Navigating the winding road toward operational excellence can be treacherous for organizations overwhelmed by rapid technology change. Yet, a thoughtful approach to evaluating process orchestration maturity levels arms enterprises with the insights needed to chart a straight course, avoiding the pitfalls of fragmented systems and moving confidently toward automation success.
Advancing through orchestration maturity levels not only streamlines operations but also multiplies efficiency, visibility, and business impact. From breaking down silos to scaling up processes, mastering orchestration unlocks automation potential, enhancing customer satisfaction and competitive strength.
Our guide introduces the process orchestration maturity model, a vital tool for assessing and boosting your orchestration skills. It covers the concept, key drivers, various maturity levels, and real-world progress examples - all you need to know before you delve into assessing your process orchestration readiness. Let’s dive straight in!
What is a process orchestration maturity model?
The process orchestration maturity model is an analytical framework that assesses an organization’s capability to successfully execute process orchestration initiatives. It identifies five core drivers that impact implementation effectiveness:
- Vision. Strategic awareness of process orchestration’s value.
- Motivation. Goals driving process orchestration adoption and automation initiatives.
- Team structure. Standards, policies, responsibilities, and simply people tasked with enabling process orchestration.
- Measurement. Capabilities to define and track process orchestration success.
- Technology. Platforms and solutions powering process orchestration efforts.
Analysis of an organization’s alignment to best practices across these critical areas provides insight into current process orchestration maturity. The model delineates five levels of evolving capability. Organizations are ranked as follows:
- Level 0 – no process orchestration,
- Level 1 – single project or ad hoc use,
- Level 2 – broader initiative,
- Level 3 – distributed adoption,
- Level 4 – strategic, scaled adoption.
This model enables constructive evaluation of current strengths and weaknesses, laying a foundation to systematically address gaps and ascend to elevated process orchestration maturity.
Process orchestration maturity model drivers
Examining key drivers of process orchestration maturity spotlights an organization’s preparedness to execute and scale automation for greater business value.
Vision
Vision refers to strategic awareness, planning and leadership support for process orchestration as a distinct competency enabling enterprise digital transformation.
At lower levels of maturity (0-2), process orchestration vision focuses narrowly on optimizing individual processes or initiatives without connecting to broader strategic goals. As maturity advances, vision broadens to recognize process orchestration’s larger role in digital transformation, efficiency improvements and competitive differentiation.
Leadership support and planning increase alongside vision, with dedicated resources and strategic roadmaps guiding advancement. Mature organizations possess a clearly defined process orchestration vision matched by proven execution capabilities.
Understanding the nuances of process orchestration maturity requires a granular approach to the facets that define its progression. Transitioning from the concept of vision, it is crucial to delve into the aspect of motivation that sustains and propels the journey of maturity in process orchestration.
Motivation
Motivation, in the context of process orchestration maturity model, is intrinsically linked to the strategic intents and desired business outcomes that drive its adoption and ongoing refinement.
Early motivations present at levels from zero to two aim to optimize individual processes, seeking narrow benefits like temporary efficiencies or bandage solutions to pains. As maturity progresses, motivations shift to achieving enterprise-wide impact tied to core objectives around customer experience, efficiency, and responsible growth.
Advanced maturity unlocks motivation to continuously transform business models, capabilities and differentiation through process orchestration excellence.
Team structure
When we talk about team structure, we are really looking at how people are organized and supported to make process orchestration work effectively.
Unstructured approaches are represented by organizations classified as early stages in the process orchestration maturity model. With decentralized teams focused narrowly on delivering individual initiatives, they do not communicate intensively within organization. As maturity increases, specialized teams:
- consolidate knowledge,
- establish best practices,
- consult across business units, and
- drive scalable solutions.
Organizations at the highest, fourth level of maturity, contain centers of excellence acting as internal accelerators that provide training, tools and platforms allowing any team to advance impactful process orchestration initiatives tied to strategic goals.
The evolution of team structure in process orchestration, from decentralized units to sophisticated centers of excellence, sets the stage for another crucial aspect in the maturity model – the measurement of process orchestration's impact.
Measurement
Quantifying process orchestration’s business impact is essential for meaningful improvement. Hence, measurement assesses capabilities to systematically define, track and analyze metrics demonstrating process orchestration’s business impact.
In early stages, success is narrowly measured at the project level without tying to enterprise KPIs. Advancing maturity brings reliable tracking of progress toward operational and financial goals enabled by process orchestration.
Organizations that achieve a high automation maturity model have executive dashboards continuously monitoring process orchestration’s holistic impact on efficiency, automation rates, customer experience and responsible growth targets.
Technology
As organizations evolve in their approach to measuring the impact of process orchestration, they simultaneously progress in their use and understanding of technology, an essential component for effective process orchestration. In consequence, the technology suite powering process orchestration must scale across systems and users while offering flexibility for diverse use cases.
