10 Benefits of Business Process Management
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Are your processes in a constant state of flux due to regulation, audit or market demands?
Do you have a lot of processes but nothing seems to be working right?
Do you need to shorten your product’s time-to-market because of increased competition?
Do employees or customers lack information on how key processes work?
Does management lack the information necessary to make key process-related decisions?
If you answered yes to any or all of these, you may need to take a closer look at Business Process Management (BPM).
Simply making hand-offs, timing and responsibilities explicit can lead to productivity improvements of more than 12%, implying that even a basic commitment to BPM can create value within the company - “Business Process Management’s Success Hinges on Business-Led Initiatives”, Gartner, 26 July 2005.
In the current global scenario, organizations of all sizes and types are faced with intense competition. To remain competitive, increase efficiency and improve their bottom line, these organizations are turning to process improvement through Business Process Management (BPM).
It is important to note that BPM is a combination of practices centred on driving organizational value through a process-improvement culture. It can be as simple as defining unclear processes, continually looking for areas of improvement and making changes, or as complex as a complete business process re-engineering venture. Whatever your approach is, there are certainly many benefits to be had. This article discusses some of the major benefits you can expect with BPM.
1. Agility
Organizations are constantly faced with the need for change. Changes may become necessary as a result of new regulations, market demands or the emergence of new ways of working.
One key feature of BPM is that it facilitates the design of processes that are flexible. With BPM, you get the flexibility of making changes to processes with minimal costs. Processes can easily be customized to suit the requirements of your organization.
2. Productivity
BPM can facilitate the automation of a lot of repetitive elements within regular workflows. Process improvements like removal of bottlenecks, introduction of parallel processing, and elimination of redundant steps can easily be achieved with BPM. This improvement will allow employees to spend more time on other activities since the main support functions would have been handled. This translates into increased productivity and reduced waste.
3. Efficiency & Reduced Risks
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.
4. Compliance & Transparency
Organizations need to be compliant with industry regulations. BPM ensures that organizations can implement regulatory requirements quickly, thereby preventing delays in compliance and any associated fines. When you adopt BPM, you integrate compliance into the process life cycle. This also implies that organizational processes will become transparent and visible to employees.
5. 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.
6. Customer Focus
With leaner processes and increased productivity, employees are better able to focus on the customer. There will be an increased capacity to respond more quickly to proposals, build solutions faster and customize more quickly. BPM also brings people and technology together in a way that increases customer satisfaction.
With BPM, employees are able to focus on activities that deliver the right results for customers and stakeholders.
7. Consistency, Repeatability & Transferability
With BPMS, each task is executed the way it was planned and designed. Identical problems are addressed the same way and there is no need to reinvent the wheel, even if roles do change. Exceptional situations and responses can also be clearly defined with BPM to ensure they are handled appropriately.
8. Sustainability
Business Processes are continually improved to adapt to changing organizational conditions so that they can deliver the expected results. This adaptation can be achieved with BPM while maintaining control or managerial oversight.
9. Measurability
All processes can be measured end-to-end and compared to expected results. This helps to manage people and processes.
BPM when implemented with technology, provides reporting and analytical tools for making executive decisions. With BPM, you can streamline processes and quantify how these processes are helping your organization optimize its workflows.
10. Technology Integration
BPMS bridges the communication gap between business users and IT, thanks to the use of standards like BPMN. With BPM, the focus is not on “applications” but on “processes”, along with the applications that support them.
11. Automation
BPM can assist with implementing automation processes. For example, companies looking to automate payroll processes can use business process management to determine the workflows necessary in building out the automation process.
This article has highlighted some of the benefits that business process management can bring to an organization. BPM is not a software application or a group within an organization, it is a way of working within the organization that ensures it can derive these benefits.
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