What Benefits Can I Expect from a Business Process Management Implementation?

My Results2Match business partner, Hans van Nes, always says that coincidence does not exist. Right or wrong, I was asked by an executive what Business Process Intelligence Management (BPIM) was. The very next day, I came across a very good article of Bloor Research on Business Process Management (BPM), also providing an introduction to BPIM.

Introduction to Context of BPM

In this blog I want to present to you some highlights from the fore-mentioned report: In a series of 3 blog I will discuss the benefits of BPM, in the 2nd issue some business requirements for a BPM tool, and in the 3rd and last blog discuss the merits of BPIM.
Let me start with providing you some context, and repeat the actual question of the executive. He asked me whether I could confirm that the introduction of BPIM would dramatically improve the efficiency of the operational business processes. I can assure that being a simple consultant I hate questions where I have to give such a confirmation. And as we all know, a real consultant answers: "It depends.".

My roots are in the thoughts and ideas of the late management consultant Peter Drucker. To cite him, and rephrase him in this respect: BPIM should be considered as another tool, nothing more, nothing less. And a tool should serve the work. So the question should be: "What is the work?" And the work is that BPM, and the BPM tool, should help to improve the performance of operational processes.

A Very Attractive Definition of BPM

Business Process Management is a holistic management practice focused on aligning organizations with the wants and needs of clients. It models the enterprise's human and machine tasks, and the interaction between them. It aims at improving agility and performance of the organization. Being a structured approach it takes into account, methods, policies, management practice, (software) tools, and systems. It aims to manage and improve the organizations activities and processes by developing simple, integrated, self-managing business processes that deliver high-value output for the customer with fewer rework loops.

A (business) process is any activity or set of activities that takes inputs, adds value, and produces outputs for internal or external customers.

So important keywords in relation to BPM are management, holistic, integrated, simple, self-managing, high-value, and within one or between organizations.

I am sure that this definition of BPM makes you want it right here and now!

The Drivers for BPM

Important drivers for BPM are:

• Structured dealing with competitive pressure.
• Performance management and the desire to increase the number clients, decrease costs, or enhance service and/or product quality.
• Be able to prove conformance to (external) compliance standards and risks.

BPM Challenges

BPM challenges are:

• Decreasing the complexity of business, and increasing the transparency of operation and governance.
• Achieving collaboration between business users and IT, and resulting in a successful business process implementation.
• Managing the changes to organizations in terms of roles, structure and activities.
• Getting consensus among users about what a process consists of and how it works.
• Integrating with existing systems and applications in a meaningful way.

Some BPM Benefits

Benefits of BPM can be:

• Happier clients.
• Higher revenue.
• Higher quality of products or services.
• Lower costs.
• More motivated employees.

And why not all at the same time? The BPM definition refers to a holistic, integrated approach! And how are those generic benefits reached? By careful managing these aspects:

• Enabling rapid changes by liberation of the burden of legacy and inadequate governance policies.
• Improving the process efficiency and process control.
• Ensuring the optimum resource utilization.

What are your experiences with BPM? And with BPIM? We want to learn from you! Please share your experiences wit the Results2Match Community.

This blog is the first part of a series of 3 blogs on BPM:

1. What Benefits Can I Expect from a Business Process Management Implementation? (this blog)
2. What Are Important Business Requirements for a Business Process Management Tool?
3. Now What is Actually Business Process Intelligence Management?

Results2Match has a strong vision on successful business strategies and result driven implementations.

This blog is written by Hans Lodder. Hans is a very experienced management consultant and interim manager. You can contact Hans by email.