Business Process Management (BPM)
Organizations pursue Business Process Management (BPM) typically to (1) save money through cost-saving or productivity improvement, (2) improve the customer’s experience and satisfaction, and (3) new product and service innovation to remain competitive.
What is Business Process Management (BPM)?
Business Process Management (BPM) is a systemic, holistic, and cross-functional view of a process managed iteratively over its entire lifecycle. It includes designing, documenting, improving, optimizing, communicating, implementing, evaluating, updating, and retiring processes.
BPM strives to align internal and external business process performance and results with the core competencies, strategic objectives, and business goals of the organization through:
- Automation and simplification business processes.
- Designing and documenting processes.
- Optimizing and simulating processes.
- Implementing new or improved processes.
- Aligning and integrating with enterprise management software.
Business Process Management Components
The main components of Business Process Management (BPM) include:
- Process House: Mapped processes, models, workflow, simulation, improvement, controls and documentation
- Process Design: Process development and optimisation.
- Process Performance: Measuring, tracking and monitoring of KPIs / SLAs, reviews and audits, escalation, and process analysis.
- Process Administration: Implementation and configuration.
- Process Infrastructure: Systems backbone and integration.
The BPM infrastructure may include technologies that assist with, amongst many others:
- Coordinating human and system interactions and dependencies.
- Providing real-time visibility of current process maps and key performance indicators (KPIs).
- Managing controls and escalations in the event of failure or missed targets.
- Identifying opportunities for continued process improvement and optimization.
Business Process Management Structure
Business Process Management (BPM) requires an appropriate structure that sets process requirements and measures.
Process requirements include a description of how the process should strive to operate with the optimal based on known best practices. Measures are the performance standards that are to be achieved, typically tracked with a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
In the BPM structure, two positions play a critical role. These are:
Initiating Process Owner (IPO) – sometimes called Group/Global Process Owner (GPO). Their role is to define the process standards, which may include maturity stages and targets to achieve. In addition, another key role is to set process performance measures and targets. Typically, the core processes in a business will each have an Initiating Process Owner.
Reinforcing Process Owner (RPO) – sometimes called Regional / Country Process Owners. They implement the defined standards on location in plants and offices. They typically own the Process Management Office responsible for guiding and delivering process breakthrough improvement projects.
