--- title: "Critical processes: the outside-in perspective" description: This post will explore critical processes; why any process that interacts with a customer could be seen as critical. image: https://blog.leonardo.com.au/hs-fs/file-2133814219-jpg/Images/LC_Stock_Picks-21.jpg --- [![LeonardoUST_CMYK-1](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/hubfs/LeonardoUST_CMYK-1.svg "LeonardoUST_CMYK-1")](https://www.leonardo.com.au/) [![Talk to Us](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/430417/7eb77b0e-c703-49d8-930c-a6d73a5e986f.png)](https://cta-redirect.hubspot.com/cta/redirect/430417/7eb77b0e-c703-49d8-930c-a6d73a5e986f) ![cross-icon](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/hubfs/cross-icon.svg?t=1536031936288 "cross-icon") ![business-design](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/hubfs/business-design.svg "business-design") ###### [Business Design](https://www.leonardo.com.au/business-design-consulting-advisory) ![process-automation](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/hubfs/process-automation.svg "process-automation") ###### [Process Automation](https://www.leonardo.com.au/process-automation) ![data-integration](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/hubfs/data-integration.svg "data-integration") ###### [Integration & API](https://www.leonardo.com.au/integration) ![platform-engineering](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/hubfs/platform-engineering.svg "platform-engineering") ###### [Platform Engineering](https://www.leonardo.com.au/platform-engineering) ![Event_bg](https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hub/3842749/hubfs/Backgrounds%20/Event_bg.jpg?width=2000&name=Event_bg.jpg "Event_bg") # The Leonardo Blog ## [Critical processes: the outside-in perspective](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/critical-processes-the-outside-in-perspective) Written by [Clement Hurpin](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/author/clement-hurpin) On February 12, 2015 [** ](https://www.linkedin.com/pub/clement-hurpin/37/b51/394) - [Automation (2)](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/topic/automation) - [bpm (3)](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/topic/bpm) - [BPM - Business Process Management (111)](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/topic/bpm-business-process-management) - [BPM/EA Technology (25)](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/topic/bpmea-technology) - [Business Innovation (5)](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/topic/business-innovation) - [CXM (1)](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/topic/cxm) - [EA - Enterprise Architecture (7)](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/topic/ea-enterprise-architecture) - [Intergration (12)](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/topic/intergration) - [**](https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fblog.leonardo.com.au%2Fcritical-processes-the-outside-in-perspective) - [**](https://www.twitter.com/share?url=https%3A%2F%2Fblog.leonardo.com.au%2Fcritical-processes-the-outside-in-perspective) - [**](http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https://blog.leonardo.com.au/critical-processes-the-outside-in-perspective) [All Posts](https://blog.leonardo.com.au) # Critical processes: the outside-in perspective - [Tweet](https://twitter.com/share) ![Critical Processes Outside In](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/hs-fs/file-2133814219-jpg/Images/LC_Stock_Picks-21.jpg?width=700&name=LC_Stock_Picks-21.jpg "Critical Processes Outside In") We’re all familiar with the symptoms of organisational failure. Your luggage was lost during that never-ending stopover. Your order was mixed up with another at your favourite restaurant. Your internet still isn’t working after numerous phone calls to your telecommunications provider. These various nuisances are all the result of poorly managed processes, but not just any processes, **critical **ones (i.e. they impact the customer directly). This post will explore [critical processes](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/why-business-process-management-bpm-is-critical); why any process that interacts with a customer could be seen as critical. I will then ask you to rate your organisation’s management of customer interactions. We’re interested in your thoughts, so feel free to offer your perspective at the end of this post. ## What is a Critical Business Process and How to Identify One? A literature review provides us with several definitions for a critical process. While some emphasise contribution to organisational performance or the unsustainable risk the company would undergo if the process were to fail, a topic-relevant one states that* “critical processes are the visible activities or processes from a customer view”.