Other Excellence in Practice books
Excellence in Practice Series in hardcover:
Quality hardcover. Illustrations, charts, references, appendices, bibliography, index.
(links below require Internet connection)
Volume I
Volume II
Volume III
Volume IV
Volume V
We encourage those who were not published this year to resubmit their case studies for the next annual Global Excellence Awards and we look forward to profiling their case studies in the next volume of Excellence in Practice.
Information and submission details on the Awards can be found at WARIA - www.waria.com.
Layna Fischer, WARIA Chair and General Manager,
Workflow Management Coalition
BACKGROUND
The prestigious Global Excellence in Workflow Awards, now in their fifteenth year and competed on a global basis, are highly coveted by organizations that seek recognition for their achievements. These awards not only provide a spotlight for companies that truly deserve recognition, but also provide tremendous insights for organizations wishing to emulate the winners’ successes.
The Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC) and the Workflow And Reengineering International Association (WARIA) jointly honor organizations that have demonstrably excelled in implementing innovative solutions to meet strategic business objectives.
The criteria for submitting an entry are fairly simple: the project should have been operational for six months prior to nomination, and have been installed within the past two years. The submission guidelines, however, are more detailed. To be recognized as winners, companies must address three critical areas: excellence in innovation, excellence in implementation and excellence in strategic impact to the organization.
Innovation encompasses the innovative use of technology for strategic business objectives; the complexity of the underlying business process and IT architecture; the creative and successful deployment of advanced workflow and imaging concepts; and process innovations through business process reengineering and/or continuous improvements.
Hallmarks of a successful implementation include extensive user and line management involvement in the project while successfully managing change during the implementation process. Factors impacting the level of difficulty in achieving a successful implementation include the system complexity; integration with other advanced technologies; and the scope and scale of the implementation (e.g. size, geography, inter-company processes).
Impact is the bottom line, answering the question “what benefits do workflow and BPM deliver to the business?” Examples of potential benefits include: productivity improvements; cost savings; increased revenues; product enhancements; improved customer service; improved quality; strategic impact to the organization’s mission; enabling culture change; and—most importantly—changing the company’s competitive position in the market. The visionary focus is now toward strategic benefits, in contrast to marginal cost savings and productivity enhancements.
While successes in these categories are prerequisites for winning a Global Excellence in Workflow Award, it would reward all companies to focus on excelling in innovation, implementation and impact when installing imaging and workflow technologies. Without doing so, they will not achieve the full potential that workflow offers. Companies must recognize that implementing innovative technology is useless unless the organization has a successful implementation approach that delivers—and even surpasses—the anticipated benefits.
True visionaries are not content with merely achieving benefits; they are proactively driven to raise the standard for excellence in their industry—in essence, moving the competitive goalposts.
The Case Studies
We are most fortunate to have read all the submissions for the Excellence Awards—not just the winners. Having combed through hundreds of submissions over the years across many countries and continents, we can clearly discern patterns in how companies achieve excellence. While not all companies share each and every characteristic, there is enough commonality to detect distinct paths for achieving excellence. When several of these characteristics are combined in a single installation, they often result in visionary companies moving the competitive goalposts for their industries, as you will read in the following case studies.
