Top 10 Benefits of Business Process Management for Business Success
Key takeaways
- A report by Forrester Research suggests that 70% of businesses are actively engaged in some form of BPM initiatives.
- Given the benefits of business process management the high rate of adoption among businesses of various sizes and types is justified.
- Common benefits of business process management cost reduction, improved customer experience, and enhanced flexibility.
- To make the most out of business process management implementation, the capabilities of present systems should be assessed first.
- Business process management is a comprehensive approach to managing business processes that contribute to business success.
- Business process management implementation involves both technological and cultural changes.
Business Process Management in Brief
What is business process management? The simplest definition of business process management (BPM) would be a systematic approach to identifying, designing, executing, monitoring, and optimizing existing business processes within an organization. Some of the main advantages of business process management is that it streamlines process operations, increases efficiency, reduces costs, and improves productivity. This blog explores the advantages of BPM in detail and provides guidance on its implementation.
Table of Contents
Business Process Management In Detail
To understand the benefits of business process management, we should first understand business process management and its scope. To run a business, you need to have processes that are executed to achieve specific goals. For example, to increase sales, you need to have a process for identifying and tracking new customers. Traditionally, business processes have been managed manually, often using paper-based systems. This can be slow and inefficient, especially when business operations scale up. Business process management has become a preferred method for managing process workflows by using technology to derive better business outcomes.
What does BPM involve? Business process management mainly involves coordinating people, repetitive tasks, processes and technology to improve efficiency and streamline operations. BPM aligns organizational activities with strategic goals, enhances customer satisfaction, and adapts to changing market conditions. It plays an important role in improving organizational efficiency by helping teams analyze, model, and standardize business processes. Implementing BPM techniques helps businesses achieve operational cost reduction, increased productivity, and improved responsiveness to customer needs. Successful implantation of BPM increasingly relies on the strategic integration of technology, which is a crucial enabler of business users. Technology provides the tools and capabilities required to optimize, automate, and streamline business processes.
A business process is made up of repetitive tasks that are geared towards achieving organizational goals. Business process management can be considered as a blueprint through which these repetitive tasks can be automated and carried out more efficiently. Business process management works by breaking down business processes into a series of predictable repetitive tasks, and provides an analytical representation of how these processes are interconnected. Common business processes that can be improved using BPM tools are loan origination, employee recruitment leave requests, invoice management, and service orders.
Types of BPM
Cloud BPM and On-premise BPM are the 2 types of BPM. Cloud-based BPM employs deployment of the chosen BPM. This type of BPM can provide the specs required for your company as business operations expand. All information pertaining to the process is available on the cloud. Cloud BPM is a flexible solution to process management, as it can be adjusted to suit your needs.
On-premise solution on the other hand uses software that is present on company-owned software and runs on operating systems that the IT department has set up. This type of BPM requires the company to pay for company servers and hosting assets. With this type of BPM, everything is in the hands of the company.
Common Benefits of BPM
What are the benefits of business process management? Enterprises rely on business process management to better understand how they operate, gain the competitive edge, and remain relevant in the market. BPM changes require a complete cultural shift and considerable investments in technology. But, the return on investment is much more than the initial investment. Topmost on the list of the common benefits of BPM is its capacity to improve automation and demystify complex processes. Process automation solutions like Cflow can accelerate digital transformation initiatives and the speed of the release of new services.
Another one of BPM advantages is mapping business processes. This is a key element of BPM that helps process experts identify opportunities to lower costs, eliminate waste, integrate processes, smooth operations, and upgrade customer service. A process map helps teams understand the process better and have better control over the process. A good understanding of the process is required to implement new programs and technologies.
Other benefits of BPM include providing deeper insights into process workflows and ability to spot process bottlenecks easily. When teams gain deep insights into the process workflow, they are able to spot improvement areas and implement automation solutions for process improvement. With the implementation of BPM, businesses gain a systematic approach to software asset management. This way businesses can easily identify redundant or underutilized licenses and allocate resources more efficiently.
Standardization and automation brought about by BPM tools helps reduce the overload of having multiple applications, ensuring that the software landscape aligns with business needs. Optimization of software licenses helps organizations cut down on unnecessary costs and enhance operational efficiency. BPM facilitates a more centralized approach to usage across different departments and functions.
