In today’s business environment, collaboration between people and systems is crucial to success. Current Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, and supply chain management (SCM) systems have made significant contributions to efficiency, overhead reduction, and improving business agility. But these systems can also present challenges to your employees because of various issues, including ease of use.

Discussing the challenges to individual productivity, discovering what operational inefficiencies still exist, and identifying roadblocks to top-quality customer service with your management team can help you to determine what features to look for in any business process management system you might be considering for your company. The following talking points, considerations, and questions can help you facilitate productive discussions with the heads of your financial, operations, sales, and marketing teams and can encourage them to share their knowledge and experience with you—to the ultimate advantage of your employees and your customers.

Your chief financial officer (CFO) needs to have a broad understanding of the business issues that affect revenue and expenses. He or she needs to direct planning and minimize financial exposure while maximizing both short- and long-term profitability. This executive needs to stay current on investments and acquisition strategy, in addition to industry regulations and tax issues. The CFO must also manage teams that collect pertinent information that can be used to generate financial reports for both planning and compliance purposes.

Priorities
Your CFO may be concerned about how to:

• Find information and generate financial and compliance reports.
• Develop annual revenue targets.
• Manage the annual operating and capital budgets
• Determine which financial key performance indicators (KPIs), like percentage of merchandise returns, are the most beneficial to track.
• Increase shareholder value by identifying new and existing opportunities for revenue growth.
• Ensure that the goals for the deployment of a new BPM system are clear and that expected improvements are measurable.
• Establish a reasonable timeframe for increases in productivity and return on investment (ROI).

Questions
Your CFO can provide useful answers to the following questions:

• What are some of the problems and limitations you’re experiencing with the way we handle our business process management? How challenging is it for you to find, collect, and analyze company information for various financial and compliance reports?
• How do you determine which KPIs are the best ones to track, and how do you track them? Based on the information you gather, how do you decide which business processes you will try to improve?
• How could integrating our planning and budgeting improve our ability to assess annual performance and help us adjust program strategies to make more informed and effective budget decisions?
• What kind of information do you rely on to help you identify both new and existing business opportunities? What other kinds of information would be helpful?
• What second-tier costs can we expect after deploying a comprehensive software solution?

Your vice president (VP) of operations formulates operating policies, manages daily operations, and plans the use of materials and human resources. He or she is responsible for ensuring that effective operations and infrastructure are in place to support all departments, and provides leadership to and oversight of the entire company.

Priorities
Your VP of operations may be concerned about how to:

• Help the company achieve strategic goals at the optimum pace while promoting productive company relationships and partnerships.
• Work effectively with department heads to set goals, monitor work, and evaluate results.
• Help manage the company's operational strengths and weaknesses.
• Bring together disparate productivity tools and systems that are a drain on productivity and therefore affect company profitability.
• Better understand how core assets such as plant capacity, equipment, and labor are affected by customer needs and demand cycles.
• Ensure that the strategy for a new BPM system deployment results in high rates of complete adoption with measurable improvements in work efficiency

Questions
Your VP of operations can provide useful answers to the following questions:

• How do you do assess and measure whether company strategies are clearly understood by all stakeholders?
• How easy is it to collect the metrics you need to set organizational objectives and operating requirements? What kind of systemwide changes would not only make collecting information easier, but help to yield more useful information?
• What process would you use to measure the success of a new BPM solution?
• What kinds of problems, like a lack of connection between disparate productivity tools and systems, have you observed? What are the main features that any new BPM system must have to address these problems?
• Rate the level of collaboration between department heads. What kind of tools and practices might lead to improving the level of collaboration?
• How do you stay in touch with customers' needs? How do you apply your understanding of their needs to product improvements and production cycles?
• What kinds of information, processes, or tools would help you identify new investment, revenue, and strategic partnership opportunities?
• What kinds of problems have you experienced with rates of BPM adoption? How could we encourage more complete employee adoption with the new system?

Your purchasing manager is responsible for keeping the supply chain moving smoothly. This manager focuses on strategic and long-term supplier relationships to make sure company goals are met.

Priorities
Your purchasing manager may be concerned about how to:

• Share information between your company and distributors, suppliers, and customers.
• Increase productivity by streamlining business processes.
• Reduce purchasing costs.
• Get the right products and materials in stock at the right time and price.
• Negotiate optimal terms and conditions on supplier agreements.
• Integrate the demand-driven supply network.
• Monitor and manage supply chain partner performance.

Questions
Your purchasing manager can provide useful answers to the following questions:

• How easy is it for you to share information with distributors and suppliers not only about today’s concerns but about expectations of future trends?
• What tools and processes do you use now to review and approve purchasing orders, and how could these processes be improved?
• What kind of features should any BPM solution have to help you evaluate supply chain partner performance?
• What is your process for approving new suppliers and subcontractors? How could we make the process more timely and effective?
• How easy is it to add a new partner to our pipeline? What would make it easier? What do our partners think about our process?

Your sales manager needs access to all aspects of the sales and marketing operations. In addition to pipeline and sales analysis, the sales manager needs to be able to troubleshoot deals, drive new leads, direct marketing campaigns, and assess and prioritize the results of your company’s sales and marketing efforts.

Priorities
Your sales manager may be concerned about how to:

• Gather pertinent customer information to keep sales teams productive and aligned with strategic business goals.
• Prospect and qualify leads in a format that is easy for the sales force to access, either online in the office or offline at a customer site.
• Trace the stages of deal closure to help manage and close more deals faster.
• Gain insight into the business practices of underperforming sales representatives and guide them to improve their sales outcomes.
• Get clear information on how each sales representative is performing against their quota.
• Analyze sales by customer, territory, product line, sales period, and marketing promotion.

Questions
Your sales manager can provide useful answers to the following questions:

• What kind of customer data do you and your sales force keep? What kind of system or systems do you use to keep it? What are the strengths and weaknesses of your information-keeping practices?
• How do you monitor the sales team and give them feedback?
• Are you and your sales staff able to participate in sales calls as needed, even when on the road?
• How do you track which leads turn into customers? How do you know when to follow up on leads that have not yet led to a sale?
• How do you compile the daily account revenue and sales order report, and what would make this process easier?
• How do you work with the marketing, sales, and production teams to project sales and set sales goals?
• Are you satisfied with your ability to quickly spot negative and positive trends and determine what contributes to them?

Marketing managers need to have an accurate understanding of the market and know what products and services should be introduced. Priorities include developing campaigns that enable field and channel partners to work together in improving new product launches.

Priorities
Your marketing manager may be concerned about how to:

• Plan, fund, and manage customer loyalty, acquisition, and retention programs.
• Help channel partners and field sales teams plan, manage, and execute go-to-market campaigns.
• Introduce new products and services and follow market shifts, or build first-mover advantage as the market changes.
• Understand customer profiles-which ones are most profitable to your company and how to segment the customer base.
• Collaborate with both the sales department and your partners to track marketing information and better target and serve customers.

Questions
Your marketing manager can provide useful answers to the following questions:

• What product or service will a customer likely purchase next? And, which product will be purchased with other products (market basket analysis)?
• How would improving customer connections affect your market offerings and overall brand positioning? What are some practical ways to improve these connections?
• How would more collaboration in the sales process help you carry out your marketing strategy? What are some of ways you can improve collaboration?
• How well do your field teams and partners collaborate in driving go-to-market campaigns? Are there ways in which they could collaborate more effectively?
• How do you gather field customer information and build it into your marketing plans?