Each company incorporates strong practices that make its operation smoother, and its activity unique. In short, a company must have a clearly defined vision, strategy and goals – equipped with the tools to reach them. The direction that the company takes, of course, changes with the market – and so does the work process. To reach the goals and execute the company’s strategy many organizations turn to Business Process Management.
Business Process Management is a method of improving the workflow by optimizing the way daily tasks are performed. Improving the work process can rely on previously established certain rules and steps, or can be innovative and tailored to the company.
In any case, it is important to understand how BPM fits in a company structure. In the first place, setting up processes is not a permanent solution, but rather a reoccurring strategy. Business needs can change as the company’s strategy evolves – demanding further changes. And the processes have to be able to keep up with the fast pace of the digital world.
How to improve your Business Process Management
To manage business processes, the first thing to do is to understand the needs of your business. This is done by reviewing the company strategy and isolating key priorities. For example, if your company’s strategy relies on an effective level of communication with the client, establishing good practices to exchange information in your teams should become a focus.
By preemptively isolating the weaknesses in daily workflow, and improving each one individually, the overall success of the project is improved. Once you set out to make changes you can follow the standard path to BPM that has been proven to deliver results as a rough roadmap.
Design
To create a new business process you have to start with its design. That means creating a set of steps from the beginning. Some companies make the choice to outsource BPM to a service that specializes in just that and bet on long term business experience. Or alternatively, identifying the weaknesses in an already implemented approach and redesigning it by keeping the steps that work and creating new rules that complement the process.
For example, imagine that you need to make a complete transformation of the way your team brings in new team members. Onboarding is a process every company has, but in the context of your company’s current state and strategy, it may need to change.
Introducing new team members demands bringing them up to speed with a wide range of company-specific details that every employee should know. By optimizing the way the information is relayed to them and the available company resources, new employees will adapt quickly and be able to produce measurable results – contributing to cost optimization.
Modelling
The next step in business process management is placing the design you created in theoretical situations to test their efficiency. This step allows you to make timely changes. For example, if we aim for performance improvement there are multiple factors that must be taken into account. Such as the fact it will take a while for employees to get used to new practices. In addition to, the extent that changes will affect employee satisfaction and therefore their performance. If the process is too complicated or radically different it can demotivate the employees it may end up causing diminishing returns. All of these factors are important to consider when making business process changes.
Execution
Once you have made a BPM design and conducted further modelling, it is time to implement it in action. This means to apply the changes and train employees to use the new methods – perhaps initially a small group of people. As a result, the information collected shows us whether the improvements are effective. The execution of the BPM changes can be in terms of employee work or with the help of software.
Monitoring
Once the practice is set up, it is time to observe how it performs and collect information by analyzing the results and requesting feedback from the employees who are directly affected by the new model. This step of the BPM implementation allows you to react in time when a model change is needed – before establishing it for use by all employees. Business process monitoring helps you track how your business is running, and you can see this through measurable data.
Optimization
Let’s say you developed, tested and found a process satisfactory and released it for company-wide use. The next mandatory part of the life-cycle of BPM is to continue optimization as needed. For example, if you have implemented software that serves to account for routine expenses, but it still requires a lot of manual work from employees there is more need to optimize this process so that you can reduce the cost. If the process can be performed automated you can redirect your employees to do work that cannot be replaced by software.
The benefit of improvements
So far we have talked about the steps in building better business processes in the company that are well established in terms of the design of the solution. But there is another aspect of it that needs attention. Automating the processes using BPM-specific software.
Aside from reducing the need for people to spend a lot of time doing menial repetitive tasks – utilizing software it is also cost-effective. Investing in a well-made solution that automates a key process can have a long-lasting improvement in the overall performance rate for the whole company.
BPM software solutions
Software solutions are a great tool for integrating business processes in the company. Currently, a lot of time is required for an employee-driven manual. Besides, digitizing the tasks provides metrics that allow us to analyze performance and make informed decisions with optimization. As well as an easier way to find issues and deficits in the current state of the process.
On the market, there are many software solutions available for business processes management. But, taking it a step further and creating custom software that is tailored to your own company structure is even more useful for long-term business growth.
- Reducing costs – when we talk about establishing processes in the company, one of the leading conditions is how much of the base production costs we can save. Improving processes leads to a better distribution of human resources as well as money. Business process management software solutions are a tool for building a system that can reduce operational costs in this regard.
- Flexibility – as I mentioned at the beginning, the business process management is generally built following the steps above. Flexibility leads to easier management and quick adaptation to the changes in market demand.
- Improving the quality of work – one more benefit in business process management the use of software solutions. Employees have a roadmap of steps to use at all times – limiting miscommunication. BPM software solutions also help with information and resource distribution to all employees. Software solutions are also used for accurate measurement of objectives and results evaluation through data collection and mathematical analysis.
While there are more than these three benefits from software solutions in BPM, they are easily the biggest ones. After all, to achieve great results the BPM implementation should be goal-driven in the first place – establishing practices that bring the company closer to the vision a little bit at a time. And digitalization of your workflow can be a great tool to achieve excellence.
In conclusion
This article has one mission – to make the meaning of BPM understandable. And also to emphasize the importance of process optimization that fits your company perfectly. As business is constantly changing, it is key to build and develop new processes in your company to adapt to the current demands.
