推薦序二

I am excited to see this book on process management from George Chen for several reasons. Primary among them is that the book suggests a rebirth of thinking about how a process orientation benefits businesses. A generation ago, process management and process reengineering were very popular in large organizations around the world. And no wonder: process redesign and the management of large, end-to-end processes were unmatched at aligning work in the direction of customers and coordinating work across departments. Process reengineering encouraged companies to re-imagine how these processes work, bringing the information technologies of the time to bear. Reengineering enjoyed many successes, although in the US it sometimes devolved into mindless job cuts.

Perhaps for that reason, it fell out of fashion in many companies. In addition, process thinking required a “left-to-right” focus, in the direction of customers, putting it at odds with more traditional functional and hierarchical “top-down” management. Employees wondered, “who do I report to, the process manager or my line manager?” For many companies the benefits were not worth the effort required to resolve the management conflicts.

As George Chen describes in this book, however, a process isn't complicated. It's simply a sequence of tasks to create a specified outcome. Its value is in understanding how the sequence of tasks fit together and making improvements. It applies at multiple levels——from work performed by individuals or a small work group, key activities within a department, and to end-to-end processes that cut across the organization.

Process management has a long history, some of which is detailed in this book. It includes Frederick Taylor's work in measuring and improving physical labor tasks, Walter Shewhart's introduction of statistical quality control, W. Edwards Demings' efforts to improve quality processes and their extension into “Total Quality Management”, the radical change-focused business process reengineering movement of the 1990s, and most recently, the Six Sigma and Lean approaches to incremental process improvement. I am a proponent of all types of process improvement and management, although business process reengineering is the only one that addresses broad, end-to-end processes. Some liken digital transformation to process reengineering, but most of these transformation programs have lacked a structured, measured approach to improving and managing operations.

Although there are important differences among these approaches, the fact that the notion of process keeps reappearing in business is testimony to its importance. There is a permanent need in organizations to improve operational performance, and managing processes is a reliable way to do so. Process thinking may have been somewhat less popular over the past couple of decades, but today I believe that a “new process calculus”is emerging and that it is time for senior leaders to put process management back on their radar screens. Much of that calculus ultimately stems from technology: both technologies that reduce the tedium of process management (such as process mining) and potentially game-changing technologies such as AI that are easier to implement when processes are well-defined and managed.

The availability of these new technologies is a key reason that companies should return to large-scale process management today. A lack of technology support——particularly in incremental process improvement approaches like Lean and Six Sigma——contributed to the decline in popularity of process thinking. Specifically, several new technologies have made business processes either easier or more beneficial to manage. They include process mining and process intelligence, process design tools, business process management systems, and AI for process improvement and enablement. This book is one of the first to consider how these new tools can benefit process management in organizations.

Process management can also improve productivity. Key to productivity gains is to measure and improve business processes, employ intermediate metrics in cycle time and error rates, and ultimate measures in money saved or earned. And because of new technologies, measurement of process performance is increasingly becoming automated. Better managing and improving processes increases productivity by reducing error rates, cycle times, and work that doesn't contribute to desired process outcomes. And new technologies help increase scale, further boosting productivity.

George Chen's book suggests that the motivations for companies to employ process management are higher and the difficulties of doing so are lower than ever before. On the motivation side, there is a virtuous cycle among productivity gains, easier implementation of technology, and better data; on the difficulties side there are numerous technologies that make the work more palatable. Those organizations that have consistently applied process thinking to their operations have reaped the benefits.

It is not just in China that process management is succeeding. In Europe, companies like Siemens, BMW, and Reckitt have had process management in place for many years. Siemens, despite having a highly decentralized set of business units, has pursued common processes and much more digitized and efficient process designs in areas like order management and purchase-to-pay. BMW has standardized most of its global production processes, which used to vary greatly around the world, and is now focused on support process optimization. The consumer products company Reckitt has combined the organizations for process excellence, process mining, and process automation under an overall banner of digital transformation.

In North America, a number of companies have discovered or rediscovered process management, but are somewhat less likely to be addressing a broad range of processes. Instead they are often focusing on a particular process domain in order to achieve savings and time reductions. Uber (customer service processes), Pepsico (accounts receivable and payable processes), Cardinal Health (order management), Johnson & Johnson (supply chain) and GE Healthcare (financial processes) are examples of organizations that have made significant improvements across major processes.

In short, process can be the unifying link among people, technology, data, analytics, and AI——and marshal them to improve business performance. It can orchestrate a marriage of sorts among these different resources. Process needs to lie at the core because it is how organizations deliver value to customers. Like most good marriages, there will be plenty of challenges to work through. So, it is time for senior managers to put“process”back on their radar screens and to begin to sort out how to make it work in their companies.

After reading this book carefully, organizations that are serious about transforming their operations with AI or who need to dramatically improve their cost or quality positions should strongly consider a major process effort. Process management is the right answer for companies and government organizations that believe that the efficiency and effectiveness of their operations, and how they deliver high-quality outcomes to customers, are critical to their success. It's also very helpful for organizations who wish to get substantial economic value from their technology investments. Of course, each of these things should be true of every company. I hope that the book is widely read across China and the world.

