How BPM powers your management systems (ERPs)

For decades ERPs have dominated corporate environments and specialized modules such as financial, accounting, production, manufacturing, HR, among others, which are characterized by a multitude of screens, reports, and parameters, always with a transactional view.

Read more: The differences between ERP and BPM

The user experience with most ERPs on the market is quite tiresome, and to generate any kind of information, whether tactical or strategic, users usually have to make a great deal of effort and the IT areas depend directly on their respective suppliers.

With the increasing use of technology, especially smartphones and tablets, users have started to demand faster, simpler solutions that offer increasingly refined experiences. As a consequence, questions began to arise:

• Why don’t the company systems meet the needs of my area?
• Why are the systems so complicated, limited, and different from my reality?
• Why does my ERP support only a part of my practical work process?
• Why is it so difficult, time-consuming, and expensive to add new features?
• How do you train users on all the screens so they can fill them out correctly?
• How do you ask them only for what really matters for the business?
• Having an ERP by itself does not make the company truly integrated, so why is there such a dependence on the package supplier?
• Why is it so difficult to generate relevant information from the data available in my ERP?

Understanding the reasons for conflicts with ERPs

The questions above represent exactly the reality of most companies in the market today, and below we point out some reasons why:

• Traditional management systems have rigid business rules that are difficult to parameterize;
• ERPs have complex screens, and most of them bring and request information that is not necessary for the business;
• Individual users fill screens and fail to see the whole workflow;
• Transactional processes are usually spread out in a segmented view by function and not over the work unit;
• Information has to be pulled up, with the need to access a screen or report;
• The people and the company must adapt to the system, not the other way around;
• A lot of difficulty in knowing the next person in charge and what the next steps are;
• Lack of management of pendencies and unfinished tasks;
• It comprises only a part of the business process, not allowing the management of the entire value chain.

The answer to most of these practical difficulties lies in the adoption of the BPM discipline and systems, which have been gaining recognition, since they speed up tasks, reduce costs, encompass the process as a whole, allow effective management over the value chain, aid decision making, and are focused on facilitating and orchestrating the company processes, its documents, and on generating tactical and strategic information.

Main characteristics of a BPM

BPM performs tasks with friendly and configured actions, always focusing on the data of the activity being executed and showing what the users need to know, without exaggeration or unnecessary information, with the possibility of searching for previously existing information in legacy systems and effectively delivering only the necessary input that the users needs to do their job. In addition, processes become faster due the simplified interaction and tasks communicated by email, dashboards, and/or smartphone.

In addition, through the technology currently available in the market, it must allow users to have mobility in their daily lives through the use of smartphones to perform tasks, collaborate on corporate assets, fill out forms, make approvals, publish and consult documents, among several other facilities that can be applied in the business context in order to give fluidity, agility and productivity to daily work. This way, those involved have several means of following all the stages and are aware of the deadlines and times spent.

Other features include:

• It designs the flow and integrates with business forms;
• Automation of business processes that are generated from document triggers;
• Business rules are configurable;
• Dynamic forms are used to customize information at each step of the process;
• Elimination of data redundancy;
• Single focal point, integrating data from different systems in a transparent way to the end user, without the need for multiple logins and passwords;
• It communicates the tasks to the people, who have deadlines for carrying them out.

The BPM discipline and systems have come to fill an important gap left by ERP, with an integration, management and process-oriented vision, aiming to allow end-to-end control of all data flow, documents and company information in an integrated manner. Therefore, they must be considered in any digital transformation strategy, paperless initiatives, or simply with the goal of leveling up in terms of the effective control of any business, keeping in mind their most essential component: processes are everywhere.

Therefore, to enhance your management system, consider Neomind’s Fusion Platform solution, a tool that integrates Document Management (ECM), BPM (Workflow), Capture, Portal and Analytics, allowing interaction with employees, clients, suppliers and anyone else in a simplified and integrated way.

Try it for 15 days free right now! Or, if you prefer, request a demonstration from our consultants. Count on us to answer all your doubts and help your company!