Guide to Business Process Management

Business process management (BPM) has become highly popular due to its capacity of making businesses achieve new operating capabilities and positive results. Now business enterprises seriously consider factors such as the value of BPM to the business, where to start BPM, the overall time taken for the end result after applying BPM, how other companies use this technology to make them more competitive in the market and so on.

Business process management is helpful for business analysts, managers, programmers as well as employees. The capabilities of BPM include deployment, execution, discovery, control, interaction, optimization, and analysis of processes. The main advantages of business process management is that it restructures both internal as well as external business processes, eliminates repetitions, and provides uninterrupted process visibility, control and accountability. The companies adopting BPM capability can serve their customers in a faster and efficient manner. These companies can definitely form more relationships in both demand and supply channels, and also have a better chance to increase their profitability.

There are books containing rich ideas to make a business very competitive and cost effective. A comprehensive guide to business process management can provide invaluable advice to organizations containing limited IT resources and budget. It will give you relevant and detailed information about how to make your organization run more efficiently and effectively by improving service levels, reducing costs and meeting regulatory requirements. These guides are made in such a way that they are easy to read, understand and act upon.

Some websites provide the facility of learning business process management. You can even download free copies of the guides provided. Live learning sessions are arranged by several websites where you can clarify all your doubts about business process management as well as know how the top companies are using BPM technology in order to streamline costs and slash cycle times. Altogether, a guide to business process management can assist a businessperson to make better use of a BPM package.

Business Process Mapping Tools

Visual Business Process Management Tool

Business process mapping software provides a useful set of process improvement tools that will help any organization measure its performance and improve its efficiency. A map provides a visual reference that outlines all the steps in the manufacturing or service process and specifies who is responsible for each step. Mapping can be descriptive or prescriptive. That is, it can represent how the organization currently operates so every member knows what their particular function is and how the rest of the steps operate, or it can describe how the organization should operate if best practices are not already in place.

When researching for process mapping software, you want to make sure you find a robust process management tool that will allow you to create your map and share it with everyone in the organization quickly and affordably, preferably a Web-based tool. As such, you can share your information instantly, regardless of whether your members are next door or around the world, and without the expense of printing and shipping.

Business Process Improvement Tools and More

Effective software usually can be purchased either as a stand-alone off-the-shelf package or it can be customized with other management services. Either way, you should be getting a management tool that provides you with interactive maps, automatic graphic-to-text functionality, real-time updates, and change tracking. With a support package, you will have access to experienced team members who will help you export your existing processes to the new software, identify improvement areas where change will result in measurable results, and provide training services for the software. Best of all, with this tool, you should expect to have the support you need to meet any number of industry standards, including HIPAA, ISO compliance, Lean 6 methodology, Malcolm Baldrige, Sarbanes-Oxley, and Six Sigma.

Business Process Outsourcing

Business process outsourcing (BPO) is a subset of outsourcing and involves using a third-party, contracted to perform specific, specialised processes on a company's behalf. Thus it essentially means handing over operations and responsibilities of specific business functions to a third-party service provider. What would otherwise be the work of an internal system or service is now purely handled by an outsider.

Business process outsourcing traces its history back to the 1800s. America used Scottish workers to help build wagons and ships, thus outsourcing them. Another outsourcing practice is called 'offshoring', i.e., when foreign countries perform BPO services. Popular offshoring countries include India and the Philippines, where skilled labour is much cheaper.

Today, several large companies and a majority of businesses indulge in business process outsourcing. Usually, the business outsources the "less important" work so that it can concentrate on its primary area of work. BPO services like technical support, back office services, telemarketing services, inbound customer care services and outbound call centre services are among the few services that are outsourced by companies today.

The objective of business process outsourcing is to typically reduce the workload on the company and also hope to cut costs by handing over the work to a third-party. Sometimes even the labour costs involved are different in different countries, which is why several companies outsource work to far off countries. A good example of this would be a London based company outsourcing its brochure content work to India, since the labour is cheap yet creativity and good-quality work is available in abundance.

Usually, there are two types of BPOs, front office and back office outsourcing. Back office processes that are usually outsourced are billing, logistics and human resources. Nowadays, even claims processing at insurance companies are being outsourced to separate companies. Examples of front office outsourcing include technical support, customer service, marketing, and advertising.

