Why Organization should Adopt BPM
After my first BPM implementation, I did not realize the promise of BPM since I was implementing a workflow based application using BPMS toolset.
Don't get me wrong on this; as the solution we delivered was highly configurable and business process driven and the solution lasted for nearly 6 years before getting decomissioned.
The point I am trying to make out here is; BPMS tools adoption itself has a wide range of benefit associated with it but BPM as an area has far reaching impact in shaping up IT to deliver business value. To realize business value organization should make serious consideration on the following aspect of BPM
- Improve Business operation efficiency
- Business process performance measurement and continuous improvement
- Drive business innovation by linking business processes across boundaries within and across enterprise
- Increasing organization Process maturity
- Enable categorization of processes for agility versus standardization to support outsourcing decision
- Enable Process governance
- Manage IT changes using Process views
This is not an exhaustive list but gives a good start for any organization to start looking at BPM from a larger perspective.
Improve Business operation efficiency: Business operation is a vast topic and would be wrong to say that BPM alone would bring in Business Operation Efficiency. However BPM would provide insight into Business process performance information and enable one to identify resource bottlenecks from an end to end process perspective. Making it easier for business owners to take an informed decision on manouvering it's resource to get maximum benefit.
Business process performance measurement and continuous improvement: This is a classic case for BPM, however organization needs to identify the process owner to define the key process indicators and work with the process owner to define strategy for continuous improvement. To facilitate this, it is important for organization to document its business process and key KPI's for analysis and improvement.
Drive business innovation by linking business processes across boundaries within and across enterprise - This is an important aspect of BPM, which is enabling organization to create core business differentiator. Today organization is extending BPM to include its partner and supplier eco system to deliver better business value to its customer by enabling better visibility and decision making capability
Increasing organization Process maturity - Today organization is using BPM as an strategy to improve process maturity by enabling process visibility and ability to track the process. This in conjunction with "Business process performance measurement and continuous improvement" enable organization to improve its process maturity.
Enable categorization of processes for agility versus standardization to support outsourcing decision - It is important for organization to identify process which needs to be agile versus processes that needs to be standardize to derive maximum value. Process visibility and continuous assessment using BPMS capability enables organization to identify processes which can be standardize across geography for them to outsource some of these non-core processes.
Enable Process governance - BPM enables organization to manage process governance better by enabling process owners to make informed decesion based on financial performance and process performance
Manage IT changes using Process views - Today most IT system changes are decoupled from process making it difficult to provide business value for IT changes. A proper BPM strategy would enable organization to manage IT changes via process change management. Today advance BPM adopters are aligning there IT based on process rather than department to derive maximum benefit from IT
Comments
Manas,
You have hit the nerve here - many clients feel that the moment their processes are automated, their BPM initiative is successfull! However the true success of BPM egagement lies in 'continuous improvement' - 3 of your points talk about improvement.
Can you highlight BPM product vendors that give the stakeholders the ability to track or report the process performance. I will be interested to see who are the best vendors in bringing home the concept of continous improvement.
A nicely drafted post!
Posted by: Piyush Swain | March 9, 2010 10:22 PM
Manas,
You have put forth some very good points. BPM is a very valuable method for a business to evaluate and improve its business and IT.
One point considering the business climate today –
Many businesses have gone through the process of trying to drive down costs and trim organizations down to lean and hopefully agile functionality. Today they are being given the challenge of growth. This growth often leaves the organization looking for the how in the current economic environment. An organization within a business is given targets and areas to grow and expand the business. This is where I can see BPM playing a key role.
I have worked with several clients where there is a struggle to align the daily business processes with the overall corporate goals of growth. Having a BPM system in place and the BAM, CEP monitoring that can feed the knowledge of the organization can play a key role in analyzing how these processes can be aligned with those corporate goals.
What new processes can help achieve the corporate goals? How can we modify or improve current processes to contribute to the goals? And also what processes hinder the organization from achieving these goals.
BPM can enable the management within the organization to identify areas of focus and give them a very useful toolset to help them succeed in today’s challenge for growth.
Posted by: Mike Orist | April 27, 2010 2:43 PM
Hi Mike,
Today when market is driven by consumer choices and hence oraganization need to be flexible to respond to these changing needs and also lean to drive down the cost. To address this I have seen the need for organizations to drive standaridization of non core / non consumer facing processes to reduce cost and adoption of agile approach for core / consumer facing processes.
This is where I see a huge play of BPM (not BPMS only) in addressing these challenges by providing the capability required to govern processes to drive standardization at one end to providing rule based process extension at the other end. And don't forget the event based intelligence that is getting into BPM offering which is being used by organization to respond to the changes faster.
Thanks
Posted by: Manas Kumar Sarkar
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June 11, 2010 6:36 AM