How Business Process Management Helps You Meet Goals The Smart Way

Business process management is a set of holistic activities that are important for improving all the processes involved in running an enterprise to gain a competitive advantage in the ever-changing business environment. Know more.

A business process is a series of steps to achieve the desired outcome. And an enterprise has multiple business processes, including operational, managerial, administrative, technological, and supportive. All these activities fall under business process management. 

Today, you will know the meaning and importance of business process management and find out how you can get started with this topic in your career.

What is Business Process Management?

Business process management, or BPM, is a collection of approaches for analysing and optimising different business processes to achieve targeted objectives. 

Business process management requires working knowledge of both disciplines – technology (IT specifically) and management. According to Gartner, BPM is necessary for adjusting modern-day investments toward the IT (Information Technology)/OT (Operational Technology) convergence to the business strategy.

BPM is also a continuous activity, a major management characteristic.  Here, the focus is more on making all the business processes the sole contributing factors for making an organisation succeed. This also means all the business processes must contribute to all the strategic objectives an enterprise has. 

Related: Business Strategy Courses 

One way to look at BPM is to consider the three words separately. 

• Business
• Process
• Management

All three are interconnected and should contribute to a single purpose. 

And, before delving any further, here is a basic analogy from one’s daily life so that you understand the concept of business process management. 

You drive a bike to work, which is your usual ‘process’ of reaching your office and returning home. The bike won’t function forever unless you maintain it from time to time. You would need to fix various issues so that it helps you move from one place to another. 

It is also important to consider that you must ensure all the bike parts function properly. Fixing just one aspect such as replacing a part may not always solve a bigger problem. At the same time, you need to be prepared for situations when the bike would stop functioning altogether. 

This is the same deal with business process management. An enterprise needs to continuously fix business processes collectively to meet the main objectives. 

Business Process Management Lifecycle

Now that you have grasped the business process management meaning, explore the steps involved.

Usually known as the business process management lifecycle, it comprises 5 stages or steps that standardise the analysis and execution of processes. And, they are cyclical in nature. 

Design

Design is considered the first step in BPM. At this stage, you identify mundane processes that can be automated to remove human errors and the ills of unproductivity. Generally, you may list down the essentials, including people involved, the decisions required, etc. 

The purpose of design in BPM is to know which processes are causing challenges. Based on that, you have to decide how those challenges can be fixed. Once you identify the bottleneck, you may also think of removing or replacing it completely instead of fixing it. The next stage covers the creation of the outline of the decision-making process. 

Modelling

This stage is necessary for making the stakeholders understand the modifications required in the workflows. This is shown through a graphical illustration describing logical steps to be taken in an analytical manner. 

There cannot be any pre-determined series of logical steps, and it can’t be used as a template. It should be specific to the unique challenges your business faces at the moment and should indicate what related steps should be taken (highlighted in a Gantt chart , What-if analysis, or similar). Preferably, you should do this through a BPM software. 

Execution

After identifying challenges and the solutions, it is time to implement. There is systematic implementation, where you will be using BPM software and non-systematic implementation, that will be done manually. The purpose of execution is to concretise the solutions based on the resources available to your organisation. 

Monitoring

As the implementation takes place across various processes, it is essential to track their progress. The monitoring activity should ensure that the progress is visible to all involved. The progress must also align with the goals determined previously. 

Through process monitoring, it becomes easier to measure and decide what needs to be revisited again. To monitor, you can set KPIs such as duration for the process, the effectiveness, etc., beforehand. 

Optimisation

Process optimisation follows process monitoring. At this phase, it is essential to implement more changes when the KPIs do not meet the goals created during the monitoring phase. You will refine the processes further after identifying and fixing the newer challenges. 

3 Types of Business Process Management Systems

There are three basic types of business process management systems. 

Integration-centric BPM

Also known as System-Centric BPM, these type of systems can manage processes of the already existing systems an organisation uses. They can be ERP, CRM, etc. The IT department is generally involved in these processes and is responsible for integrating such cloud applications through coding or using APIs. 

Related: ERP courses

Human-Centric BPM

As the name suggests, humans are involved in this type of BPM. Automation takes a back seat in processes such as hiring employees, facing customers, etc. 

Organisations give more importance to human-centric BPM, as it is the people who are the bigger assets. 

Related: Human Resources courses

Document-Centric BPM

Such systems bank on the approval of people in the organisation. Think of creating a legal document that a company uses. 

Generally, departments from accounting, law, etc., are involved in creating documents that go through a multi-stage process of approval. 

Importance of Business Process Management

Business process management improves agility in an organisation. Mainly because, the market dynamics change and forces business to adapt to trends and move forward. 

Customer relationships can be improved to a great degree when deploying business process management, especially when it comes to using CRM software or implementing marketing automation.  What this leads to is higher customer satisfaction and an increase in revenue. 

Related: Top digital marketing courses online

More than the above, it reduces the cost of implementing processes and gives you a microscopic view of these processes so that you make the changes quickly. All in all, the importance of business process management comes from the fact that you can optimise any operational resource.

Top Online Courses to Learn Business Process Management

Here are some courses on BPM that you can take right away. 

1. Business Process Management on Great Learning
2. Business Process Management in Healthcare Organizations on Coursera
3. Professional Program in Business Process Management from the University of California, Berkeley

Parting Thoughts

These are the basics of business process management. Hope you are now more familiar with it. You can also check out some broader business analytics courses.