When BPM is implemented correctly, it improves the efficiency of business processes. Efficient business processes result in better overall customer satisfaction, where customers appreciate being able to get what they need quickly without errors or inconsistencies. Customers that get speedy and accurate responses to their requests are more likely to come back for more business. Furthermore, business process management helps businesses understand their customers’ needs and preferences better, allowing them to create products and services that cater to their expectations.
Another interesting benefit of business process management is that it helps identify strengths and skill gaps. How? The data gathered by the BPM platform offers deep insights into individual strengths and weaknesses, allowing organizations to recognize and leverage the unique skills of their employees. Armed with this data, managers can identify skill gaps by highlighting areas where employees require additional training or development. BPM Learning and development departments at organizations can utilize this data to conduct targeted training programs, seal skill gaps, and build a more skilled and versatile workforce.
Seamless scalability is another advantage of BPM.
Top 10 Benefits of Business Process Management
In this section, we will be looking at business process management benefits in detail. The top 10 benefits of business process management include –
Increased productivity and efficiency
BPM tools empower teams with a deeper visibility into the process. The process maps that are created using these tools help teams analyze each process in great detail. Armed with the information provided by process maps, teams can identify, analyze, and streamline processes so that they are aligned with overall business goals and strategy. When individual processes are aligned with the overall business goals, operational efficiency can improve significantly.
Automating a process based on the findings of the BPM tool eliminates the manual workload, reduces errors and inconsistencies, and optimizes workflows. BPM tools support automation that targets inefficient processes and tasks. When processes are automated, it becomes much easier for employees to complete their tasks quickly and accurately. This leads to significant savings in terms of time and resources.
Deeper visibility and transparency
Businesses can get a clear and transparent view of the end-to-end business processes. Such deep visibility into the status of processes helps stakeholders understand the entire process completely, identify bottlenecks, and make data-driven decisions for improving overall performance of the process.
Streamlined workflows
BPM standardizes processes and streamlines workflows by automating tedious manual tasks that are time consuming and repetitive. BPM standardizes processes so that employees can work more efficiently within a set framework that accelerates decision-making and minimizes the risk of human error. BPM tools also embed analytics that provide managers a bird’s eye view of how their department and individual processes are performing.
Strategically aligned process controls
Business processes grow organically in a haphazard manner in the absence of a streamlined approach. As each process takes shape, managers and project management teams need to address new requirements that span tax jurisdictions, regulatory requirements, contractual terms and security. BPM takes a more systematic approach to understanding the origins of each process and ways in which it can be streamlined to support the same requirements with lesser data, effort, and steps. Clearly defined and precise processes provide a tighter control over value-added internal and external activities. This visibility empowers managers to implement technologies and ensure that all business models are strategically aligned to the marketplace.
Provides greater agility and scalability for businesses
Deeper understanding and better control of processes brings better flexibility when pivoting to new opportunities. Agile and flexible organizations are increasingly gaining an advantage over slower moving legacy businesses. BPM tools create an architectural avenue to new cloud services, regulatory changes, market opportunities, and AI capabilities. Businesses that implement BPM tools to improve their process outcomes are able to sustain amidst market competition.
Improves customer service and experiences
BPM benefits customer experiences in many ways. Firstly, existing processes can be analyzed to identify areas where customer service representatives spend more time working on redundant tasks. BPM tools enable businesses to collect and sort required customer information automatically from multiple sources, thus, eliminating duplication and redundancy. You can also improve the development, manufacture, and quality of the final product or service delivered to customers. BPM also enables teams to discover better ways to let customers see how far along they are in complex processes and additional steps (if any) are required.
Seamlessly connects silos for channeled communication
One of the major pitfalls of manual systems is siloed processes and systems. BPM can integrate siloed systems by simplifying the technical work and improving communication. The real-time visualization capabilities that BPM brings into businesses, connects people, processes, software, information systems, and machines. BPM software can help manage software releases by tracking progress and identifying disruptions in the process. Whenever a bottleneck is identified, BPM systems limit the communication to the key decision-makers and specify ways to resolve bottlenecks. With BPM, teams do not have to waste time in general coordination or update meetings.
Reduced risk, waste, redundancy, and money pits
BPM tools are extremely useful in assessing the current state of business processes and identify areas to consolidate and optimize them. The goal of BPM is to eliminate waste, redundancy, errors, inconsistencies, compliance risks, and automation deployments that are losing money. Think about the time you had to spend learning to work on multiple systems for your work. BPM integrates all these systems together so you have a single source of truth.
