Businesses rely on business process management to better understand how they operate, stay competitive, and gain market advantage. BPM initiatives typically require significant investment in technology implementation and cultural change. But the rewards can be equally substantial.
High on the list of BPM benefits is its ability to improve automation and understand complex processes. Business process automation technology accelerates digital transformation efforts and accelerates the release of new services.
Business process mapping, a key element of BPM, helps process professionals reduce costs, eliminate waste, smooth operations, connect the dots between processes, increase business agility, and upgrade customer service. help identify opportunities. It can also improve process control and facilitate the implementation of new programs and technologies.
In addition, advanced process capture tools using machine vision and process mining (techniques that analyze event logs to improve business processes) can give companies insight into existing processes and help automate the deployment of new processes. Helpful.
Benefits of business process management
Business process management is a structured approach to improving the processes that organizations use to get their work done. This is a broad discipline, and by definition dynamic, given that an organization's roles, rules, tactics, business goals, and other elements within it are constantly changing.
Here, we dissect seven benefits that organizations can reap by implementing BPM.
1. Streamline your workflow and improve efficiency
The main reason for introducing BPM is to improve business quality and efficiency. “BPM allows organizations to streamline their workflows by automating tedious manual tasks such as data management, data flow, data entry, approval processes, and report generation,” said his research manager at Nucleus Research. , said Isaac Gould.
BPM standardizes processes, allowing employees to work more efficiently within a set framework, speeding decision-making and reducing the risk of human error. BPM tools also have built-in analytics that provide managers with an understanding of how departments and individual processes are performing, such as tracking employee performance and identifying workflow bottlenecks.
The combination of automated workflows, standardized processes, and process monitoring improves the quality and quantity of worker output. Team members have more time to manage their BPM tasks that require human intervention, experience, and expertise while identifying further opportunities for process improvement and automation.
2. Tighter, more strategically aligned process control
Business processes tend to grow organically and haphazardly when left to the whims of various managers. As each process takes shape, business managers and project management teams must address new requirements ranging from tax jurisdiction, regulatory obligations, contractual obligations, and security. Additionally, these requirements must be incorporated into the data formats and fields built into ERP, CRM, and human capital management systems.
BPM takes a more systematic approach to understanding the origins of each process and how it can be streamlined to support the same requirements with fewer steps, less data, and less manual effort. I am. “With more clearly defined and precise processes in place across the board, companies will have tighter control over all value-adding internal and external activities,” says Boyd Gaming's I.T. Monty Staggs, Director of Application Operations, explains. This visibility creates opportunities to implement technology and ensures that all business models are strategically aligned with the market.
3. Increase business agility and scalability
Better understanding and control over processes means more flexibility when pivoting to new opportunities, Staggs said. Fast and agile organizations are increasingly gaining an advantage over slow-moving traditional businesses. BPM creates an architectural path to new cloud services, AI capabilities, regulatory changes, and market opportunities.
“Companies that can provide value-added services in the most flexible and agile way are the ones that grow best, and those that don't excel,” Staggs reasoned. [will] It will either stagnate or eventually disappear. ”
4. Better customer service and experience
Dana Daher, associate practice leader at HFS Research, an IT advisory group, says business process management benefits the customer experience in several ways. BPM helps companies:
- Analyze your existing processes to identify areas where customer service representatives are wasting time entering redundant information into the system.
- Automatically collect and categorize required customer information from multiple sources and eliminate duplication.
- Find a better way to help your customers see how far along they are in a complex process and what additional steps are needed.
- Improve the development, manufacturing, and quality of the final products you provide to your customers.
5. Connected silos and more focused communication
Business process management software helps connect siled systems and processes by simplifying technical tasks and improving communication. Valentina Botnari, a freelance SAP technical capabilities consultant, says BPM's real-time visualization capabilities connect people, processes, information systems, software, SaaS platforms, and machines. BPM can convert graphical models into executable commands to automate her IT integration of business process automation.
Botonari said BPM software helps manage software releases by monitoring progress and identifying process interruptions. Once a blocking issue is discovered, BPM software limits communication to key decision makers and specifies how to resolve the bottleneck. “Narrowing communications down to key people at that stage means not wasting everyone else's time with general coordination meetings, extensive emails, and other communication chains,” Botnari explains. did.
6. Reduce risk, waste, redundancy and money pits
“BPM helps business managers and teams assess the current state of their business processes and identify areas to integrate and optimize,” said Dan Shimmerman, CEO of Blueprint Software Systems, a business process design and management platform. ” states. The goal is to eliminate waste, redundancy, error-prone sequences, compliance risks, and cost-damaging automation deployments.
According to Shimerman, one of his customers realized that an automated process costing $1 million a year to maintain was only providing $300,000 in business value. I did. The company saved $700,000 annually by eliminating some of its automation and running it manually.
7. Understand complex processes
Vendors are increasingly developing new tools to automate the process of analyzing and modeling existing business processes. For example, process mining analyzes event logs from ERP, CRM, and supply chain management systems to model existing processes and identify areas of variance. Process Capture Tool (also known as Process Capture Tool) task mininguses machine vision analysis of worker interactions with user interfaces to map specific process steps.
These tools help fill in the blanks about how processes actually run, which may be different than how employees and managers imagine. This insight helps improve collaboration in process improvement efforts. Additionally, these tools can help break down processes into tasks that are best completed by humans or AI and humans working together, allowing many aspects of complex processes to be automated.
George Lawton is a journalist based in London. Over the past 30 years, he has written more than 3,000 articles on computers, communications, knowledge management, business, health, and other areas of interest.
