Every year dozens of books are written by management consultants to advocate
some great new management idea. Some of these new ideas have merit, but most are
simply fads that are popular for a year or two and then gradually fade. This book is
not such a book. In the first place, this book describes a variety of process change
techniques that have been proven over the course of many decades. It describes how
organizations can achieve efficiencies by integrating and improving their business
processes and by aligning those business processes with corporate strategies and
goals. Organizations that routinely practice business process improvement, using the
techniques described in this book, are able to consistently improve on the results
obtained from existing processes. Organizations that undertake more extensive
business process redesign efforts frequently achieve improvements in excess of 50%.
This is not miraculous; it simply reflects the fact that most existing processes are
less efficient than they could be and that new technologies make it possible to design
much more efficient processes.
This book was not written to hype the idea of process change. If you need
convincing or motivation, you should read one of the popular books that have been
written to do just that. This book is designed to help you actually make process
change happen, systematically and consistently.