Business Process Management (BPM)
Business Process Management (BPM) Overview
One of the main challenges that most of the organizations face is managing the business processes. Many business owners consider that BPM is expensive or that it is only worth it for processes which are quite big. However, BPM is crucial no matter what size your business is. In this guide we provide a way of managing your business process with the help of automation tools.
What is Business Process Management?
Business process management (BPM) is a discipline that uses various methods to discover, model, analyze, measure, improve and optimize business processes. A business process coordinates the behavior of people, systems, information and things to produce business outcomes in support of a business strategy. It is actually a process where a company takes a step back and looks all the processes in total and individually.
BPM related to task, project management and software product
BPM is neither task management nor project management. With task management the focus is on individual tasks while with project management the focus is on specific flows.
BPM is not a software product. There are BPM tools available that help in implementing standard and automated business processes. BPM, however, is not a software product in itself.
One-time and non-repetitive projects contain a number of activities. The handling and organizing these activities is what we call task management.
However, BPM is more focused on repeatable processes that follow a specific pattern.
Why does Business Process Management is important?
In case a company leave its business processes unorganized, this can lead to total anarchy and organization chaos. From individual level point of view, people have no clear visibility of the processes, where a process starts and where ends, what kind of data needed in order to be performed, where we may have delays or inefficiencies.
Disorganized processes damage the business and cause the following effects:
Lack of employees' motivation
Many errors
Increased criticism
Lack of data
Waste of time
By applying BPM, companies can improve their processes and run their operations optimally.
Which are the Steps of a BPM lifecycle?
Step 1: Design
The main goal of the process design stage is to get an understanding of the business rules and ensure if the results are in alignment with the organizational goals. In order to achieve this goal the Business analysts (BAs) need to review the current business rules, initiate discussions with the various stakeholders and communicate the desired outcomes to management.
During the gathering period of existing process information and artifacts the BAs need to identify the teams, prepare the communication plan, define roles and responsibilities and determine the scope. Following the gathering period, the BAs should initiate the "As - Is Workshops" where the pain points and metrics can be identified as a result with the communication with the customer.
Step 2: Model
In the second step the process diagrams are analyzed. The flows and steps are reviewed, inefficiencies are identified and alternative flows are modelled. BPM uses specific notation, Business Process Model Notation.
Step 3: Execute
Depending on how large the changes are, test the newly proposed business processes with a small test group before fully committing to the new plan.
No matter how innovative your design phase is, you can be sure that the resulting model will contain some unforeseen errors that can only be uncovered in the field. Therefore, the execution phase is actually a test phase where theory meets praxis. It usually goes through several rounds of testing and making new adjustments.
Step 4: Monitor
Processes need to be monitored and analyzed to identify further adjustments/improvements to the process to better control the execution of the process.
BPM should be seen as a circle because the outputs of the process monitoring make demands for more changes. Also because the ever-changing landscapes of customer needs, technology and competition.
Step 5: Optimize
A good BPM is not a one-off intervention but a continuous endeavor. Therefore, the optimization stage can be seen as a repetition of the last four stages. Even if you have perfectly designed and executed new processes, you still need to continuously monitor results to further optimize your business processes. If you do not optimize your business processes, chances are that errors or inefficiencies will reoccur over time.
Types of business process management?
BPM systems can be categorized based on the purpose they serve. Here are the three types of business process management:
Integration-centric BPM (or System-Centric BPM)
This type of business process management system handles processes that primarily jump between your existing systems without much human involvement. Integration-centric business process management systems have extensive connectors and API access to be able to create processes that move fast.
Human-centric BPM
Human-centric BPM is for those processes that are primarily executed by humans and automations does not easily replace them. These often have a lot of approvals and tasks performed by individuals. These platforms excel at a friendly user interface, easy notifications, and quick tracking. Examples of human-centric processes include providing customer service, handling complaints, on-boarding employees, conducting e-commerce activities, and filing expense reports.
The process of designing a system with human tasks must include many types of responses. Human-centric BPM understands the complexity of how a human may react to a task and creates room for more than just a binary response.
Human-centric BPM is not against automation; in fact, it encourages as much automation as possible. Human-centric BPM is as concerned about who does the tasks as it is about who designs the process. A human-centric BPM approach can still make use of automation while still presenting a simple workflow diagram. Even within a process that seems to have several human tasks, automation is still used for notifications, recording, and communication.
Document-centric BPM
Creating a document of any kind takes up more time than most organizations are able to afford. Planning and content creation, as well as content review and approval, are all different stages of the process. Document-centric BPM aims to streamline this workflow.
Business process management examples
Operation teams
An operation team (for example integration or optimization telecom teams) are bombarded with emails and notifications every day since anything that involves operation activities has to go through them. For instance, if the management team wants to schedule integration or optimization work, they send the schedule by e-mail that they received from the operator. This is just one case. Imagine, how many emails they receive on a daily basis from various teams. Without a system in place, it is almost impossible for them to manage all of these. A business process management (BPM) system helps them manage all of this. Here are a couple of scenarios in the telecommunications' department, where business process management comes as a saving grace:
Automated approval of work and access to base stations.
Customize workflows for unique scenarios (site surveys, construction, installation, integration, optimization).
Visibility of tasks need to be completed under specific timelines and service level agreements (SLAs).
Features every business process management tool should have
Here is a list of the features a good business process management system should have.
Visual process diagramming tool or workflow editor. A good tool for creating process diagrams should include many BPMN symbols to choose from, a drag-and-drop system, and an organized and pleasant layout.
User-friendly process design interface. Don’t get stuck with programmers, everyone in your organization should be able to create their own workflows. This is called Low Code BPM.
Integration with existing software systems. A BPM tool should have easy connections to common platforms and APIs for custom integrations, in particular REST type web services.
Mobile support. BPM should be accessible from everywhere.
Reports and analytics. The best BPM tools have reports that you can customize to track any item, user, or task with a click of your mouse.
Role-based access control. Different users might need to see different things based on their role.
Single sign-on (SSO).
What are the benefits of incorporating business process management?
Here are some of the primary benefits of using BPM in your business:
Increase productivity and reduce errors.
When you have a clear structure identified for all of your business processes, every team member involved automatically increases their productivity, gaining the ability to produce more without the need to increase input.
Run everyday operations more efficiently.
The visibility of business processes allows for concentration on inefficiencies. Because BPM gives organizations the opportunity to work more efficiently, they are able to save their resources. BPM also results in the creation of better-designed, executed and monitored processes which can help reduce the risk of fraud. Providing visibility into business processes, BPM eliminates redundancies and reduces the risk of negligence caused by human error. With BPM in place, desired execution quality can be maintained by increasing the accountability of each department in the organization.
Employee Satisfaction
BPM eliminates a lot of red tape in organizations and allows employees to focus 100% on their work since process automation cuts down on a lot of repetitive work and makes information access easier. This in turn makes for increased productivity and a happier workforce.
Move toward digital transformation.
Processes always focus on both employees and customers. Since the goal of BPM is to make processes efficient, you automatically undergo digital transformation. A more focused approach to digital transformation is through a no-code BPM platform. Business users can create simple workflow-based applications on their own without IT help.
Control data accessibility
Data security is becoming a bigger concern for IT leaders. Employees need to access data from different sources to get work done. BPM also prevents accidental data access issues. Let’s say an employee requests a certain view in a software tool.
IT is responsible for showing only the data that particular job role has clearance to access and not more. While designing a process, you define data clearance for each step and job role. BPM acts as a security measure to ensure that employees access only what they need.
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Sincerely,
Stathis 👋