Business Process Management and the Balanced Scorecard: Using Processes as Strategic Drivers

Chapter 2. How Process Can Drive Strategy

As the need for organizations to focus on processes has grown, so has the level of integration of process with the planning side of the organization (both strategic and operational planning). The manner in which organizations have improved and leveraged process performance has evolved through four stages over the years. These are shown in Exhibit 2.1.

Figure 2.1. The Four Waves of Business Process Management

The First Wave: Total Quality Management

As referenced in Chapter 1, total quality management (TQM) was a term that became popular in the mid-1980s. It was generally thought that the term originated with the Department of the Navy when it was trying to spread successful application of a set of principles in one location to multiple locations. A formal definition of the term comes from the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers (JUSE). They state that:

TQM is a set of systematic activities carried out by the entire organization to effectively and efficiently achieve company objectives so as to provide products and services with a level of quality that satisfies customers, at the appropriate time and price.

© 1998 The Deming Prize Application

There are several key parts of this definition. The first is that TQM was systematic. It involved applying the concepts of continuous improvement(referenced in Chapter 1) throughout the organization. ...