Early maturity levels feature siloed technologies supporting isolated use cases. Progressing to higher maturity involves integrating scalable platforms that standardize, accelerate and govern process orchestration programs across business units, empowering reliability and enterprise-wide visibility.
Mature technology strategies provide the specialized capabilities needed for the organization’s context without unnecessary components or fragmentation.
5 levels of process orchestration maturity model
Organizations ascend through distinct levels of process orchestration maturity marked by the increasing sophistication of the drivers above.
Level 0: No process orchestration
Organizations at Level 0 of process orchestration maturity model have yet to adopt any kind of process orchestration frameworks, technologies or staffing models to consolidate automation efforts. While isolated process automation components may exist in certain departments or IT systems, these fragmented initiatives fail to provide any enterprise-wide visibility, governances or repeatability.
With automation functionality dispersed in silos across disparate groups, Level 0 organizations cannot reliably track performance of critical workflows. They lack unified data and insights about bottlenecks, waste, risks and opportunities tied to process health. Meanwhile, they miss key integrations between interdependent steps impacting holistic efficiency and end-user experience.
Transitioning even simple individual workflows into reliable orchestrated processes with basic oversight can yield tremendous efficiency gains, cost reductions and customer experience improvements for Level 0 organizations. Introducing foundational process orchestration platforms, common notation standards like BPMN, and centralized automation/integration teams lays the groundwork to add increasing enterprise value.
Level 1: Single project or ad-hoc use
The first stage of the process orchestration maturity model launches process orchestration via isolated, small-scale initiatives optimizing individual processes, targeting urgent needs or inefficiencies.
While positive business outcomes may be achieved for individual processes, Level 1 maturity lacks mechanisms to reuse talent, technology and lessons learned across initiatives. Success metrics emphasize project outputs, such as budget, rollout status, etc., rather than analyzing the holistic impact orchestrating the process delivers for enterprise KPIs like cost savings, revenue, automation rates and customer retention.
Establishing maturity to drive transformational process orchestration at scale involves:
- expanding the scope from fixing singular workflows (Level 1) toward improving automation capabilities for entire departments or business units (Level 2),
- developing reliable methods to quantify broader contributions beyond isolated workflows builds leadership confidence for further investment,
- start establishing specialized process orchestration personnel that increase reuse, mitigate reliance on tribal knowledge, and support additional self-service adoption with training programs.
Level 2: Broader initiative
Level 2 process orchestration maturity contains more extensive automation programs beyond individual use cases toward improving performance, compliance and competitiveness at a business unit or regional level.
However, Level 2 of process orchestration maturity model capabilities to reliably measure process orchestration impact may focus on project-specific metrics versus analyzing the holistic contribution to enterprise digital transformation and functional objectives.
For example, a common scenario is technology leaders touting sophisticated orchestration architecture for critical finance system integrations while frontline issues continue eroding customer loyalty and brand equity.
Maturing measurement practices by requires the organization to:
- institute executive dashboards to continuously monitor contribution to digital transformation and growth goals,
- formalize Center of Excellence teams that consolidate knowledge, drive best practices, and provide internal consulting,
- prioritize scalable orchestration platforms and self-service tools empowering more teams to rapidly improve workflows aligned with transformation roadmaps.
Level 3: Distributed adoption
Level 3 process orchestration maturity model sees proven success leveraging orchestration capabilities to achieve efficiencies, engagement and differentiation at scale across dispersed geographic regions and business functions. Standardized metrics demonstrate reliable hard dollar ROI along multiple dimensions like cost optimiazation, automation rates and revenue linked to major programs.
Specialist process orchestration teams drive consistency in:
- architectural patterns,
- security protocols,
- operating procedures, and
- rollout sequencing,
to balance maintainability with customization needed for specific use cases. These personnel act as internal consultants assisting various groups to map local inefficiencies to enterprise platforms rapidly deploying automated solutions. Extensive training and accreditation regimes cultivate orchestration fluency across IT and business roles.
Reaching the next wave of transformational impact involves aggressively expanding the process orchestration portfolio to address additional mission-critical workflows or demographics. Additional focus should turn toward innovations in business models, products, channels and experiences uniquely enabled by the organization’s orchestration competencies combined with complementary emerging technologies.
Level 4: Strategic, scaled adoption
Level 4 represents the pinnacle of process orchestration capability maturity. It features aligned vision, motivation, resources, metrics, governance and technologies combined to continuously optimize, augment and differentiate essential operations through process orchestration excellence.
Specialized teams act as internal accelerators that empower various groups to map local constraints and opportunities to enterprise automation platforms. Self-service interfaces promote citizen-led initiatives to help perpetually improve responsiveness and resource efficiency at scale. Executive leadership dedicates budget and headcount to significantly expand process orchestration penetration across customers, processes and innovations based on proven contribution to past growth.
