What is BPM and What Are Some of its Main Advantages?

Business Process Management (BPM) refers to operations management focused on managing and optimizing a company’s business processes in order to improve corporate performance. Therefore, it can be described as a process that optimizes other processes. BPM, in essence, helps organizations to be more efficient, effective, and adaptable than a typical function-based hierarchical management strategy.

Working in a bespoke software development company, I know the business value of well-orchestrated internal processes for our partners. We function in a world that is moving towards the digital transformation of products and services at rapid rates. So, what this means is that companies will have to find ways to embrace what’s new and combine it with established practices to ensure business continuity. BPM does exactly that by reducing operational costs while boosting revenue generation. 

Let’s dive deeper into the main components of BPM and key benefits for your company to keep it up and up.

The Core Definition of BPM

A definition by Gartner goes to describe business process management as a discipline that studies analyses and measures business processes in order to optimize their future performance. Well-thought-out BPM should take into account all necessary steps towards implementing business strategy, including custom software development to help manage structures and unstructured processes.

Some people still think of BPM as workflow automation and synchronization of already existing processes. However, the core assumption of BPM is that it should be a tool to align with long-term company goals, results, and KPIs. Looking at the big picture and not simply executing daily tasks, companies that provide BPM software solutions help businesses improve their operations and avoid bottlenecks and inefficiencies. 

Here is why your company should consider using BPM services in the future: 

1. Full Control of Operational Costs

Most companies have hundreds of processes running simultaneously on daily basis, so it can get hard for some business experts to have the overall picture under control. Let’s take the transportation sector as an example: some of the constantly running processes there are package tracking applications, road navigation systems for truck drives, customs handling software for handling international orders, invoice systems, and many more. 

BPM software services offer tools such as process automation and process modeling that give companies greater control over each integral step of the process. All vital information is conveniently stored and visually shown so that team leaders can effortlessly monitor tasks, orders, deadlines as well as contact the responsible people. Most new BPM software solutions come with fully functional dashboards and graphs to track real-time process progress. 

2. Reduce or Fully Remove Redundancies 

Most companies have experienced it at some point – the same data is stored and appears in multiple locations, e.g. cloud or database. Data redundancy can cause three key data anomalies (problems): 

• Insertion anomaly, when new data entry is not possible until other data is added
• Deletion anomaly, when the deletion of some data causes the deletion of other unrelated data, and 
• Update anomaly, when data doesn’t update in all necessary database locations.

Once these data redundancies are prevented, companies can achieve more efficiency by reducing human errors. The role of BMP here is to automate processes that don’t require human intelligence but are still vital for running the business. Plus, removing mundane tasks from your employees’ responsibilities can help prevent burnout and boost their work motivation and productivity.

Also Read: Top Tips to Optimise Workflow in Your Small Business

3. Enhance Business Process Flexibility

The world around us is changing faster than ever before in 2021, and the biggest challenge for some companies is keeping up with all the transformations. Many employees re-organized their life priorities as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, and millions of US workers contribute to the so-called resignation crisis that is currently taking over. Such a change in mindsets means that a key ingredient for success remains to be adaptable and flexible as an employer, understand human nature and emerging trends. 

As a result, businesses should adapt their needs, requirements, and goals based on market trends, changing customer demands, and even new policy regulations (e.g. Brexit). All this inevitably calls for changes in business processes. Again, reliable BPM software comes to the rescue while establishing a new customer base or navigating a business partnership that restructures its business operations.

4. Simplify Business Knowledge Transfer 

As a sensible effect of the currently trending employee resignation around the globe, businesses find themselves in a position to manage their business knowledge and be able to transfer it when staff changes. However, companies frequently rely on just a few employees to have an in-depth understanding of a specific process, but as the workforce evolves, this strategy becomes inefficient and expensive. Thus, the need for a reliable knowledge transfer emerges.

When people go on maternity/paternity leave, transfer, or part ways with an organization, the information they’ve gained goes with them, leaving a major vacuum in the company’s knowledge. Fortunately, this problem has a remedy in the form of BPM practices. Company knowledge can be captured, stored, and shared with other colleagues since BPM encourages a well-documented process map of each workflow. Later on, this essential information can be easily used during onboarding processes and internal employee training. 

Also Read: How to Set up a Reward System for your Remote Employees

5. Boost Company-Level Cooperation 

Leading a company is far from being easy, especially when different teams are not well aligned and coordinated. Thus, you want to avoid any Brownian motion (random chaos) that might naturally occur in a time when teams lack proper communication. BMP can serve as a powerful method for sharing important metrics, distributing essential information throughout the companies, helping all team members align towards the bigger common goals no matter if they currently work on separate projects. 

Let’s take a look at the Japanese automobile industry as an example. Japanese auto companies use a very distinctive BPM concept system called Kaizen. The term Kaizen can be translated as “continuous improvement” or “change for the better”, and its basic principle is that companies work continuously to improve all business processes gradually, rather than making sudden, radical changes that can disrupt the achieved progress and even undermine future progress.