Taking into account the increased complexity of modern business processes, it is no surprise that more and more companies are investing in Business Process Management (BPM) solutions.
With in-depth tech knowledge and a pinch of creativity, business processes can be flexibly designed, implemented, and automated for the entire company. As an end result, companies can enjoy enhanced business functionality tailored to specific needs.
Working in a bespoke software development company with experience in developing solutions for pharma, healthcare, FinTech, and transportation has taught me that process optimization
is one of the cornerstones for sustainable business growth. System downtimes and outages can be reduced through continuous monitoring and optimisation of running processes, securing business continuity and enhanced productivity.
In a Nutshell: What are BPM Solutions
Why are BPM implementations so important? Simply put, BPM enables executives to understand the various processes that run in their organization, analyze them from start to finish and continuously improve them.
The goal for organizations investing in BPM is to take control of their numerous intertwined processes and constantly strive to optimize them in order to create a more efficient organization.
An organization that is better able to process end products deliver high-quality core services, and satisfy consumer demands. The three basic types of BPM software solutions are integration-centric, human-centric and document-centric.
Typically, integration-centric BPM targets processes that don’t require much human involvement but instead depend on APIs and mechanisms that integrate data across systems, e.g. HRM or CRM systems. On the other hand, human-centric BMP revolves around people, their roles, and responsibilities.
It often has an Intuitive UI with drag-and-drop functions, making it easier to hold individuals accountable as the process progresses. Finally, the document-centric type of BPM focuses on managing specific business-related documents such as contracts, investment portfolios or reports.
BPM Role in Digital Transformation
A lot has changed throughout the last year and a half. From pandemic-related lockdowns and remote work in early 2020 to employee crisis and disrupted supply chains in late 2021, the global business arena experienced massive challenges.
However, a safe path towards securing market positions and staying relevant in the digital age is to invest in solutions that help you digitalise processes, decrease operational and labour costs and achieve more efficiency. Besides being a tech trend, digital transformation has a lot more to offer and BPM certainly contributes to its objectives.
Responding to the dynamics of the Digital Era requires companies to come up with digital business models, products and services, making the organization more agile. For example, a custom BPM solution helps your employees be more efficient when working remotely and as part of distributed teams.
Additionally, let’s not forget Big Data – a key business enabler for any 21st-century business. Business process management allows you to fully make sense of your own and customer’s data, perform thorough process analytics and leverage it to align with your business goals.
Let’s look at the three main benefits of BPM for your business:
An Optimal Productivity Boost
One of the central business objectives that can be tackled with a custom BPM solution is to increase productivity within your organization. A well-implemented BPM tool can help you make the most of your existing business processes while simultaneously savíng you time and money. But how can business process management help you solve these challenges? The answer inspects three productivity issues.
First, a custom BMP software solution helps you make sense of and, if necessary, reorganize your resources effectively so that you can achieve your KPIs and realise your next business goals. BPM captures business roles and processes, re-designing them for maximum efficiency and strategic alignment.
Second, counting on BPM ensures a shift in organizational culture that promotes easier communication and collaboration across departments and locations (vital for remote teams). Third, optimal productivity requires process transparency and BPM allows you to track metrics, distribute them to decision-makers, identify process bottlenecks and responsible team members.
Reduced Workflow Redundancy
A BPM solution doesn’t just simplify or automate particular single tasks that help your employees stay focused on their core responsibilities. Instead, a business processes management program helps you automate entire processes and better utilise your company’s available resources.
One of the factors preventing you from doing so is data and workflow redundancy causing inconsistent work, task repetition and poor outcomes. Alternatively, data redundancy and fewer data errors lead to increased efficiency, productivity and even employee motivation and satisfaction.
For example, let’s imagine you plan to invest in an integration-centric BPM solution to avoid any discrepancies between third-party apps and reduce downtime.
This type of BPM software concentrates on building multidirectional data flow between all software tools you use in sales or marketing. Having any sort of data redundancy can turn simple daily tasks into a challenge and interfere with your employees’ productivity and increase the risk of manual errors.
Making The Most of Ruling Uncertainty
Back in 2016, Gartner conducted a BPM maturity study and reported that roughly 75% of companies were going through standardization and automation processes. Five years later, after a major digital push from Covid-19, businesses are much more digitally competent and aware that they need a reliable tech partner and a robust IT infrastructure to stay competitive.
In fact, statistics show an 80% boost in business interest towards implementing a BMP solution.
Building upon the known capabilities of BPM to design, model, execute, optimise and re-engineer internal company processes, the focus of some companies deepens as they look for options to discover previously unknown data connections and process relationships.
While BPM is certainly not outdated, nowadays, even more attention is directed to business process mining. With the goal to analyze and reconstruct business processes using digital traces in IT systems, process mining poses a new problem-solving technique for businesses to deal with the massive amounts of existing data and better cope with uncertainty.
Your existent BPM system can provide powerful insights for better strategic and operational decisions for future company development.
Author Biography Aleksandrina Vasileva
Aleksandrina is a Content Creator at Dreamix, a custom software development company, and is keen оn innovative technological solutions with a positive impact on our world. Her teaching background, mixed with interests in psychology, drives her to share knowledge. She is an avid reader and an enthusiastic blogger, always looking for the next inspiration.