AI is *the* hot thing these days and you cannot pass any tool that does not have these two characters attached to it. That is also true for the BPM space, and this week we have the pleasure to speak with a person who is working in this space for over 20 years and his tool has built in AI already, while other vendors are still thinking about how to integrate it in their stack. The guest in this episode is Scott Armstrong, CEO of Interfacing, a BPM tool provider. He is a entrepreneur and...

The age old question: how do you make your processes "evergreen". Well, one way is to update your models on a regular basis (for example to comply with regulations), but is that really "the process" or is it just a picture of it? Your processes come to life when someone performs them and for this you need to be able measure them. To support the process execution you can use an automation tool (a "heavy" BPMS, RPA, etc.) or you can use a lightweight low-code/no-code tool for this that...

You have chosen to start your BPM journey and are now asking yourself the question "how *DO* I get started?". Well, one way is to look at a BPM Adoption Framework, the other is to ask someone who has done that before. We are lucky to speak with someone who fulfills both criteria - our guest today is Caspar Jans, who also already has been a guest in an earlier episode on the show before :-) Since then he has raised his profile in the BPM space and was recognized as a thought leader and Top...

This episode closes out the mini series about data, and this time we talk about data modeling. Data models are some of the things that I have seen the least often in projects over the last two decades. Why is that? Is it because it is too geeky, or not interesting enough compared to, say, a process model in BPMN? But being clear about data is important when it comes to designing solution architectures (and in other use cases, such as regulatory compliance), and the three questions that you...

A lot of projects are just looking at processes and applications. One thing that typically does not get the limelight is the data that is needed to empower these two things. But why is that? Is it because data is "invisible" and cannot be touched or felt? Our guest today is Wiebke Apitzsch, who is working in "data" for over 15 years with companies like the Boston Consulting Group. Currently she is working in a small organization named "Datahearts" that focusses on the combination of...

As we all know, the majority of time in a process mining project is in some form or fashion related to data preparation and a significant lower share of time is spent on the actual analysis. There are multiple ways of getting you data into shape (SQL, visual data modeling tools, etc.), but our guest today has developed an approach and a tool to flip this time relation and shorten process mining projects significantly. Our guest today is Lotte Vugs, who, after 5 years working as a process...

This episode is a first for the podcast - we are not talking about something from an external perspective, but speak with someone "in the trenches" who is actively implementing BPM in an 160-year old organization. Our guest today is Martin Holling, who is working at Kemna (a road construction company in northern Germany) and who has worked at Siemens, as well as a consultant in the BPM space before. His main objective is to figure out processes and how they should be designed and implemented...

We had a couple of episodes where we discussed the Solution / Process Lifecycle, but this time we look at it from the perspective of Business Process organizations. What we see is a distinction between the different disciplines that are needed to deliver a full solution and there are organizations that see a "them" and "us" between those.Unfortunately, I see a lot of these organizations also display a "mercenary approach" ("I am just here to create this artifact") and don't show the ownership...

Welcome to Season 6 of the What's Your Baseline Podcast! We’ve got another fascinating season coming up, chock full of emerging trends and leading voices from the EA and BPM space. We will be talking about customer success stories, architecture topics like “data”, and also about how to make YOUR program a success. See you there! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/whatsyourbaseline/support

We are wrapping up Season 5 of this podcast with an episode that I was looking forward to for quite some time now – we are talking about operational intelligence. What is that, you might ask. Well it is the insights into what your complex organization does by using technology and measuring the important things, while making them visible for you as a decider when you need to take not only the “big decisions”, but all those small decisions that you take dozens or more everyday. Those...

You might have heard it in the last episode of the podcast (Ep. 59: Process Inventory), that our guest Michael Schank has written a book ;-) That triggered two things with us - first, making a WYB Shorts about the process of writing a book and become a published author, and second, nudging Michael for a giveaway of three books to some randomly drawn winners. To win, you need to do two things: Follow @whatsyourbaseline on LinkedIn (here:...

How do you plan your transformation? By looking out of the window or asking your two best friends? Or would it be better if you had an overview of all the things that your organization does - in the form of a process inventory? Michael is a distinguished thought leader and executive, specializing in addressing Digital Transformation and Operational Excellence challenges through his innovative, process-based framework. With over 25 years of experience in the Financial Services industry, he...

