The companies in the telecommunications industry, for ­example, would seemingly have to interact closely with their customers because of the nature of their industry, whether mobile services or fixed networks. To this extent, they should be quite advanced in their development in terms of process design, in all aspects of interaction with customers. But if you analyze specific companies in detail, you will find that they are also lagging behind in this trend, although they should be highly customer-centric.  

DMR: Product lifecycles are becoming shorter and shorter, markets and consumers more and more demanding, but simultaneously less constant. What are the special features of a successful, process-related company these days, and what does this increasing complexity mean for the process management of tomorrow?  

L. Brecht: I do not regard process management as a series of small steps with the aim of redefining the procedural organization. Letter-sorting logistics, as one example, can be described as inefficient in many cases. The question that must be answered is: Are there companies, whether postal services, logistics companies, or general service providers who are giving any thought to a redefinition of these procedures? How could technology change the processes in this example? I would even go one step further and radically change the business model of the Postal Service or of a provider such as Siemens which offers letter-sorting machines. Ultimately, the technology, as described in the examples, should be understood as an enabler so that the processes can be approached in a radically different way across company boundaries. 

DMR: For a number of years now, there has been a special focus on the tighter meshing of process management and IT. Software producers in particular attempt to drive this meshing forward, using such terms as “business service management”. ­Components of such approaches include IT service management and service oriented architectures. Is this merely a marketing strategy of the software industry, or is it really the next stage of evolution in process management? 

L. Brecht: The ever tighter meshing of process management and technology has been observed for some time now. ERP ­providers have supplied an extremely large number of solutions.  We all know large ERP providers as well as smaller niche ­providers who integrate intelligent telecommunications solutions and RFID applications into the ERP system. I will give you an example; although an old example, it is still one that I consider relevant in this sense. ABB Turbo Systems, for ­example, manufactures turbochargers for large ship engines whose output values can be monitored worldwide. Imagine now a ship sailing across the world’s oceans. The temperature and pressure conditions in this turbocharger can be measured and monitored via GPS remote monitoring. If I can now make sure that a part which could possibly fail is already at the destination port when the ship arrives, I have minimized the ship’s lay days and can naturally realize process improvements this way. This example beautifully illustrates the meshing with previous IT providers who offer business services. The use of technologies such as GPS and monitoring represent an example of this in the technical field. Many more examples which have as their focal point the meshing of IT, telecommunications, GPS, RFID could be given.  So the meshing of processes and IT is not only a trend which is being driven by marketing activities of ERP providers; it is clearly a pull from the market. I can observe this in the most widely divergent industries.