Manage Your Resource Constraints

• Are you trying to maintain or accomplish more with fewer resources?
• Have you down-sized to the point of no return?

Understand What Drives Your Business Results

• Are you unable to reliably predict your business performance?
• Would you like to measure your business performance but don't know where to start?

Adapt to Change

• Is your business hampered by high rates of staff turn-over?
• Is the knowledge of how your business operates solely contained within the minds of your human resources?

Leverage Your Core Competencies

• Are you unable to identify which of your business processes contribute to competitive differentiation?
• Are you considering out-sourcing (or in-sourcing)?
• Do you need to merge an acquired company's processes into your business?

If you answered "yes" to any of the above questions then consider investing in the creation of a business process architecture for your business. A business process architecture (in part or in whole) provides a roadmap that will help answer the following questions (and more):

• Where and how can we streamline our processes?
• How can we expedite delivery of customer value?
• Where can we out-source without negatively impacting our competitive position?
• If we in-source this process what will be the resource requirements?
• How well is this process performing?
• What are the business requirements for automating this process?
• What do new personnel need to understand to perform their job?
• What is the impact on the business of adopting a new tool (e.g. software application)?
• What does the acquired company do different/better than our business? How can we ease the transition?

If you don't have a business process architecture and yet you need to answer any of these questions, how will you go about it?