Finding the Business Value of CEBP
Finding the Business Value of CEBP by Marty Parker
Communications-Enabled Business Processes (CEBP) is an important and growing part of Unified Communications. From the outset, UCStrategies has defined UC as "communications integrated to optimize business processes." We further distinguished between UC-U (User Productivity) in which the standard UC tools are provided to creative and motivated users to produce benefits, and UC-B (Business Process) in which selected UC functionality is used to transform specific business processes. CEBP is at the core of these UC-B solutions.
The breakthroughs provided by CEBP are possible because of the many innovations in communication technologies in the past 10 years. These new tools include Presence; Instant Messaging (IM or texting); multi-media wired and wireless devices; ubiquitous (almost) wired and wireless networks; VoIP (voice and video over Internet Protocol) that uses those devices and networks; social networks; collaborative workspaces; software-based communications modules and development tools; web portals; multi-modal conferencing; and sharing of documents, desktops, and recorded audio and video (podcasts).
CEBP solutions are based on the discovery of communication-intensive places in business processes which have problems – delays, errors, duplication of effort, low quality, high cost, customer or user dissatisfaction, etc. With the new UC tools, those "communication hot spots" can be redesigned or re-invented to avoid or bypass the legacy communication problems.
The evidence is growing rapidly that CEBP has significant value. CEBP solutions represented over a third of the 35 case studies which a dozen leading UC vendors brought to my panel "UC Options: Who’s Offering What?" at Enterprise Connect Orlando 2011. Also, a growing portion of the industry’s newly published UC case studies show CEBP examples and results. CEBP has been a featured session at the Gartner Fall Symposium for the past two years.
The reason for all this buzz and investment is that CEBP really does solve business problems. Recently, my teammate Don Van Doren and I were involved in a project to identify specifically the places in which CEBP delivers business value. Here are the seven specific CEBP value types we identified:
1. Optimize Resource Utilization: Engage the best resource for the purpose.
2. Accelerate Transaction Completion: Assure or improve transaction timeliness and accuracy.
3. Increase Notification Precision: Guide alerts, alarms, and action requests to the best recipient.
4. Improve Contact Success: Avoid connection delays, especially outside the enterprise.
5. Automate Communication Processes: Eliminate manual, labor-intensive communication steps.
6. Speed Information Delivery: Get information to users most expeditiously to reduce delays.
7. Enhance Collaboration Effectiveness: Enable faster, higher quality project completion.
We recently published a detailed review of these seven value propositions as "Capturing CEBP Value," a Microsoft-sponsored white paper. Each CEBP value type is explained in some detail, supported by one or more published CEBP case studies.
These CEBP value types overlap somewhat with the earlier, "Top UC Applications Are Now Apparent" which applies to both UC-U and UC-B applications of UC, but we see this list of CEBP values types as a more precise basis for finding the CEBP opportunities in your organization.
The methodology for discovering your CEBP opportunities, in summary, is to examine your high-value or high-volume business processes to see if there are any ‘communication hot spots’ or any places where one or more of the seven CEBP value types can be found. If so, then look at the new UC tools, as listed above, and also study the relevant CEBP case studies to find the places where CEBP methods and solutions can eliminate or mitigate the communication barriers and thus optimize the business process results. Usually, you will find many such opportunities, which can then be prioritized and sequenced to create a UC roadmap and action plan, i.e. a UC strategy.
We would welcome your feedback on CEBP, this article, or the white paper as a comment below.