What is business process management?

BPM is a broad discipline that examines all the different operations within an organisation. This could relate to efficiency, profits, employee and customer satisfaction and a variety of other metrics. The business management process should be embarked on with a long-term view rather than as a one-off project. Ideally, you will want to be continuously analysing your organisation’s processes to identify opportunities for improvement and growth and create actionable steps that can be repeated over time or across departments.

You can apply BPM to simple practices that are ongoing or recurring, like onboarding staff or clients, managing HR tasks like leave requests and simplifying month-end processes, among others. BPM can also become vital in larger endeavours, from navigating rebrands and mergers to launching new products or services and managing customer interactions.

BPM can be broken down into three primary categories:

1. System- or integration-centric: this type of process management focuses on non-human interactions. This typically relates to an organisation’s pre-existing automated processes and the efficiency of its software.
2. Document-centric: this category relates to any process that involves documents. This broad remit can include contracts, taxes, invoicing, document signing and more.
3. Human-centric: any process that requires human intervention falls into this category. It’s often prevalent in customer interactions, including user experience (UX), as well as the HR department, where a process like onboarding new hires would be an example.

Related: What are automated workflows and how can they be used in HR?

When should you use these strategies and why?

Because of how versatile and dynamic BPM is, it can be used in a wide range of situations for businesses of all sizes. The practice offers a comprehensive array of advantages, so if you have a large business or any budget for optimising your organisation’s functions, it’s worth investing in specialised business process management software.

The types of processes that can benefit from BPM can be broken down into three distinct categories:

• Primary processes: these are your organisation’s core processes that ultimately lead to the product or service you are offering. Depending on your type of business, they can include anything from sourcing materials and stock to product development.
• Secondary processes: the purpose of these is to support the primary processes of your organisation. Logistics and HR often fall into this category.
• Management processes: these processes are targeted at managers and aim to provide them with an analysis of anything that falls under the first two processes. This helps managers by giving them the information they need to create effective workflows and keep the organisation on track with its goals.

Diverse in both scope and utility, business process management practices offer myriad benefits. Let’s dive into a few.

• BPM improves efficiency and the quality of your organisation’s work. These are the two main reasons companies turn to BPM. Both of these can lead to better revenue, along with reducing waste, another task BPM is adept at.
• BPM reduces errors through standardising processes, identifying flaws and improving compliance. These factors can help protect your business and enhance the customer experience.
• BPM increases employee satisfaction by taking over less fulfilling tasks such as data management. It can also help boost morale by getting employees involved by offering feedback and ideas, helping them feel like valued members of the team.
• The analytical tools offered by BPM software can give managers better insight into what’s working and what isn’t.
• BPM practices allow your organisation and its employees to make rapid changes and react quickly to problems. This will help you remain competitive.
• BPM systems often go hand in hand with monitoring and tracking workflows. This can create better accountability between departments and the business at large. Employees will gain a greater understanding of their roles and what is expected of them.

What is the BPM life cycle and how can you enact it?

So, you’ve decided to start incorporating business process management into your organisation – how can you begin to introduce it? There are six key steps to creating a BPM framework. These are commonly referred to as a BPM life cycle. The steps are:

• plan
• analyse
• design
• implement
• monitor
• optimise

Let’s have a closer look at these six stages and how to put them into practice for your organisation.

1. Plan: in the planning stage, you will need to define your objectives and create a brief that clearly outlines the goals. You will determine which process or processes you want to work with, whether they fall under primary, secondary or management processes and how they fit into your organisation as a whole.
2. Analyse: during this stage, you’ll take a detailed look at how the processes you’re targeting are currently operating. To do this, business process managers typically use two types of analysis: qualitative and quantitative. Qualitative analysis is concerned with tangible and fluid elements like thoughts, feelings and opinions. It can help you spot flaws as well as areas of inefficiency and waste. Quantitative analysis looks at fixed elements like facts and statistics to paint a broad but accurate picture of how the organisation is currently operating.
3. Design: the design phase involves taking the existing processes and optimising them to perform in a way that delivers the best outcomes for your organisation. At this stage, you will decide whether your objectives require a complete overhaul that involves all steps of a BPM cycle (commonly referred to as the business process re-engineering approach) or whether they can be achieved through minor changes and tweaks to solve specific problems (known as the continuous process approach). You’ll want to consider factors like the time frame, if any tools or special software are needed, which employees and teams are involved and the location of the work.
4. Implement: depending on the nature of the changes you’ll be making, you may want to roll out your redesigned or new process manually or systematically through the use of software. This is a good time to run tests on changes, either before implementation if possible or in the early stages. You will want to keep your stakeholders in the loop here and offer training to employees if needed.
5. Monitor: monitoring the processes you have implemented is a critical step in the BPM life cycle. You and/or your employees can track data and use graphs and charts to see whether the changes are delivering positive results. You can also set KPIs that align with your goals and collect feedback from employees, customers and stakeholders.
6. Optimise: the monitoring process will help shine a spotlight on any areas that still need work or changes that are not performing as expected. Once you have this information, you can initiate further changes or tweaks. Most organisations evolve continually and aim to keep up with changes in the market and new technology in order to remain competitive. Because of this, the monitoring and optimisation phases of BPM are intended to be ongoing.

Tips and best practices for the business management process

Outside of following the steps set out in the BPM life cycle, there are many other factors to look at and ways you can give your management process the best chance to succeed. Below are a few to consider.

• Form a collaborative team. A diverse selection of ideas, perspectives and feedback will help make your strategies stronger and more likely to succeed. If you can bring employees from different disciplines on board, this will provide an even better foundation.
• Build a BPM Centre of Excellence. This involves a group of BPM specialists who can offer valuable experience and expertise. They will also be able to help you integrate technology or software into your business process management.
• Use an established BPM methodology for a greater chance of success. A Centre of Excellence team will also come in handy here as they can help you customise the methodology to your organisation’s unique needs.
• Consider the customer, service user or client at every phase of your process and solicit feedback from them if possible.
• Provide ongoing training for all teams involved and ensure they are kept abreast of any new changes and problems.
• Ensure any information that goes into your business models is accurate and up to date. You’ll also need to keep the models themselves up to date as well as any technology you are using.

Related: Tips to manage change in the workplace

The toolkit provided by business process management can be used at all levels of an organisation, from the simplest processes to the intricate and advanced ones. When done well, it can be a lifeline for businesses, helping them to continuously evolve, adapt, thrive and weather storms in an uncertain economic climate.