Complete Guide: Everything you need to know about BPM

Imagine that you decided to plant a tree and, to do so, you created three assignments: one person will dig the ground, another one will plant the seed e the last one will cover the hole. The first person does his job on time, but the second one ends up forgetting to do his part.

When the third person gets there, he realizes the hole has no seeds in it. He comes back, gets in touch with person 2, that says he’ll only be able to plant it five days later. Then it starts raining, the hole collapses and, five days later, the second person gets back to the spot and realizes there is no hole anymore.

He sends a message to the first person, who in turn wants that will only be able to dig the hole again next week… Long story short: a task that could be completed in less than an hour took a whole month. Besides, each of the three people wasted time and money.

This example may sound absurd, but that’s exactly what happens when to a company that can’t manage its processes. When no one know for sure what needs to be done and when to do it, a task ends up lost among so many others and, what’s even worse, the company ends up losing money.

So, no matter the size or sector of your organization – nor the product or service it offers -, the fact is, even though you don’t realize it, every company has processes. They bring order to what otherwise would be chaos and late deliveries, for example.

• What is Business Processes Management?
• What is involved in BPM?
• What are the advantages of BPM?
• The importance of standardizing processes
• How to standardize processes?
• Ok, but how to know if my company really needs BPM?
• And how to know if it’s viable to invest in BPM?
• How to implement BPM?

So that you can clear up your doubts about the subject, we gathered our 5 best articles about Business Processes Management in this single post. Happy reading!

What is Business Processes Management (BPM)?

Business Processes Management is commonly known by the BPM abbreviation. It’s a flexible management methodology designed to organize and simplify organizational processes of high or low complexity, internal or external, of a company.

Its goal is to meet companies’ goals through management and control methodologies, techniques, and tools optimization, in order to analyze, model, improve, publish and keep track of processes involving all their departments.

What is involved in BPM?

Essentially, BPM:

• Organizes activities around results – not tasks – to ensure sustained focus;
• Corrects and improves processes before automation;
• Enables continuous improvement so that changes can be extended and propagated over time;
• Improves existing processes, instead of creating new ones;
• Standardizes processes across the company so they’re easier to extend and manage, besides reducing errors and risks.

What are the advantages of BPM?

Processes of a company involve all departments (HR), Quality Assurance, Purchasing, Sales, etc) and may be transorganizational, transversal, interdepartmental, or horizontal.

Among BPM’s main advantages, the most expressive one is that it makes this processes progress way easier and provides a real-time view of their ongoing activities. In short, it answers: who is doing what, for what reason, what is the deadline, and who will follow through with the task?

With that, managers are able to react more quickly to incoming issues and consequently improve the competitiveness of the company.  But BPM’s benefits are not limited to that. With Business Processes Management it’s possible to obtain:

• Collaborative view: employees are able to better comprehend their role in the organization.
• More traceability: one of BPM’s big advantages is that each activity inside a process flow may be tracked in real-time. This allows that authorized people tell right away how a process is going and verify its progress.
• Precise information: access to accurate, relevant information helps your team to avoid expensive mistakes, meet deadlines, keep compliance, improve individual performance and make better, quicker decisions.
• More efficiency: many companies still rely on inefficient systems or require manual intervention in tasks that could actually be automated. Through automation of certain tasks and simplification of others, teams become more efficient.
• Better results: at the end of the day, every company’s goal is to improve results by delivering great products/services and excellent customer experiences. With a consistent and efficient internal operation, an organization can raise its profit margins by reducing operational costs.

Other advantages that are worth pointing are:

• Increased transparency;
• Increased agility;
• Role reduction;
• More productivity;
• Cost reduction and
• Processes standardization.

On this last point, check below:

The importance of processes standardization

Standardizing processes means eliminating inefficient and conflict-prone alternatives. It’s through standardization that we seek the best way of executing a given activity. Some of the benefits gained with that are:

• Reduction of errors and losses;
• Training culture;
• More transparency; and
• Cost reduction.

Standardization also makes the process and the ones responsible for them be known from end to end, ensuring those involved have a better understanding of the inputs and outputs. Besides, standardizing processes is a competitive advantage because it eliminates flaws, optimizes internal processes, and improves the quality of products and services.

How to standardize processes?

We have made a step-by-step list for you to start standardizing your company’s processes today:

1. Let teams know: transparency is essential. Because of that, the first step for each leader is to gather his team and explain processes standardization, showing its advantages. Since employees will have to deal with changes in how they execute their activities, it’s important to make it clear how those changes will help them to be more productive and reduce wasting and reworking.
2. Map processes: mapping identifies all steps, involved parts, goals, decisions, and workflow of an existing process. It’s in this step too that the process itself will be designed and redesigned. In the case of existing processes, the goal is to take a critical look at each one and check for inconsistencies, redundancies, or improvement opportunities.

In order to see a process as a whole and design it, it’s essential that you create a flowchart. This can be done manually, but the most recommended method is to use a BPM tool. In case you wish to know more about how to map processes, we recommend this reading: Mapping processes: where to begin with?