Sustaining Level 4 requires persistent modernization to retain competitive advantage as market landscapes evolve. Leaders must vigilantly nurture talent, curate an agile ecosystem of internal and external partners, and prioritize upgrades keeping architecture on the innovating edge of possibility. By institutionalizing orchestration capabilities into corporate DNA, they stand poised to execute transformative visions as paradigms shift.
Case studies
Exploring organizations at differing points along the process orchestration maturity continuum spotlights required steps to progress to the next level. The following examples demonstrate how two industry leaders leveraged process orchestration methodologies and technologies to accelerate their maturity journey.
Atlassian
The software giant leveraged Camunda for enterprise automation initiatives spanning
- finance,
- commerce,
- marketing, and
- customer support systems.
By implementing robust process orchestration, Atlassian accelerated critical workflows while enabling end-to-end visibility, governance and continuous improvement. These new capabilities rapidly increased efficiency and self-service adoption across business functions. Attlasian’s initiative exemplifies Strategic Scaled Adoption, seamlessly syncing disparate solutions into orchestrated workflows with optimized efficiency and visibility.
National Bank of Canada
Despite limited resources, the National Bank of Canada’s Center of Excellence democratized process orchestration skillsets enterprise-wide through training programs that empowered business teams to manage workflows aligned with transformation objectives. The approach implemented by the sixth largest bank in Canada, with 25,000 employees, included:
- strict governance models that maximized reuse while balancing agility,
- accelerated development cycles that increased productivity by 66% annually as more teams participated in impactful process orchestration projects.
These examples exhibit process orchestration maturity manifesting in different forms according to each organization’s strengths and strategic context – but with consistently expansive impact on efficiency, responsiveness and differentiation as a result.
Trends driving automation adoption and the need for process orchestration
Several prevailing trends underscore the growing importance of process orchestration maturity for modern enterprises:
- Pandemic-era digital acceleration – 2020 saw mid-market companies accelerate digital transformation plans by 2-5 years. However, disjointed technologies and disjointed processes resulted, causing customer and employee frustration. Developing process orchestration maturity can consolidate investments, restoring end-to-end experiences.
- Exponential technology expansion – budgets dedicated to transformative technologies like RPA, AI and cloud have increased by over 1000% since 2016. But poor integration causes nearly $30M in losses per business annually. Process orchestration mastery helps seamlessly adopt new innovations.
- Heightened customer expectations – disconnected processes damage satisfaction and trust. Process orchestration expertise directly fuels the integrated omnichannel experiences customers demand in 2023.
- Investors focus on profitability – with possible economic recession looming in 2023, investors are optimizing for efficient and lean operations. Leveling up process orchestration maturity provides hard cost savings to impress shareholders.
Process orchestration with Camunda x RST
As a Gold Certified partner for Camunda, we are uniquely positioned to help organizations implement Camunda's industry-leading process orchestration platform. With deep expertise across Camunda orchestration methodology and technology stack, RST's certified architects and developers can effectively empower your business to connect systems, automate workflows, and optimize critical business processes.
Together, RST and Camunda provide both the strategic vision and technical capabilities required for success with process orchestration initiatives – from initial scoping through to implementation and beyond. With our track record of delivering digital transformation and Camunda's pioneer status in process automation infrastructure, partners are equipped to drive transformative outcomes no matter their current level of process orchestration maturity.
If you're seeking expert guidance on your journey to business orchestration, our team is ready to help. We assist in evaluating your current state, identifying improvement areas, and devising strategic plans for greater efficiency and market distinction. Contact us today to discuss how we can help you navigate towards operational excellence with confidence.
People also ask
What is process orchestration?
Process orchestration refers to the coordinated execution of multiple business processes or workflows across various systems, applications, and teams within an organization. It involves the automated management, coordination, and arrangement of complex processes and tasks to achieve specific business objectives. Here are some key aspects:
- Automation and coordination: process orchestration automates and coordinates tasks that would otherwise be performed manually. This can include data transfers, decision-making processes, and the integration of different systems or applications.
- Workflow management: it defines, manages, and executes workflows efficiently. Workflows are sequences of tasks that lead to the completion of a complex process.
- Integration of systems: orchestrating processes often involves integrating various systems and applications within an organization to ensure smooth data flow and task execution.
- Efficiency and scalability: by automating and optimizing processes, orchestration helps in increasing efficiency and enables businesses to scale operations more effectively.
- Centralized control: it provides a centralized view and control over multiple processes, which aids in monitoring, managing, and optimizing operations.
- Error handling and adaptability: orchestrated systems can better handle errors and adapt to changes in processes, reducing downtime and improving overall performance.
- Compliance and governance: ensuring processes adhere to internal policies and external regulations becomes more manageable with orchestration.
In summary, process orchestration is about streamlining and optimizing how different tasks and systems work together within a business, leading to more efficient, consistent, and scalable operations. It's particularly important in complex environments where multiple systems need to interact seamlessly.