BPO companies work in a similar fashion as a creative boutique. While they have a set of clients, their main revenue comes from work that is outsourced to them from larger companies and advertising agencies. Thus, when there are deadlines to meet or a huge proportion of work to be done, the easiest way to achieve this is to outsource it to a third-party. One of the biggest reasons that smaller outsourcing units thrive and earn a constant stream of revenue is because of the larger organisations that have reputed, large companies as clients.

With the IT industry booming in India and people recognising the numerous strengths of India, organisations throughout the world are outsourcing their services to outshore countries like India. It is also good to know that the Government of India has also taken positive steps and several initiatives to urge India into to recognising its true potential.

Reasons to Automate Business Processes in Your Organization

Since the days of the automaton, workers have been searching for ways to automate the manual business processes that steal time from more important jobs. Communicating with colleagues, manipulating spreadsheets, entering customer information into a CRM... these are all examples of time-consuming manual processes that can be done better and faster by someone (or something) other than you (no offense).

If your idea of fun is copying and pasting text all day then by all means, continue doing what you're doing. Your competitors will love that. But we've got some thoughts on why you should at least consider automating business processes in your organization. Here are a few.

Reason 1: To Err is Human. It's Also Expensive.

In a compilation of error rates by business task*, as reported by studies over the last 30 years or so, error rates for medication prescriptions were found to exceed 1.6%. Data entry error rates for expert typists ranged as high as 6%. In general, the human mechanical (I.e. by hand) error rate for data entry tasks is 0.5%. Seems small at first, but what if you're entering order data from 100 online transactions into your CRM? Or, if you're compiling stock performance for 100 different mutual funds from an online investment website? What if you're changing prescription doses for 100 patients? That's 5 errors that have the potential to cost you money and maybe lives. You can expect to make 5 errors per 100 records any time you're manually changing information. The fun part is: You'll never know which records or pieces of data will be wrong. Get yourself an automated solution that enters and changes data for you automatically, and you'll never have to worry about data errors again.

Reason 2: Have Time to Kill? Neither Do I.

Here's the great thing about never making an error: You don't need to waste time fixing them. If you're lucky enough to catch an error (see #1 above), and it's a critical one, you'll need to go back and do the job again. In some industries like health insurance, where the cost of a reprocessed claim is 4 times that of one that gets approved the first time, that rework time can be a killer

Think of an automation software solution like a "digital employee" - someone who basically does the most unpleasant parts of your job for you so that you're free to do other things. Digital Employees generally work faster than humans in most web or Windows applications, so more gets done faster without rework. Even if it DIDN'T work faster, you'd still be free to perform other tasks while your software solution did all the typing, copying, and pasting. Automation basically returns 100% of the time spent on manual business process back to you so that you can go serve customers, win business, or take a vacation.

Reason 3: It's Easier Than You Think.

A good automation software solution can be installed and put to work inside of a few hours. Sure, there are some solutions out there that require coding or programming to operate, but the kind you're looking for can be "taught" to perform tasks simply by clicking and dragging your mouse to objects on the screen. The software should then present you with a narrow list of actions that work with the object you've targeted. You shouldn't have to scroll through 200 possible choices when all you need to do is click a "Submit" button.

Automation software solutions that actually work like "digital employees" use a series of steps (called a script) to perform a task. They work off of those scripts diligently because it's what you have told them to do. And they do it flawlessly. If concerns over learning curves and installation times are preventing you from automating your workflows and business processes, choose the right solution and put those fears to rest.

Documented Your Business Processes

You know you've done it. The boss has said "Let's get our business processes sorted out" So you've drafted in some Visio guy who's put together your business process documentation. Now it has been printed off, bound up, reviewed and signed by the department head. Everyone is happy, right? Wrong! It's a waste of time and money doing this because it's just paying lip service to the whole concept of business process management, and will result (usually) in a set of documentation languishing in a drawer for years.

If you think doing this is going to help you become a sleeker, more efficient, business entity then you are sorely mistaken. This will actually have the opposite effect on your users. They will resent the time they've spent helping put the documentation together, there is no guarantee that it's the right process and therefore there's no guarantee it will actually be followed.

