10 Point Program for BPM Excellence

What really makes for BPM project success? Visualizing a lean and efficient business structure, or how to “Think Big, Start Small, Scale Fast!”

1. First, identify a few processes that are costing the company’s bottom-line, increasing turnaround times or represent a compliance risk.
2. Put together a think tank of subject matter experts, process owners and forward thinking individuals from your organization to draw up a new goal based process.
3. Look at your internal technical skill set and various platforms in your IT landscape and evaluate BPMS tools from vendors that fit well with your existing IT investment.
4. Choose a BPM software vendor to develop an initial proof of concept (POC).
5. Run and test the process. Revise, revise, revise till you get it right.
6. Measure the new process for KPIs which are key to your business – common measurement indicators are cycle times, cost implication and customer satisfaction.
7. Deploy the process and continuously monitor the Business Activity for improved achievement on overall governance aims and better customer offerings.
8. Synchronize and Collaborate with teams on potential ideas for competing in the market and use these as BPM opportunities to scale up your BPM initiative.
9. Consider integrating your BPM software with your existing ERP system and extend the bandwidth of your process optimization tool.
10. Leverage organizational knowledge and market intelligence to constantly update your process with a trial and deploy methodology.

Redirecting resources to find and close business opportunities, rather than spend time looking for information spells Operational efficiency and results in better bottom lines.

Future Forward! - BPM Futuristic Trends

Future Forward - BPM Futuristic Trends :

How can Business Process Management optimize business outcomes and performance? Last year’s leading BPM events and the views aired therein by the industry’s thought leaders all bring out a dominant and somewhat worrying scenario – after a decade, Process Agility is still a pipe dream for organizations struggling to connect BPM technologies with their real world business processes.

Companies continue to focus on process automation as the quick fix to achieving Business Process Management goals without clearly defining end performance parameters and process improvement metrics. There is a need then to step back from the blinding array of available BPMS and concentrate on building operational resilience achieved through continuously introducing new process incidents for goal fulfilment and performance measurement. The need is also to identify a set of techniques that allow people, processes and information systems to adapt to changing patterns repeatedly.

The success words for the future of BPM include Activity Monitoring and Business Intelligence – a greater shift towards “predictive” instead of the “reactive” models being followed; Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) and Business Event Support as an important aspect of any full service BPM platform whilst evaluating best fit BPMS by organizations. BPM platforms with a strong focus on BAM, will come out on top by providing the critical visibility today’s embattled organizations need to establish relevant business goals and accountability.

The road this year will organically lead to social BPM - an ideal scenario where knowledge workers and partners model collaborative processes and BPMS designs address needs of unstructured process such as those that rest with knowledge workers. . As organizations begin to see the light about creating structures that are operationally resilient, BPMS as a technology takes a back seat. Key features of BPMS that support real world company goals for operational intelligence such as BAM and Process Designers for continuous process improvement take to the forefront of BPM as a solution to achieve operational success.

Business transformation has emerged as the key to sustaining organizational success and there is negligible concern on technology issues. Processes as a platform must necessarily come to pass as more and more users are vested in the belief that processes will eventually run in the cloud (both public and private).

The economic downturn has everyone looking inward and setting the house in order. Going forward, structured process automation will slowly give way to process management for unstructured processes – harnessing knowledge repositories within enterprises.

The emerging face of BPM extends accountability to process management as the means to optimize business outcome. This means that BPMS needs to keep pace as organizations start adapting process at the pace of business changes and not at the pace of their BPM package!

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Business Process Management Simplified: And How Does BPM Feature in the Retail World?

Business Process Management Simplified: And How Does BPM Feature in the Retail World?

And How Does BPM Feature in the Retail World?

The retail landscape has seen significant changes since the inception of the internet. While retailing in the past essentially meant simply distributing the product in question, that is no longer the case. In order to succeed in today’s fast paced retail world, a business needs to focus on retaining customers just as much as attracting new ones. Aspects that need to be addressed in such scenarios include enabling better communication between the business and its customer base, improving the supply chain, as well as seeing how IT solutions can help simplify the overall workflow.