Last week's episode of the podcast was a very good conversation about learning and enablement with Ron Cohen, Peter Dern, and Adam Egger, and we could have talked for hours about this topic. However, the conversation took quite a turn after I asked how the future of learning will look like. But we also were at the top of the hour and we didn't want to cut it out unheard. The solution to the problem? Another What's Your Baseline Shorts! Enjoy the conversation and -sometimes creepy-...

How do you set up learning and enablement for your architecture/process people? What has changed since the days of instructor-led training, and where will the field of enablement go into the future (hint: it might be creepy for some of us). In this episode of the What's Your Baseline? podcast we are looking into the field of learning and enablement and discuss this topic with three experts of the field, and the background of working/having worked in process organizations. Ron is the...

You bought the tool and now the most critical question for your success comes up: “Now what?”. This leads to these questions: what you can do in the tools, what can you expect, and -maybe most importantly- what do you do after you’ve done a part of the analysis. You also need to have a “meta process” on how to approach a Process Mining project. These are all the topics that we are talking about in this episode of the What’s Your Baseline? podcast. Since this is a comprehensive (and long)...

Implementing a tool or standing up a new capability can be a complex task. Standing up a Center of Excellence as part of this implementation can help ease the pain for new users. However, it is not always clear what a CoE shall do and how it is integrated into an organization (or where it is located in the org structure). In this episode we are talking with Thi Nguyen about exactly this topic, and he has some interesting -and maybe sometime controversial?- opinions about this topic. Thi is a...

The way how we communicate and learn has changed over the last couple of years. One contributing factor is podcasting (or videocasting - we are no purists over here at What's Your Baseline?). By now there are tons of excellent podcasts about Business Process Management, Process Mining, and Enterprise Architecture out there free of charge for you. We thought that it was a good idea to look at this phenomenon and invited three former guests of our show who also run their successful podcasts to...

This is another What's Your Baseline? Shorts episode and we are following up with the guest from our last episode, Moritz Berger. Moritz took the APQC Process Classification Framework and imported it into "The Brain" to visualize the breakdown and connectivity of processes to each other. Since this Shorts consists mostly of a demonstration, you might want to watch at it on Spotify, YouTube, or on our website at whatsyourbaseline.com/shorts10. And if you like to click through the Brain...

We spoke about frameworks and reference content as accelerators in a previous episode (listen here), but one of those is pretty popular here in North America, so that we have a deeper look into the APQC Process Classification Framework today. We are talking with Moritz Berger about the ins-and-outs of APQC, and will extend this conversation with another What's Your Baseline Shorts in a week from now (WYB Shorts 10). Moritz is a senior leader with credentials in technology strategy,...

Process Management has a bad reputation of downsizing, replacing humans with bots, and all those other things that one relates to "bad capitalism". But there are also other ways to include humans into process management that are outside of these parameters. And, believe it or not, you still need humans to analyze, design, and improve processes. Today we are talking with Christoph Piller about the topic of subject-oriented process management. Christoph, also known as the Process Wizard, has...

Sometimes you have to mix up things a bit and come down to the level of practicality ... in this case we are looking at process-bility in this week's episode of the podcast. What that is? Oh, it is the approach to process modeling that our guest Kevin Tan has developed. Kevin is an accomplished Business Process Analyst with more than 20 years of global experience gained through roles in Australia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia and the UK. His industry experience includes insurance,...

We had the topic of today's episode - transformation - a couple of times on this podcast, even though we did not call the episodes like that. But why? Because transformation in today's times is not an exception but the reality for all organizations. It is not just "an update by IT", or something that is a "one and done". We all need to change and transform our organizations all the time. However, a lot of organizations are caught in their day-to-day issues and don't plan the change - they...

Some topics seem to be a "stretch too far" for this podcast, and the topic for today's episode seems to be one of those: Sustainability. But is it? Yes, Sustainability -or the lack of it- is a global problem, that manifests itself in climate change, social restructuring, and many other forms. But it also becomes a topic that organizations have to adjust to in their business practices. And some areas of the world are doing this for decades by now - not only being pushed by the desire to do...

Welcome back to the What's Your Baseline? Podcast. We are starting our Season 5 (who would have guessed that?) next Monday, July 31, with our 50th episode about Sustainability. We can't wait to hear back from you :-)