From policy implementation to business process management: Principles for creating flexibility and agility

Organizations are required to comply with changes in legislation and policy. Yet the implementation of new legislation is often expensive, can have long lead times and is prone to failure. The existing situation significantly constrains policy-making. To improve this, policy makers and policy executors are searching for ways to achieve higher levels of flexibility and agility in their business process management systems. Flexibility is the ability to react to changes and agility is the speed in responding to variety and change. Both flexibility and agility are multi-dimensional concepts.This paper presents principles for creating flexibility and agility when implementing new or revised policies into business processes. These principles include: 1) defining and using business services, 2) integrating and orchestrating business services through the use of events, 3) separating process, knowledge and resources and 4) implementing policy in an integrated manner. Business services are components encapsulating business functions and having clear responsibilities and accountabilities. The case study shows that these forms of flexibility and agility can help to implement policies more quickly and cost effectively. An organization's resources and level of flexibility and agility determines what laws can be implemented within a certain time. The improvement of flexibility and agility requires innovations on all levels: infrastructure, business process and organization. The level of flexibility and agility should always be measured by a combination of measures. We make plea for instruments assessing the impact of policies on organizations prior to implementation.

► Implementation of new legislation is often expensive, can have long lead times and is prone to failure.
► This paper presents principles for creating flexible and agile processes.
► These principles can help to implement policies more quickly and cost effectively.
► The level of flexibility and agility should always be measured by a combination of measures.
► Flexibility and agility improvement requires innovations on all levels: infrastructure, business process and organization.