[**[1]**](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/critical-processes-the-outside-in-perspective#_ftn1) * So [critical business processes](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/why-business-process-management-bpm-is-critical) are either: 1. risky (*potentially exposing the company to harmful effects*), 2. vital (*their contribution to the business is too important*) or 3. in contact with the customer (*affecting the delivery of value)*. Identifying those seemingly abstract processes is not trivial (*for instance, identifying certain risks and their impacts can be a program in itself*), so for the sake of this post, let’s focus on the rather simpler ones to spot: those acting as an interaction platform with the customer. If you are not customer-focused, your business processes won’t be either: yet customer-centrism is a paramount element to keep in mind on the [BPM ](https://www.leonardo.com.au/bpm-business-process-management)journey. Let’s find out why. ## Be your own client No matter what your business is all about, your organisation’s ‘bread-maker’, i.e. your customer, only sees the processes with which they interact. Do you know the technicalities behind the Amazon Cloud service? Most of their customers don’t -but it doesn’t stop them from enjoying the service: a credit card and a short amount of time will get them some servers running, and that is what the customer wants. The processes running in the background to deliver your product/service do not matter to your customers - only the output does. They matter to you (hopefully!), but not to them. To deliver excellent products and services, we must sometimes look at our business from the customer’s perspective. In other words, we must look at our processes from the outside-in. By getting into our customers’ shoes, we can discover things from their perspective (which can lead to some humbling reality-checks). Easy on paper, harder in reality: managing human-centric processes is complex. It often involves defining complex interactions between humans and machines. Is this a reason to stop managing them? Definitely not as they are *critically* important. Complexity aside, customer-centric processes can be easier to manage than previously expected.  They often exhibit simpler patterns since many of the decisions are driven by human judgement (such as approval/rejection, information request etc.) rendering modelling simpler as there would be fewer activities compared to their purely technological counterparts. Furthermore, customer-centric processes can also be more agile as they are inherently and repeatedly exposed to the end users, and they are thoroughly “user tested”, resulting in issues identified faster and more often. Additionally, considering the potential impact of unhappy customers on bottom lines, change requests usually move up the priority list.[[2]](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/critical-processes-the-outside-in-perspective#_ftn2) Managing those processes with touch points with the customer is not easy, but it is necessary. In order to achieve this feat, it can be beneficial to shift perspective from the inside-out to the outside-in. So forget for a minute what you know about your organisation, put your customer hat on, and consider what you company looks like from the outside. Who knows?  You may be better off for it. [![Download Critical BPM Discussion Paper](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/430417/a28f51d5-2c2c-45a0-8028-5af6277dd673.png)](https://cta-redirect.hubspot.com/cta/redirect/430417/a28f51d5-2c2c-45a0-8028-5af6277dd673) ## Blog’s question: Considering the importance of any process interacting with the customer, how would you rate your organisation on the following statement? Please use the poll below or leave a comment - we would love to hear your thoughts.  My organisation is consciously and systematically managing our interactions with our customers (which can include measuring and/or standardising the interactions, building scenarios…) <a href="http://polldaddy.com/poll/8648514/">My organisation is consciously and systematically managing our interactions with our customers .</a> --- [[1]](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/critical-processes-the-outside-in-perspective#_ftnref1) Melnyk, S. A. (2000), *Value‐Driven Process Management: Using Value to Improve Processes*, Hospital Materiel Management Quarterly; Rockville 22(1). [[2]](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/critical-processes-the-outside-in-perspective#_ftnref2) Gal Shachor, Yoav Rubin, Nili Guy (Ifergan), Yael Dubinsky, Maya Barnea, Samuel Kallner, Ariel Landau, *What You See And Do Is What You Get: A Human-Centric Design Approach to Human-Centric Process,* Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing Volume 66, 2011, pp 49-60 ###### Clement Hurpin Clement Hurpin has put his business process management knowledge into practice by working on projects involving process engineering and design, process modelling, gathering user requirements, process automation, data modelling, use case definition, workflow and report design. - Recent - Popular - Categories ### Lists by Topic - [BPM - Business Process Management (111)](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/topic/bpm-business-process-management) - [BPM/EA Technology (25)](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/topic/bpmea-technology) - [The Process Session (23)](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/topic/the-process-session) - [Process Modelling (18)](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/topic/process-modelling) - [News (14)](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/topic/news) - [Intergration (12)](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/topic/intergration) - [EA - Enterprise Architecture (7)](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/topic/ea-enterprise-architecture) - [Platform (6)](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/topic/platform) - [Business Innovation (5)](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/topic/business-innovation) - [Red Hat (4)](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/topic/red-hat) - [bpm (3)](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/topic/bpm) - [Automation (2)](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/topic/automation) - [Process Automation (2)](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/topic/process-automation) - [Process Mining (2)](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/topic/process-mining) - [Regulatory Optimisation (2)](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/topic/regulatory-optimisation) - [Video (2)](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/topic/video) - [process (2)](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/topic/process) - [redhat (2)](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/topic/redhat) - [CXM (1)](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/topic/cxm) - [RPA (1)](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/topic/rpa) [see all](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/critical-processes-the-outside-in-perspective#) ## Subscribe and Get The Latest News ## Related Posts ## [UST Acquires Leading Australian Process Transformation Company Leonardo](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/ust-acquires-leonardo) UST Acquires Leading Australian Process Transformation Company Leonardo - Strategic acquisition further strengthens UST’s position in the dynamic ANZ market Melbourne, Australia, 21 February 2024:UST, a leading digital transformation solutions company, has announced the strategic acquisition of Leonardo, a leading provider of business process improvement, automation, and integration services in the ANZ region. The acquisition by UST will empower Leonardo to expand its market reach and enhance its service offerings for clients, combining Leonardo's in-depth process expertise with UST's technology leadership, digital transformation capabilities, and global credentials, and strengthening UST's position in the Australian market. - [Daniel Weatherhead](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/author/daniel-weatherhead) - 5 min read - Feb 21, 2024 9:00:00 AM ## [How to Present Business Process Models to Stakeholders](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/presenting-business-process-models-to-stakeholders) Has an audience member ever interrupted in the middle of a presentation about process analysis to ask, “Can you show us the process models in a simple PowerPoint slide?” – or, ”I don’t want to look at the green and purple boxes, just show me the flow!” Perhaps you then felt that you had wasted some of your efforts in modelling the process with too much detail or in the wrong way. Embarrassed and demoralised, you must have wondered how else could these models be presented. Well, you are not alone! This is a common dilemma when there is a need to present process models to a variety of audiences. There is both art and science in presenting the right level of process detail to the right group of stakeholders, especially if they are not familiar with the process modelling language. Effective presentation is even more critical in larger and complex end-to-end process improvement work and in new automated business model implementations. You may need to use multiple model types to describe the same business processes to various audiences. Hence, it is very important to understand who the stakeholders are and what they would like to see before your audience with them. This article proposes an approach to the effective presentation of business process models based on three key elements: understand, organise, and communicate. - [Daniel Weatherhead](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/author/daniel-weatherhead) - 7 min read - Oct 10, 2023 10:00:00 AM ## [What Are The Most Important Questions In Business Process Management?](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/what-are-the-most-important-questions-in-business-process-management) She who dies with the most answers wins. We seek the truth. We want to know the answers. Paul Harmon started me thinking recently when he invited members of the BPTrends Discussion group on LinkedIn to “describe the purpose of Business Process Management in 160 characters, including spaces and punctuation.” Not easy to do – have a go at it yourself. It felt like I was crafting The Ultimate BPM Answer, which, of course, begged The Ultimate BPM Question. That got me thinking that The Ultimate BPM Problem is that we have plenty of answers and not enough questions. So put all the answers aside for a moment and help me to work out what are the most important questions in Business Process Management? - [Roger Tregear](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/author/roger-tregear) - 6 min read - Jul 30, 2023 10:30:00 AM ### Subscribe to Email Updates [![LeonardoUST_CMYK](https://blog.leonardo.com.au/hs-fs/hubfs/LeonardoUST_CMYK.png?width=791&name=LeonardoUST_CMYK.png "LeonardoUST_CMYK")](https://www.leonardo.com.au) Leonardo drives continuous process improvement through technology and has worked with many leading enterprises in APAC to enhance the performance of their business processes through architecture and automation as well as integrating their applications, platforms and data to enable disruptive technologies. **What We Do** **Resources** ##### Company 2022 ©Incotrade Australia Pty Ltd trading as Leonardo Consulting  |  All rights reserved   |   ACN 066 273 256. |  [Privacy Statement](https://www.leonardo.com.au/privacy)  [**](http://www.facebook.com/leonardoconsultingAU) [**](https://www.linkedin.com/company/leonardo-consulting/) [**](http://www.twitter.com/leonardoBPM) [**](http://www.youtube.com/leonardoconsulting)