Various retailers have already delved into the BPM sphere. Amongst the various things that one can expect a good Business Process Management solution to provide include, lowered operational costs and reduced cyclic times. Besides, one can also expect a significant ROI in an investment such as this simply because the operations and the solution would work in tandem, and both would be equally responsible for the outcome of the implementation.

How Can BPM Help?

Retailers now accept that their field is becoming more and more complex, and this is mainly because of the surge in service channels coupled with problems in tracking sales. Moreover, brand loyalty isn’t what it used to be, anymore; and in order for customers to come back, one has to ensure not just the high quality of the product, but high service levels as well. With an effective BPM solution in place, you can provide your customers with various platforms to interact with you (these would include in-store communication, over the phone, emails, chat, etc). Of course, you don’t necessarily need a BPM solution in place to offer your customers these options but a BPM solution would ensure that the interactions that take place through the varied mediums are fused seamlessly, thereby giving the business in question better flexibility, better productivity, better processes, and thereby, better customer satisfaction.

BPM solutions for the retail industry also take into account that having a smooth and reliable supply chain can affect the way the business functions to a large extent. A good BPM solution, when it comes to addressing the supply chain, would be able to send out automatic notifications across the business’ various stores, departments, etc; and the same can also be done when it comes to routing work across different sections/levels. The automation would help minimize errors and would also hasten the entire process.

Also, since the workforce is quite an important aspect in this sector, businesses can also use BPM solutions to track the performances of their employees and the processes through an assortment of tools designed specifically for this purpose. This would allow a business to review, strategize, improve and execute their future plans in accordance.

On the whole, with an effective BPM solution in place retailers can expect to respond to change more quickly, give their customers a better experience, get real time control over the business’ processes, effectively manage the supply chain, as well as look forward to enhanced retail distribution, product portfolio, and campaign management.

E Governance in Today’s BPM World

Any government, it is said, is only as transparent as its citizenry wants it to be and as the government functionaries choose it to be. However, with an increasing number of countries now paying due attention to their citizens’ rights to information, this transparency does seem to be on the rise. With e-governance, a government gives all its citizens a common platform to voice their opinions, seek answers, and most importantly, to get work done.

E-governance is not something that is limited to the west any more, and a number of Indian states have also embraced this technology is some form or the other. States that are already part of the e-governance revolution in this country include Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu, with more looking to follow suit.

This shift in paradigm is not without reason. Not only does this allow the government mechanism to be available to the common people round the clock, but it also cuts across the geographical barriers owing to the continually rising internet connectivity penetration even in previously unreachable hinterlands. So, not only would this result in saving time and money, but would also provide people with the much needed ease of access. For instance, registration of property could be incorporated into e-Governance, and so could an assortment of application processes.

Governments need to recognize that looking at BPM e-Governance solutions is the way to go because documentation accounts for a considerable chunk of its work, and this would include collecting documents and forms from the electorate, or supplying the electorate with any record or document that it requires.

With a good document management system in place governments would succeed in making their processes more transparent. Moreover, since government processes, like any other business process, require to be cost efficient, incorporating an effective document management solution would work in reducing the costs considerably. Process and documental Security is also a crucial aspect, and with the right document management solution in place the classification of documents and access to the same can also be handled effectively.

Other benefits that a good BPM e-governance solution would provide include ensuring that documents are not lost or misplaced and that they can be tracked easily; that inter-governmental communication is streamlined; that audits can be more reliable; that collaboration between various departments is augmented; and a smoother overall workflow. A good BPM e-governance solution should ideally be able to seamlessly integrate with the process’ existing framework; and should also allow room for reengineering at a later stage if the need arises. Also, owing to the diverse electorate, such a solution should be multilingual. These, in effect, would lead to the smoother overall functioning of all the government bodies involved, which resultantly would lead to a more satisfied electorate.

And since this is the primary aim of every government body (or should be), then not using e-governance to empower the people would only leave them discontented, unsatisfied, and looking for change.