Do You Need Business Process Management?

Businesses need agility. It’s not up for discussion; it’s a requirement.

We’re at a point where 1-day shipping isn’t enough to satisfy customers. So, what timeframe is sufficient? Well, digital products must be downloadable instantaneously after purchasing — or else a customer takes their cash to the competition.

When products aren’t delivered now, there are consequences: less than stellar reviews (the dreaded 1-star complaints) explode across Google, diminishing you reputation in a matter of seconds.

Stakeholders must face the facts: Something is wrong. But what? They’re not delivering products fast enough, that’s a given. But why is that? What’s halting production? How can they speed up delivery without sacrificing quality?

Questions without answers further delay improvements. It’s time to reach out to an individual with the proper expertise to sniff out areas of concern: A business analyst with knowledge about Business Process Management (BPM).

What is Business Process Management?

BPM is a combination of methodologies and technology. It increases agility and efficiency by fixing bottlenecks. BPM advantages are:

• Speed up delivery times
• Assesses problem areas
• Aligns with corporate goals

Do more for less is BPM’s basic premise. And who doesn’t want that?

We’ve outlined 3 ways to know when BPM is no longer just a desire, but a necessity for success.

1. Memos and notepads aren’t cutting it

Internal communication amongst workers, managers, and stakeholders is crucial. Everyone must understand the goals to arrive at the necessary result. If any noise interrupts how appropriate parties communicate, problems arise.

How are your teams communicating? If it’s by paper memos — easy to tear, lose, and manipulate — how effective is it as a long-term plan?

Most likely, memos on paper aren’t sustainable. At least not without a few casualties: Lost orders, misplaced documentation, daily objectives pushed to the wayside… it’s not a pretty picture. Not for customers and not for leadership.

Business analysts, backed with BPM knowledge, find appropriate technology to streamline communication amongst teams. The introduction of technology should always benefit the company’s bottom line.

In this case, technology, like a CRM system, will reliably keep employees and management on the same page for:

• Leads
• Sales
• Inquiries
• Objectives

2. Several workers doing the same job… for no reason

Duplicate processes are the bane to businesses productivity. It’s when two channels work towards the same end goal but one is enough.

Say you have an accounting department which handles receipts and product invoices. After a purchase, the invoice is automatically sent to the customer via email for their records. But the sales guys also manually sends an invoice after each sale.

Not only is the customer getting the same invoice twice (clogging their inbox), someone’s time is being wasted. Either the accounting department should be the only point of reference for invoices, or the sales guys. Not both.

And really, it shouldn’t be the sales guys. Once the purchase is closed, they should be serving new customers. Not fiddling with technology, manually adding email addresses, and praying the computer doesn’t freeze in the middle of the transaction.

Duplicate processes waste time, resources, and funds. A business analyst with BPM expertise weeds out unnecessary duplicate processes to streamline how decisions are made, allowing workers to focus attention where it’s actually needed.

3. System crashes… everywhere

How is technology affecting customer transactions?

Are cashiers consistently calling the manager to reboot the system, in the middle of cashing out a customer?

Is your phone log filled with calls to your IT team?

If you can immediately think of multiple occasions where technology has caused issues with staff or customers, that’s a bad sign. Technology should serve the company to increase the bottom line. It should speed up the transaction process, not stop it.

The older the technology, the more likely it is to crash. Especially if new software is continuously added. It’s like a boat that is consistently holding more and more cargo. Eventually, something is going to break. And when it does, how much will the company lose?

No one wants to find out. And no one should.

BPM introduces technology to:

• Manage system inventories
• Map out processes
• Add automation to handle repetitive tasks .

If your technology is excessively expensive, consistently down, or a headache to use — it may be time for an upgrade.

What you may see, thanks to BPM practices and technology, is an upgrade to customer satisfaction, employee efficiency, and the ability to create more with less:

• Downtime
• Costs
• Frustration

Do you need BPM? If you want to achieve more for less, then the answer is obvious, right?

Image “Cloud Solutions” by NEC Corporation of America is licensed under CC 2.0