Business Process Management
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“Because of its far reaching implications for the ability of enterprises to adapt, BPM is much more than a technology fad but a management issue
that needs to be on senior management's agenda, driving the IT support of the business.” Aberdeen Group
Organisations in all sectors are faced with tighter margins and increased pressure to make front and back office processes more efficient. Customers
expect a seamless experience from order capture through to billing, and stakeholders expect clear accountability and auditability. Organisations
everywhere are looking to find ways in which their end-to-end processes can flow smoothly and flexibly over organisational boundaries, functional
hand-offs, and system interfaces.
The business process management (BPM) systems that have emerged in the last couple of years are proving to be an effective weapon for organisations
striving to strategically co-ordinate and manage their end-to-end business processes. This BPM system technology provides business managers with the
means to define, change, implement, and monitor processes with ease and consistency.
“[e-Work] lets you design the process, manage it effectively and bridge the gap between IT and business leadership, because business people can take
part in the process definition.” Gartner Group
Positioning the Business Process Management system
“This [BPM] software will reduce operational costs due to gains in efficiencies and preserve and reuse existing IT assets, arguably producing the
fastest ROI of any other technology category today.” Aberdeen Group
One of the strengths of a BPM system is that it sits above an organisation’s existing IT landscape, and enables the business to design, manage and
fine-tune processes outside of the underlying IT systems.
The benefits of this approach are many:
- People-focused: business managers can design processes focused on the people in their organisation, rather than the imposed
requirements of IT systems;
- True e2e processes: the processes managed in a BPM system can be truly end-to-end as the breadth of the process is not constrained
by any particular system. Most importantly, there is no requirement that process steps need to be automated at all. A BPM system manages manual
as well as system steps, including authorisation and escalation steps. Additionally, because BPM systems draw on the latest web services developments,
they can easily extend processes outside organisational boundaries.
- Quick and flexible: business managers are able to design and update processes in intuitive modelling tools within the BPM system. As
a result, changes in business strategy can be rapidly reflected in the organisation’s processes.
- Reuse of existing IT assets: BPM systems extend the useful life of legacy and stand-alone IT systems in two ways:
- Changes to legacy systems can take significant amounts of time. Where the business requires quick changes to the user interface eg to change
the appearance or add display fields showing data from other systems, a BPM system can emulate the existing screens and enable rapid changes to be
made to the BPM versions of the screens without impacting the underlying system. One use for this is the creation of a single customer view, where
information about customers can be pulled from various underlying systems and displayed on the one form in the BPM system, without impacting the
design of the underlying systems.
- Full-blown integration with underlying IT systems is not a pre-requisite for being able to manage processes using a BPM system. As a result,
BPM systems can interact at an individual transaction level with any legacy or stand-alone application whether or not they have been integrated
with other systems, EAI architecture, portals etc.
- Continuous control and improvement: Because the BPM system manages the end-to-end process, it enables business managers to monitor
and report on business activity in real-time. The system inherently provides a full audit trail of all activity in the processes, and thereby
enables compliance with governance and regulatory requirements.
“A majority of survey respondents reported that BPM reduced process time and costs by more than 50%, with Return On Investment (ROI) delivered within
months of implementation. The quantifiable business value of BPM was realized primarily in business process efficiencies, decreased costs and reduced delays
associated with human involvement in processes.” Vitria BPM survey, 2003
More on Business Optimisation and BPM
Helen Smith, Divisional Director, SECOR Consulting.
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