What Is Business Process Management

Business process management is a field in the operations management that mainly focuses on the improvement of the corporate performance by optimizing and managing the business processes of the company. This is therefore described as the process of process optimization. The business process management enables any organization that adopts it to be more effective, efficient and also more capable of changing the functionality that is focused in a more traditional and also a hierarchical management approach. These processes deeply impact the revenue generation as well as cost of a particular organization. As it is an approach of policy making, business process management sees these processes as very important assets to a particular organization that must be managed, understood and also developed.

Business process management has a life cycle and this life cycle consists of design, modeling, execution, monitoring, optimization and also reengineering.

Designing - The areas that are concentrated at this stage are representation of the flow of the process, alerts and the notifications, the factors present inside, the standard operating procedures, escalations and also the service level agreements.

The main aim of this step is to ensure that an efficient and a correct design is produced or prepared.

Modeling - The process of modeling takes all the theoretical designs and then introduces various combinations of all the variables. This determines the exact way in which all the processes might operate under the different circumstances.

Execution - Execution step executes all the required and essential steps of the business process management.

Monitoring - Monitoring represents the tracking of various individual processes so that all the information can be easily visible.

Optimization - The process optimization includes the retrieving the process from the phase of monitoring or modeling. It also includes identification of the potential of saving costs and also various other improvements.

Reengineering - When a particular process becomes more noisy and the user is not able to get the desire output, the process has to be reengineered. This step is used by businesses to achieve productivity and also efficiency.

The technology of Business process management is widely used as a technology as well. For example it is used in operational intelligence in order to deliver actionable and real time information. These real time decisions can in turn be used for a variety of other purposes which makes business process management all the more useful. This is the reasons that this process is viewed as a bridge between the businesses and the technology.

Business Process Improvement

The majority of business process improvements were developed in the manufacturing arena but the core techniques and principles remain transferable across most industries today.

Business process improvement focuses on ensuring that functions are done correctly, by reducing waste for example. We begin by defining the strategic objectives of an organisation, targeting the customers of that organisation and making the business processes in line with those objectives.

BPI tends to look at a radical change in the business performance rather than a slow change approach. Change is not intended to be trivial but rather a revolution. Re-engineering is a term often associated with these changes.

Businesses process improvement looks at the primary roles in a business, the management system, the business leader, the process owner, the operation manager and the process operator. Each has a unique set of responsibilities but all need to work together as a unit. The business leader creates the business plan which was devised through the strategic planning process. They communicate the the business plan through the organisation, they build communication bridges and remove barriers. They analyse the performance of the business and use management data to guide the business to ward its objectives.

Meanwhile the owner of the business process is the person who designs the processes necessary to achieve the objectives set out in the business plan that was created by the business leaders. They create and approve the documentation that supports the process. They are often supported in this work by the process improvement team. The starting point is to understand the customer requirements which translate into a set of metrics overseen by the operational managers and are commonly known as KPIs or key performance indicators. These are what measures that the customer requirements and expectations are being met.

The process operators analyses the performance data to review the performance of the process. They create performance improvement plans based on that performance data and this may include Lean practices to reduce waste such as Six Sigma. Improvement plans include risk analysis to identify problems within the process and mitigate against their consequences.

Meanwhile the operational manager brings resources and process together to deliver the targets set out in the business plan. This follows a classic plan, do, check and act cycle. Finally the process operator performs the work needed to achieve the objectives of the business plan again using the do, check and act cycle.

Processes need to be in line with business goals. Customer needs to be at the centre of business process improvement and results need to be regularly benchmarking to be able to measure improvement and progress.