Setting Up a Process Orchestration Center of Excellence: How to Do it and How to Measure Success

When your team launches a new process automation project, does it have to reinvent technology elements from scratch?

Are business and IT stakeholders struggling to align on process improvement goals? Is there no system in place to measure an automation initiative’s success?

If team members are asking these kinds of questions, your organization needs to get its process automation strategy and execution headed in the right direction.

Many are doing this by adopting a “Centers of Excellence” (CoE) approach – focused squarely on automating and orchestrating processes. In our 2022 State of Process Automation survey, 76% of organizations either already have a CoE in place, or are actively working on it.

So, given that the concept is resonating, how should an organization start an automation focused CoE? How do you define whether it’s working or not?

In the part 1 of this two-part byline series, we outlined how process automation CoEs can help organizations plan and execute projects, share knowledge, create training resources, improve communication, and establish governance. In this article, we’ll get more tactical. We’ll discuss how to get a CoE started, who should play what role and how success should be measured.

Getting started

The first step should be to get buy-in from management, so the CoE has the financial backing and the organizational support to meet its goals. Even the most well-thought-out automation strategies will struggle to succeed without a top-down mandate. So, get your plan endorsed by the right people.

Part of this process should involve securing an executive sponsor who is passionate about process improvement. This could be a technical executive, such as a CIO or CTO. Or it could be a mid-level tech leader who can capably communicate the value of the CoE to business leaders. Either way, it’s critical to have a sponsor who can continually advocate for process automation and orchestration – how the CoE approach gives the company a competitive advantage. As a rule of thumb: The higher the management buy-in, the more successful a CoE typically is.

Next, get developers on board. Process automation should be approached as a holistic, end-to-end initiative, but in their delivery teams developers will be responsible for carrying out specific implementation tasks that are crucial to the overall effort. Developers need to understand how the CoE can help deliver the best results on a project and across shared resources. So, incorporate feedback from the development community and set some initial goals on what the CoE is meant to accomplish.

A CoE should be obsessed with delivering value to its internal stakeholders and not be seen as an impediment for agile delivery teams.

Structuring your automation CoE

For years, organizations defined CoEs narrowly in terms of having one team responsible for all functions in a particular discipline.

A process automation CoE can be organized this way. But in line with modern software development paradigms, a new concept is emerging in which a decentralized, federated CoE guides automation efforts and provides frameworks for success. This likely would be coordinated by a team that empowers communities of practice throughout the organization.

When it comes to the structure of this automation team, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach that works for every situation. Individual roles will vary depending on an organization’s goals, company culture, CoE size, funding, and automation strategy. CoEs don’t necessarily have to be large. Some major enterprises have just a few people advising in decentralized roles while others build large teams that manage automation platforms across organizational functions.

To create a process automation CoE function that scales effectively, it should act as a cross-functional services arm that enables, consults, and supports the project teams in specific business domains.

A variety of personas should be involved. As a baseline, a CoE team should include at least three roles: business analysts who can identify projects and define processes, IT architects who see the big picture on how initiatives fit into the enterprise, and developers who can plan, build, and test automation tools and processes. If you’re building an internal managed platform, you’ll also need DevOps engineers to architect the automation platform environment.

But a fully functioning process automation CoE team will need other roles to drive the initiative forward. There should be visionaries: technology leaders who can set the vision and goals for the CoE and have the skills to market the vision throughout the organization. There should be automation experts who can model processes in BPMN and draw advanced workflow patterns. And increasingly, there should be InfoSec experts who can maintain IT security (although they don’t need to be directly located in the CoE).

Optimizing your team with diversity

Building a world-class automation team goes beyond just filling roles. The roles need to be filled by the right people. When you are assembling your team, it’s important to incorporate a diverse range of talent. Teams from different backgrounds build better processes.

In addition, make efforts to recruit internal people with different skill sets, ensuring that the team includes both individual contributor and management roles. Then play to those strengths. For example, a developer wouldn’t necessarily present results of a pilot project to a business stakeholder to gain buy-in for a larger automation effort, nor would a manager be responsible for day-to-day execution. Being thoughtful of the makeup of your federated CoE will ensure not only that the team is successful, but is also representative of the stakeholder it serves.

Measuring the Success of a CoE

After you get your CoE up and running, how do you know if your process automation initiatives are succeeding? One measure is the so-called “eye test.” Are stakeholders happy with the way processes are taking shape? Do tasks appear to be moving as quickly as they should? If the CoE is functioning smoothly and the organization is responding, that’s a good sign.

But there are more tangible ways to track a CoE’s success. One is performance. Is business value for the organization being achieved in terms of the number of successful projects being completed? Are the platforms meeting Service Level Agreements? Are projects getting done on time and achieving appropriate time to value?

Another set of KPIs can measure enablement. Is the organization reusing components? Is the process automation community flourishing – adding participants, holding more community meetings, issuing more blog posts? Are software and technology implementations achieving the agreed-upon ROI?

Conclusion

Establishing a process orchestration Center of Excellence doesn’t require a revamping of roles, responsibilities, and reporting relationships. Organizations just need to commit to a coordinated approach that elevates the importance of process improvement across operations. Done correctly, a CoE can help organizations increase efficiencies and deliver value on an ongoing basis.

[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]