturally occurring byproduct of CEMM and that is critical to enabling new steps on the evolutionary path. Focus (that outside-in customer stuff) is a different perception of reality – it’s that big of a difference – and each movement in that direction opens new doors and opportunities we couldn’t see or realize in the place we started out from.

This becomes a journey of natural creation and recreation that builds an environment (an organization) organically designed to make change simple, faster and more efficient. It’s the missing link in our approaches to date, giving us the ability to grow into whatever we need to be based on the context of the market at any given junction in the life cycle of the business.

It’s this approach that gives us the freedom to do radical change in an incremental manner – but one that can move as fast as we need it to. Context is everything, so the rate of change will be driven by the context of each organization.

The concept of context is the one area where people disconnect even from CEMM though. If the context of a given organization means that very few assumptions can be successfully challenged then change must be very slow. For some organizations the assumptions are so rigid that almost any attempt at doing the Right Thing will be snuffed out before it has the chance to bring new light into the dank dark halls of “we’ve always done it that way.”

Consultants have a very difficult time with this when they organize around their existing customers and those customers fall into this category. (oh, and trying to “sell” the CEMM concept into these dinosaurs is a very good way to get eaten alive!).

Yet the majority of organizations are not this locked into the past. There are almost always people on the look out for an opportunity to do the Right Thing and CEMM has already become a rallying point for these people.

While it may seem attractive to think about starting from scratch (clean slating or BPR) that just won’t work as a purist approach. What we must do is snapshot the current state as our starting point for identifying next steps. When those next steps follow the rules of CEMM they will always move us in the right direction while setting the stage for taking bigger, bolder steps the next pass through.

That’s how to change without hitting a glass ceiling or starting a war. That’s how to build the capability in an organization to uncover opportunities tomorrow that we can’t even think of today. That’s how to eclipse the possibilities of BPR, BPM and even starting from scratch with no restrictions. It’s a journey of success that is exciting, energizing, surprising, continually renewing and far more successful (personally and financially) than anything else we have ever done.

The only limit on ourselves and our results is - us. CEMM is the one approach that deals directly with reality by giving people the freedom to create the value they are capable of creating. You can become a BPM, BPR, Six Sigma, Lean, etc. expert and you will have a skill. You can use CEMM (you don’t need to be an expert) and you will embark on a journey of ongoing transformation that will impact your life and your organization in a strikingly positive way for the rest of your life.

Legacies are a part of that reality. Change what you can now so that you create the opportunity to make bigger changes tomorrow. Get your focus right and start whittling away at that complexity around you and see how quickly you start attracting the attention of others. It will happen and before you know it you will be part of the change that has taken the organization to a new place, a place that eclipses what we would have done in BPR or even with a clean slate. It will take however long it takes based on the context but the rate of change in even those stuck in the mud organization can at times be truly awe-inspiring. It’s the way to create the future we see as possible – and beyond.

Since 2004 Gilead have tripled profits to $1.6 billion by directly focusing their efforts on the Successful Customer Outcome, and in this context it is surviving beyond HIV infection. Previously treatment involved a complex cocktail of many drugs, timings and expense involving dozens of throughout the day. Gileads ‘outside-in’ vision allowed them to create a solution crafted around the customer, the resulting drug, Altripla, costs $1300 a month and is taken at bedtime. The innovative drug releases different medicines over several hours and in doing so makes the customers life simpler, easier and more successful.  Production cycles have been slashed, volumes increased nine fold and costs reduced by a factor of ten.

Gilead’s outside-in thinking and practice, led by CEO John Martin, says Business Week “is a hallmark of the companies in this years rankings” of top performers. “It’s this kind of management vision and moxie that could spell the difference between the companies that not only survive, but thrive, and those that are carried away in the economic undertow. These are companies that, for all their past successes, are not afraid to alter their business models at the first signs of weakness.”
In industries as methodical as pharma (twelve years to develop a product is quite simply a dogs life) there is enormous potential to create new and more customer oriented ways of working, as Gilead prove consistently.
 
What holds us back? The inertia of the 20th century inside-out thinking is precisely what. That place where the customer revolves around the organization with functional specialism and corporate paralysis. That place of politics, turf wars and fiefdoms (hey who has time for the customer?) and ultimately stagnation and decay.  That place where we designed tools and systems (forgive me SAP and oracle) that have fossilized and marginalized our processes.

The new way, outside-in thinking and practice liberates our people and creates the vibrant energized companies that now lead the pack. Best Buy (Retail technology), Virgin (Brand kings), FedEx Kinko (printers extraordinaire), Emirates (new thinking in the sky) to name a few represent new business models oriented around the customer.

Gilead Systems have now created a new challenge for all sectors – what do you do when your closest competitor starts to offer your core product, easier, simple and complete AND for next to nothing – even free?  
Peter Fingar, one of my mentors who inspired Bennu, described this challenge in ‘Extreme Competition’. If you would like a copy let us know. I will be reviewing the shape of the world to be in my conference keynotes this year – please join me of you can! I am in the UK next week at the 9th Annual Process Excellence conference at the QE2 Centre in London – see http://www.iqpcevents.com/ShowEvent.aspx?id=41558&details=54592

Food for thought?

Has your company linked everything it does with Successful Customer Outcomes?
Are you truly aligned through your processes, people, systems and strategy?
Do you focus ‘Outside-In’ or inside-out?

References:
Review Business Weeks 2008 Top 50 Performers (as measured by Standard and Poors)
http://bwnt.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/bw50_2008/

See the associated Special report

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_14/b4078051184585.htm?chan=magazine+channel_special+report

Customer Expectation Management
(the book that kick started Outside-in process and performance)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/092965207X/httpwwwstevet-20

Extreme Competition – Peter Fingar
http://www.amazon.com/Extreme-Competition-Innovation-Business-Reformation/dp/092965238X//httpwwwstevet-20

9th Annual Process Excellence conference at the QE2 Centre in London
Going From Process Excellence To Business Excellence
http://www.iqpcevents.com/ShowEvent.aspx?id=41558&details=54592

Creating the direct linkages with these performance objectives is now a major strategic goal in order to better align people, processes, systems and strategy to achieve successful customer outcomes.

• Evolving and building Six Sigma & Lean approaches to Outside-In thinking
• Building the framework to support excellence
• Creating the linkage between process change and corporate performance improvement
• Leading your people beyond techniques and tools into successful customer outcomes
• Delivering a comprehensive and sustainable strategic approach to process and performance transformation
  http://www.iqpcevents.com/ShowEvent.aspx?id=41558&details=54592