What is Business Process Management (BPM)?

December 8, 2019

Business Process Management (BPM) is a scope of activities and practices aimed at optimizing organization’s business flows. BPM technology can be applied to many different management areas of an organization, be it the automation of repeat functions or a new employee onboarding.

Who is BPM for?

The need for business processes to be clear and adaptable cannot be overstated. Companies all around the globe have been recognizing the importance of process management, and are planning to invest in BPM software within the next few years. Their position is quite clear – with the help of business process management, it is easier for the team to:

  • Measure and adjust operations to suit business needs
  • Increase employee performance by coordinating workforce demands
  • Apply IT developments to the challenges of business processes
  • Respond quickly to changes in projects or emerging opportunities

Benefits of BPM

The primary benefit of implementing BPM software is the increased productivity. Powerful BPM tools are all about streamlining diverse business processes by cutting out inefficient tasks. Another great thing about BPM tools is that they are good at automating almost any kind of manual work.

According to statistics, companies that implemented business process management increased their ROI by as much as 41 percent within the first year by lowering costs through automating tasks. With the efficiency you have gained from streamlining business processes, you will eventually end up with a lower output-to-expenses ratio.

The fear to innovate and change is the worst enemy of any business. Even though change is not that easy sometimes, BPM tools are there to help you. Remember, unless your organization gets used to changing and adapting on a regular basis, you will have a hard time doing it when your business is on the line. BPM allows for creating flexible processes. On the other hand, it develops a culture of innovation within the business, making change something common within the organization, and not something to be feared.

As practice shows, there are times where you just have to do some menial work. Of course, no one likes it – especially for a position that requires high skill or expertise. Fortunately, BPM allows users to automate and process a lot of menial work. With BPM tool in place, it would be easier for employees to focus on the work that is actually engaging and enjoyable. This, in turn, leads to higher employee satisfaction rate.

Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN)

The Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) is visual modeling language for business analysis applications and specifying enterprise process workflows, which is an open standard notation for graphical flowcharts that is used to define business process workflows. It is popular and intuitive graphic that can be easily understand by all business stakeholders, including business users, business analysts, software developers, and data architects.

BPMN allows us to capture and document business processes of an organization in a clear and consistent way that ensures relevant stakeholders, such as, process owners and business users are involved in the process. Thus, the team can respond to any issues identified in the processes more effectively. BPMN provides comprehensive and yet rich notations that can easily be understood by both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Business Process Management Software (BPMS)

The primary goal of BPMS is to accelerate process design. Therefore it’s important to consider a software with the following capabilities:

  • A BPMS tool should allow to design process diagrams with simple visual tools, store them in a convenient process library and manage all the processes in the unified environment.
  • It should leverage BPMN standard, which enables both business and IT to easily understand and work with process models. A common format of files for BPM systems is *bpmn.
  • Collaboration tools on process design that would allow to involve colleagues to work on the process, share links to processes for remote viewing and commenting, edit processes together in real time.
  • Automatic generation of comprehensive process documentation based on process descriptions from the flowcharts.

A proper process design software tool allows to review and optimize business processes. It leads then to BPMS tools for process automation, execution, monitoring and optimization. The following features could be useful to address this challenge:

  • A robust BPMN processes editor that could automatically generate the corresponding business logic. Ideally it should be a tool available for business analysts which does not require coding skills.
  • Ability to manage unstructured processes (also known as “cases”) by mapping general workflow stages and specifying conditions for every new stage
  • Process logs and dashboards that help to monitor and analyze the process flow and outcomes. This will allow to identify and eliminate bottlenecks in the processes.
  • A library of out-of-the-box processes and ready-to-use configurable business process templates that can be easily employed and modified according to specific business needs would significantly accelerate business process management.

One of the leading BMPS according to Gartner and Forrester is Studio Creatio. It offers a free BPMN cloud-based design tool and a robust low-code platform for process automation. At Flexentric you can order a free guided demo of Studio Creatio.

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