Thomas H. Davenport

Distinguished Professor, Babson College and Fellow, MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy Author of Process Innovation, Competing on Analytics, and All In on AI

我很高興看到陳果寫的這本關于流程管理的書，原因有幾個，其中最主要的一點是，這本書重新提出了流程導向如何使企業受益的思考。流程管理和流程再造曾在世界各地的大型組織中非常流行。毫無疑問，流程重設計和對大規模、端到端流程的管理，在以客戶為中心來對齊工作以及跨部門協調工作方面是無與倫比的。流程再造則鼓勵公司利用當時的信息技術重新設想流程是如何運作的。流程再造取得了許多成就，盡管在美國，它有時會演變成盲目的裁員。

也許正是因為這個原因，流程再造在許多公司已經不再流行了。此外，流程思維需要以客戶為導向、橫向貫通的關注，這與傳統的職能上和層級上“自上而下”的管理模式相矛盾。員工們想知道：“我向誰匯報工作，是流程經理還是直線經理？”對許多公司來說，解決管理沖突所需付出的努力并不值得其所帶來的收益。

然而，正如陳果在這本書中所描述的，一個流程并不復雜。它只是創造特定成果的一個任務序列。流程管理的價值在于理解任務序列如何組合在一起，為企業帶來改進。它適用于多個層級——從個人或小型工作組執行的工作、部門內的關鍵活動，到跨組織的端到端流程。

流程管理有著悠久的歷史，該書有一些詳細介紹，包括弗雷德里克·泰勒在測量和改進體力勞動任務方面的工作，沃特·阿曼德·休哈特對統計質量控制的采用，威廉·愛德華·戴明改善質量流程的努力及以此為基礎的“全面質量管理”的誕生，20世紀90年代激進的以變革為中心的業務流程再造運動，以及最近的為了持續改進流程的六西格瑪和精益管理方法。我是所有類型的流程改進和管理的支持者，盡管“業務流程再造”是目前唯一一種處理廣泛的端到端流程的方法。有些人將數字化轉型比作流程再造，但大多數轉型項目缺乏結構化的、可衡量的方法來改進和管理運營。

盡管這些方法之間存在重要的差異，但流程的概念在企業中不斷出現的事實證明了它的重要性。在組織中，提升運營績效是一種永久的需求，而管理流程則是滿足這種需求的可靠方法。在過去的幾十年里，流程思維的普及度可能有所下降，但是今天我相信一種“新的流程演算”正在出現，高層領導者是時候再次重視起流程管理的作用了。這種演算在很大程度上最終源于技術，既有可以減少流程管理枯燥乏味的技術（如流程挖掘），也有可能改變游戲規則的技術（如人工智能），當流程被明確定義和良好管理時，這些技術更容易實施。

這些新技術的可用性是當今企業應該回歸大規模流程管理的關鍵原因。缺乏技術支持（特別是在像精益管理方法和六西格瑪這些增量流程改進方法中）導致流程思維的普及度下降。具體來說，一些新技術使業務流程更容易管理或能產生更多收益。它們包括流程挖掘和流程智能、流程設計工具、業務流程管理系統，以及用于流程改進和流程實現的人工智能。這本書正是率先考慮這些新技術如何使組織的流程管理受益的代表作。

流程管理還可以提高生產力。提高生產力的關鍵在于衡量和改進業務流程，并且在處理時間和錯誤率方面應用過程性指標，在成本節降或利潤提升方面應用結果性指標。由于新技術的出現，流程績效的衡量越來越自動化。可以通過降低錯誤率、縮短處理時間以及削減不能產生預期流程結果的工作來更好地管理和改進流程，從而提高生產力。新技術有助于擴大規模，進一步提高生產力。

陳果的書表明，當前企業采用流程管理的動機比以往任何時候都要強烈，而這樣做的難度比以往任何時候都要低。在動機方面，生產力的提高、更容易的技術實施和更好的數據之間存在一個良性循環；在困難度方面，有許多技術使工作更容易開展。那些始終如一地將流程思維應用于其運營的組織已經從中獲益。

流程管理不只在中國正在取得成功，在歐洲，西門子、寶馬和利潔時等公司已經實施流程管理多年。盡管西門子的業務單元高度分散，但它在諸如訂單管理、采購到付款等領域一直追求通用流程以及更加數字化和高效的流程設計。寶馬已經將它在全球的大部分生產流程標準化，這些流程過去在世界各地的差異很大，寶馬現在專注于支持性流程的優化。消費品公司利潔時在數字化轉型的大旗下，將流程卓越、流程挖掘和流程自動化的組織整合起來。

在北美，許多公司已經發現或重新發現了流程管理，但它們不太可能處理廣泛的流程，相反，它們通常專注于特定的流程域，以實現成本節降和效率提升。優步（客戶服務流程）、百事可樂（應收賬款和應付賬款流程）、卡地納健康（訂單管理）、強生（供應鏈）和通用電氣醫療（財務流程）都是在主要流程上取得重大改進的案例。

簡言之，流程可以是人員、技術、數據、分析和人工智能間的紐帶，可以將它們組織起來以提高業務績效。它可以協調這些資源之間的各種“聯姻”。流程需要處于核心位置，因為它是組織向客戶交付價值的方式。就像大多數美滿的婚姻一樣，這里的“婚姻”也會有許多挑戰需要克服。因此，高級經理們是時候再次重視起“流程”，并思考如何讓它在企業中發揮作用了。

在仔細閱讀了這本書之后，那些認真考慮用人工智能來改變它們的運營，或者需要顯著改善其成本或質量狀況的組織，應該著重考慮流程管理努力的重點。對那些相信運營的效率和有效性以及向客戶交付高質量成果對其成功至關重要的公司和政府機構來說，流程管理是正確的答案。對希望從技術投資中獲得巨大經濟價值的組織來說，它也非常有幫助。當然，這應該適用于每一家公司。我希望這本書在中國乃至世界各地被廣泛閱讀。

托馬斯·H.達文波特

巴布森學院杰出教授、麻省理工學院數字經濟倡議研究員、《流程創新》《基于大數據分析的競爭》《全情投入人工智能》等書的作者