Actually you're not alone in doing this. Many companies have fallen into the same trap of thinking that a documented process is a defined and managed one process. But it doesn't have to be like that. Let's look at ways out:

How to solve this issue

1) Don't go there in the first place.

If at all possible try to make sure that you don't confuse documenting processes with defining and managing them. If you want to get some documentation of what your processes are, bring in someone who knows about facilitating processes and get them to do the work for you. But understand yourself WHY you are doing this. If it's just to say "I've documented the processes" then you're probably doing this for the wrong reasons. If it is part of a bigger review then this is slightly better. If it is a small step in a larger Business Process Management initiative this is the best reason of all

2) Don't take the documents as gospel.

Given that you've spent the time documenting your processes, make sure this is the start of the process rather than the end. Look at how you can take the documented processes and use them as a basis for improvements. Don't look at this as the end state i.e the gospel according to St Process, but look at this as the first step in a journey to process salvation. Use the existing documentation as a springboard to build a full process documentation set - along with a process management capability

3) Ignore and start again

I know it's painful to throw away things that you've worked hard on but the fact is that unless the process documents were put together under the authority of someone who knows how to document and manage processes, the chances are they will not be right. The might not fully reflect the process as it exists. They might not be a complete record of all the items needed for process documentation. They might not even be documented according to set documentation standards. All these factors mean that it is probably just as useful to throw them away and start again using someone who knows what they are doing. As in the previous suggestion, use this as a basis to build an internal process management capability

Build the process capability

Managing processes is much more than just documenting the work in Visio. Building a process management capability involves identifying and training individuals who can expertly analyse and document current state processes, who can design future state processes and who can appropriately work a tool to store all this information in. They can identify owners at a process level, implement a governance process and put in place appropriate metrics to measure the processes.

So if you find yourself stuck with a set of hastily put together process documents, meant to define your current state, before you bind them and throw them in a drawer, ask yourself if you wouldn't be better looking at some of the choices stated above to really benefit from the power of a well designed process.

Keys to Successful Business Process Management

How to get real value from Business Processes in each organisation?

1. Create transparency

Ensure that all relevant business processes are identified, described and documented. This also implies a consistent repository and clear numbering system.

2. Invest in communication and training

The process performers - those who execute every single workflow step - have to be trained and enabled. Sounds simple, but can be quite a challenge, especially in large and dynamic organizations.

Tip: Plan a fixed budget for training.

3. Fix the process objectives

Every process has an unambiguous objective that should be decided upon and communicated to all process stakeholders. Sad enough, this is often not the case! Only with a clear objective it is possible to measure the performance and overall success of the process.

4. Assign process owners

Every process needs an owner. Those are people responsible for the achievement of process objectives and realisation of improvements. A sustainable process management is impossible without appointed process owners.

Tip: It is essential that the individual objectives of process owners are reflected in the organization's reward and incentive systems.

5. Focus on process implementation and real execution

Any business process can contribute to the achievement of organization's objectives only if it is really executed. Sounds simple, but here is the main weak point of operations management. Real process execution means leaving the PowerPoint universe and digging into real life of the people in the trenches. All investments into process management are waste of money and effort if the processes are not "lived" as intended.

Tip: Conduct interviews with process performers to find out how they actually execute the process. You may be surprised by the outcomes!

6. Ensure the right order: First ensure execution, then optimise

Don't make the second step before the first. Many organizations optimise processes that do not exist in reality (i.e. they are not really executed by the people, see topic 5). That is pure waste of time and money. Ensure the real process execution first and then do the optimisation. (Or change the process when you realise that it does not work in reality.) The right order does not only save time and money but generates higher employee satisfaction.

7. Consider the organization's process maturity

Organizations are on different levels with respect to business process management. Pay attention when planning the implementation of the new approach. For instance, there is no effect in fixing process objectives as long as there are no process owners assigned. Employees can become frustrated (and customers dissatisfied) if you drive compliance without clear definition and communication of business process standards. That was a real case in a company assessed by the author. Do it better and develop the organization's process maturity step by step.

Tip: The leadership team should make clear which scope of business process management it wants to see implemented within which time period.