Artikel ini dicuplik dari situsnya HBR (Harvard Business Review) dari tulisan aslinya dengan judul “The Coming Commoditization of Processes” oleh Thomas Davenport. Isinya terkait dengan kebutuhan standard bisnis proses terkait dengan komunikasi antar unit, antar perusahaan, maupun pola outsourcing. Meski demikian, standarisasi bisa mengarah pada komoditisasi proses yang akhirnya mudah ditiru kompetitor.
Throughout the history of business, most firms have built their own processes for almost everything that needed to be done. Whether the processes involved were critical to the organization's strategy or incidental to it, they were generally performed by people within the organization. Sometimes they were done well, sometimes they were done badly—but since a company had no way of determining how well an outside business might perform these processes, they were kept in-house.
Most companies have remained in do-it-yourself mode for most processes. Because of a scarcity of process standards, it would be risky to do otherwise. With the exception of IT system development, there is generally no clear basis by which companies can compare the capabilities provided by external organizations with those offered in-house, or to compare services among multiple outside providers. As a result, firms that choose to outsource their capabilities have to proceed on two criteria: faith that the external provider will do a good job and cost.
Three types of process standards
A business process is simply how an organization does its work—the set of activities it pursues to accomplish a particular objective for a particular customer, either internal or external. Processes may be large and cross-functional, such as order management, or relatively narrow, like order entry (which could be considered a process in itself or a sub-process of order management). The variability in how organizations define processes makes it more difficult to contract for and communicate about them across companies.
Firms seek to standardize processes for several important reasons. Within a company, standardization can facilitate communications about how the business operates, enable smooth handoffs across process boundaries, and make possible comparative measures of performance. Across companies, standard processes can make commerce easier for the same reasons—better communications, more efficient handoffs, and performance benchmarking.
Since information systems support processes, standardization allows uniform information systems within companies as well as standard systems interfaces among different firms. Standard processes also allow easier outsourcing of process capabilities.
In order to effectively outsource processes, organizations need a means of evaluating three things in addition to cost.
First is the external provider's set of activities and how they flow. Since companies have not reached consensus it remains ambiguous what services should be performed between buyers and providers. Therefore, organizations need a set of standards for process activities so that they can communicate easily and efficiently when discussing outsourced processes. These process activity and flow standards are beginning to emerge in a variety of businesses and industries.
A second set of needed process evaluation approaches are process performance standards. Once companies in a particular industry achieve consensus about which activities and flows constitute a given process, they can begin to measure their own processes and compare their results with those of external providers.
Finally, organizations need a set of process management standards that indicate how well their processes are managed and measured and whether they're on course for continuous improvement. Because this third type of process standard doesn't require consensus on process activities and flows, it is the easiest to create and the most widely available today. Process management standards are based on the assumption that good process management will eventually result in good process flows and performance.
If your organization provides process services, you may have mixed feelings about the development of process standards. Standards will lead to commoditization, more competitors, and lower prices for the services you offer. However, the move to process standards makes so much economic sense that it is probably inexorable—whether or not your company gets involved. It's better to help shape a standard than to be put out of business by it.
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