BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT

Business Process Management System and its potential for enterprises

According to Gartner’s research, Business Process Management (BPM) has been a top priority for most organizations worldwide for over a decade. WEBCON has been at the forefront of BPM development throughout that time. So why is it so critical, and what have we learnt about doing it right?

What is Business Process Management?

Let’s start by making our language clear. Gartner defines Business Process Management as a discipline that uses various methods to discover, model, analyze, measure, improve, and optimize business processes.

Another definition points out that BPM is a part of operations management, and involves modeling, automating, executing, controlling, measuring and optimizing flows of business activity, known as workflows.

The discipline has also been recognized as Process Modeling, Business Process Improvement, Business Process Reengineering and Business Process Automation.

Why is Business Process Management crucial for businesses at this very moment?

The ultimate purpose of all Business Process Management efforts in an enterprise is to support the organization’s goals, whatever they are.

On top of the “business as usual” competition and the built-in-the-market pressure to reduce costs and increase efficiency, enterprises are currently finding themselves in the midst of the digital transformation. In these circumstances, their priorities vary: from bare survival, to being the first to grasp emerging market opportunities and reap the benefits that the digital revolution brings to market mavericks. Organizations that have chosen to use Business Process Management and operational excellence principles have discovered the previously dormant potential and identified new areas for improvement. Putting it all into practice is what keeps them ahead of their peers.

While a disciplined approach to discovering and managing processes can leverage a much sought after competitive edge for companies of all sizes, it becomes a necessity for large, highly complex, multinational organizations. Business Process Management gives them a set of tools that – if skillfully applied – help them navigate the complexity and increase the efficiency of their operations.

What to look for in Business Process Management software?

Business Process Management as a discipline doesn’t really require any technological tools. It is mostly a voyage of discovery of how a particular system works, how people cooperate and communicate within it, how it can be optimized, and how to introduce improvements so that they will be adopted with minimum disruption. The last decade has seen the development of methodologies that help with that.

In real life, however, the size and complexity of the daily tasks of any modern organizations do require the use of technology in order to model the business processes efficiently. This comes in the form of a Business Process Management System (BPMS), also called a Business Process Suite. Standard ERP systems are not designed to address all the complex needs of an organization that is trying to navigate the digital transformation.

At this point, Business Process Management stops being the sole responsibility of operational managers and enters the Information Technology department. A successful BPM solution must act as a bridge between the Business and the IT domains in the enterprise.

Business Process Management – a business perspective

From a business perspective, a well-designed and deployed Business Process Management System:

• focuses on saving time, money and other assets,
• improves business agility: the ability to pause and fast forward business processes,
• ensures regulatory compliance with standards and laws,
• promotes security and safety measures,
• provides data and insight that help arrive at smart solutions in the present and prepare for the future,
• is open to changes.

A technological solution is applied best in areas where humans are not a match for the ever-increasing automation and are prone to error. Specifically, a good Business Process Management solution can helps in areas that require optimization by focusing on:

• eliminating minor bottlenecks,
• removing redundancies
• eradicating possible error situations.

Business Process Management – an IT perspective

From the IT technology point of view, there are four basic elements to a Business Process Management System:

• First, there is the process engine, a robust platform for modeling and executing process-based applications, including business rules.
• Second, there is a business analytics component that – with reports and dashboards – enables managers to identify business trends, opportunities and issues, and allows them to react.
• Third, content management provides a system for storing and securing electronic documents, images, and other files.
• Fourth, collaboration tools facilitate communication within departments and among them, through discussion forums, dynamic workspaces, message boards, and similar solutions.

How to go digital successfully with a Business Process Managament System, and what else to have on your radar?

One of the crucial steps on the digital transformation journey of an enterprise is digitalization of its paper documents. Traditional typology of IT systems distinguishes Document Management Systems (DMS) – used for registering, scanning, classifying, storing and sharing digitalized documents) from Business Process Management System (responsible for assigning tasks, handling approval processes and distributing data and information). In practice these two layers overlap and need to be seamlessly integrated.

All and all, the expectations of a Business Process Management System are high, both on the business stakeholders, and the IT department part. If a BPM solution is to perform up to them, it must be both robust, able to carry the weight of all the data and actions, and flexible,