Why is business process management important to organisations?
Business process management, or BPM, is a term that often conjures up images of tremendous complexity and exhaustive effort with months of planning, committees, and meetings.
The challenges faced by organisations when re-engineering business processes often prevent such initiatives from ever getting started. Common hurdles include:
- no clear BPM strategy in place
- difficulty implementing BPM across technological and organisational boundaries
- internal politics and scope creep related to BPM initiatives
- lack of leadership, sponsorship or ownership for a BPM strategy
However, if these hurdles can be overcome, BPM software offers a plethora of benefits to organisations. Some of the reasons why business process management is important to organisations include:
Increase productivity
So much activity in an organisation is duplicated or even wasteful. BPM allows for process improvement by reviewing the current process to combine and remove redundant data entry or steps. Manual processes are automated resulting in accelerated approval cycles and less time spent waiting for things to simply move from one desk to another.
By automating processes, businesses will see huge improvements in productivity with employees able to deploy their skills more efficiently and focus on business-critical issues.
Eliminate paper
Paper documents and forms, such as request forms or purchase orders can be digitalised with BPMS. This reduces the amount of paperwork circulating in an organisation which can lead to cost savings in storage, printing and labour.
Paper is not only slow to move around but it is also easy to fill in incorrectly, with mistakes only being spotted hours or days later. eForms can be configured to prompt users if data is missing or incorrect, meaning that small mistakes do not lead to extended approval times.
Paper is also inherently hard to back-up and impossible to make accessible to distributed users. This means it should have no place for capturing business critical data or being relied upon within any time-sensitive process.
Increase visibility
A lack of process visibility is often cited as a reason for adopting business process management software.
With BPM, management can view their in-flight processes in real-time and receive notifications if a workflow is predicted to be late. This means they can easily discover bottlenecks in a process and intervene to keep things running smoothly.
Minimise errors
BPM eliminates errors and problems due to lost, inaccurate or mishandled requests. For example, form fields will be validated on input or on form submission. This reduces the prospect of the form being rejected or being passed back to the originator for clarification. Attachments are appended to the form submission avoiding the possibility of lost paperwork.
Shorten project timelines
BPMS accelerates the time-to-approval of projects. All members of a group or team can simultaneously perform tasks as part of the process. Automatic eMail notifications alert members when a task is assigned to them - or if they are in jeopardy of missing a due date.
Run processes consistently
BPM ensures process consistency. Whether you run a process once or a thousand times, the result will be the same for each project or request.
Not only does this offer peace of mind to management that the correct process was followed, it can often be a legal requirement for regulated industries or any publicly traded company.
Governance, risk and compliance (GRC)
There is no magic pill that will keep your business fully compliant and guarantee audit success. The business must have a culture of compliance with strong ethics and clear procedures, policies and accountability in place.
BPM software with GRC capabilities, however, can support a business in creating that culture and addressing the auditor’s biggest concerns: Are their processes consistent? Are they following the processes?
The bottom line: GRC software can track and record every meaningful transaction in a way that can be retraced later by managers, auditors and regulators.
Improve agility
BPM provides insight into your critical tasks allowing management to review processing metrics, production status and intercede if necessary. This allows nimble organisations to make timely decisions when circumstances change and satisfy customer needs quicker.
No-code rapid application development (RAD) and BPM tools empower organisations to capitalise on changing market conditions to build digital applications quickly and stay ahead of the competition.
Continuous improvement
BPMS can proactively identify process bottlenecks for continuous improvement, as metrics can be reviewed and analysed to identify opportunities for business process improvement.
Are you currently researching potential BPM software solutions? Complete this form or call 03300 100 000 to start your digital transformation journey today.