Ensures compliance and reduces micromanagement
BPM systems provide a definite structure to processes, which ensures compliance with organizational policies, industry regulations, and standards. Organizations can implement controls, monitor complex processes, and demonstrate regulatory compliance when BPM tools are implemented. This reduces the need for micromanagement of resources and risk of legal issues or non-compliance penalties. When processes are structured by automation, the accuracy and authenticity of data increases automatically. Automation also reduces manual data entry errors and controls data through defined process roles and access controls. The risk of unauthorized data manipulation or security breaches is totally eliminated.
Catalyzes digital transformation
Business process management catalyzes digital transformation by integrating cutting-edge technologies and methodologies into organizational processes. BPM solutions make use of workflow automation to streamline operations, improving efficiency, and reducing the manual workload. Organizations can continuously improve their processes and build a culture of innovation and adaptability with BPM.
Centralized systems and tools provided by BPM can be used for real-time data analysis that unlocks valuable insights and enables informed decision making. To further enhance digital transformation in organizations, BPM embraces advanced technology like AI for intelligent automation of tasks and processes. The amalgamation of BPM and technology improves operational effectiveness and ensures that organizations remain agile, responsive to market changes, and ably positioned to harness the benefits of digital transformation.
End-to-end workflow automation
Build fully-customizable, no code process workflows in a jiffy.
No Code Automation and Business Process Management
Given the benefits of business process automation, it is obvious that it is the right choice for businesses that are looking to streamline and optimize their operations. Implementing BPM can be done by adopting no code workflow automation solutions like Cflow. No code development platforms support BPM strategies with greater flexibility and governance. A no code automation platform like Cflow provides a visual workflow builder with a drag-and-drop interface that makes it easy and quick to automate core business processes. Even users without technical knowledge can easily create workflows with the help of visual elements. The workflow builder can transform processes into streamlined workflows with no coding.
Why is no code automation the best tool for implementing business process management?
1. Faster BPM implementation
BPM implementation is often looked upon as a major organizational change that involves a large amount of effort and money. Given this, no code workflow automation is the best way to simplify and accelerate BPM implementation. A no code automation solution like Cflow can automate workflows 10 times faster without any coding involved. Cflow is your go to solution for accurate, efficient, and faster automation.
2. Automated routing and notifications
BPM implementation aims at accelerating processes. Automating the process with a no code solution increases transparency in the workflow. All stakeholders are automatically alerted and notified on any pending approval. Cflow offers a wide range of options for routing tasks and notifying the concerned individuals for timely review and approval.
3. Customization
BPM solutions should be customized as per the requirements of the workflow. The visual workflow builder in Cflow can be used to create custom workflows using the drag-and-drop user interface. A wide range of options for routing tasks and notifying the concerned individual is provided in Cflow. Cflow offers extreme customization options where you can customize your forms at each stage of the process. Users can choose to add or remove fields, or even hide them to design forms that are most intuitive for users.
4. Cloud or on-premise storage
Users can choose where the data is stored – cloud or on-premise. You can gain access to data from anywhere, at any time. Data gathering and analysis in BPM is greatly simplified by AI-powered workflow automation.
5. Integrations
BPM solutions should be able to integrate seamlessly with other applications for efficient operations. Cflow can integrate with almost all third-party applications via Zapier so that work can be carried out most efficiently.
The fuzzy search feature in Cflow provides easy mapping of data from the main database with an advanced match-and-find setup. The Kanban feature in Cflow allows for effective visualization and prioritization of multiple tasks. All the features listed above make Cflow the best choice for implementing BPM solutions.
Conclusion
“As organizations barrel into the digital era, the demand for organizational agility increases exponentially. BPM can cater to the increasing demands of agility and flexibility that come with the need to keep up with the pace of digital transformation.”
The benefits of business process management listed in this blog make it very clear that BPM is the way forward for progressive businesses. To implement BPM and leverage the advantages of BPM, you need a no-code workflow automation tool like Cflow. To explore Cflow further, sign up for the free trial.
FAQs
1. What are some examples of business processes that can be automated with BPM?
Payroll processing, order processing, employee onboarding, and invoice processing are some examples of business processes that can be automated with BPM.
2. How should BPM be implemented?
BPM is a systematic approach to improve business processes with the help of technology for making processes more efficient and effective.
3. What is the difference between business process management and workflow management?
Workflow management is a subset of business process management. Workflows management is more on specific tasks or actions, while BPM is about business processes on the whole.
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