1. Document all processes: After having mapped your processes, it’s crucial to document them. Documentation is essential because it will describe how the process will work in the company. It’s very useful for training new employees. We also emphasize that the documentation should serve as a guide, and should be simple and easy to understand by those who need it. Ideally, you should use a well-known standard graphical notation, such as BPMN.
2. Conduct training sessions: There may be some resistance here because up to this point there was no procedure to be followed. This is common, and the important thing is to always be open to dialogue. In a short time, everyone will realize the benefits of process standardization.
3. Monitor constantly: Always keep an eye out for something that may need to be improved, or if there are still inconsistencies or improvement opportunities.

Ok, but how do I know if my company really needs BPM?

All this may sound very nice when put into words, but does your company really need to automate your process management? To answer this question, we have created a checklist. Check the alternatives that apply to your business:

( ) Difficulty in completing processes on time.

How long does it take for your company’s employees to complete an activity within a process? Do you have control over what stage the process is at and/or what is being done?

( ) Difficulty in making decisions.

Do management members have the necessary information to make important process-related decisions? Is the information easy to find? Is it centralized?

( ) A lot of money invested, little return.

Has your company been investing in processes that do not bring actual gains? Before starting a process, can you evaluate the time it will take to complete it, and the expenses it will incur?

( ) Loss of competitiveness due to delivery delays.

Does your company need to reduce the time to market your product due to increased competition? Do you need to improve the quality of your product/service delivery?

( ) Lack of achievement of organizational goals.

Despite all the effort of your teams, is your company unable to achieve its organizational goals?

( ) Inconsistent delivery of products/services, coupled with customer dissatisfaction.

Have your customers been complaining about delivery delays, product defects, and so on?

(  ) Employee inefficiency.

Has the productivity of your employees decreased and is the delivery of products/services falling short? Are your employees wasting time performing repetitive, manual tasks?

(  ) Lack of information about which step of the process is being performed.
Within a process, how do you control the progress of the activities? What is the level of difficulty to obtain this information?

( ) Non-compliance with legal conformities.
What is your company’s level of control over legal compliance?

(  ) Difficulty in prioritizing processes.

Does your company have a lot of things to do, but doesn’t know what is urgent and what is important? Among the processes, do you know how to define those that need to be executed with more urgency?

(  ) Inability to assess the effectiveness of processes and map them.

Do you know which processes really bring your company results? Can you make a list of those that can be eliminated? Can you identify points for improvement? (learn more about processes mapping here).

(  ) Difficulty in figuring out which stages of the process do not add value, and where the waste is.

Are you sure that all activities within a process are essential? Are they done in the right way? Are they completed on time and within budget?

(  ) Inability to evaluate the results of a process.

Can managers measure processes end-to-end and make a comparison with the expected results? Is it possible to quantify processes?

If you checked most of the items above, then your company should ideally invest in a Business Process Management solution in order to streamline and facilitate process management.

And how to know if BPM is a viable solution to investing in?

Well, by now you understand the importance of process standardization and BPM. You have also completed the checklist and realized that it is time to invest in this kind of tool.

However, is the investment really feasible? To make sure you have the right answer, we have developed a calculator that allows your company to analyze the viability of investing in a BPM solution. The ROI calculator takes into account variables such as:

• Standardization and compliance of the process and its rules (quality gains);
• Assertiveness with reduction of failures and rework;
• Increase in process speed;
• Efficiency and process reliability;
• Decreased time and number of people involved;
• Increase in productivity.

To access it, just click here.

How does BPM implementation take place?

Let’s suppose you have chosen to invest in BPM. To help you understand how its implementation works, we’ll go through the following phases:

1. Planning and identification (As Is);
2. Process analysis (To Be);
3. Design (To Be);
4. Simulate flows and verify adherence (To Be);
5. Monitoring and control;
6. Refinement (improvement of flows).

Phase 1 – Planning and Identification (As-Is)

During the first of the BPM implementation phases, the current situation of the organization’s processes (As-Is) is identified, as well as the key users involved. It is essential that these users participate in this phase of surveying and understanding the processes since they are a rich source of information about how they are executed on a daily basis.

Read also: What is As-is/To-be process mapping?

Phase 2 – Analysis and improvement opportunities (To Be)

In the second phase, the bottlenecks, flaws, and other process deficiencies are already known. Based on these insights, each process should be analyzed and improvements aligned with the strategic objectives of the organization should be proposed. This leads to the development of new versions of each process (To Be).

At this point, improvement opportunities are the key to success, and they are usually related to work methods, people, machines and equipment, raw material, customers/suppliers, physical environment, among others.

Phase 3 – Flow prioritization and automation

A good strategy to get your organization engaged with BPM implementation is to start with the simplest processes, but those that bring some operational gain or simplify daily tasks, so they have buy-in and involvement from managers.

For the automation of the flows, the ideal is to use a suite that goes beyond the simple modeling of the flowchart, i.e., allows the systemic execution of the steps with electronic forms and Document Management (ECM). Still in the definition of the automation strategy, one should verify:

• What are the relations of workflows with other internal systems in the organization, or even external ones, and their needs for integration;
• How will evidence and audit control work;
• Mechanisms for generating automated reports and identifying bottlenecks;
• Processes and documents versioning;
• Methods of user training and promotion;
• Implementation and assisted support.

Phase 4 – Flow simulation and adherence check

After the automation of the selected processes and their due structuring in a BPM solution, it is essential to carry out simulations/pilots with key users to verify how they adhere to the improvements, and if they’re aligned with the strategic objectives of the organization, and to make the necessary adjustments.

Finally, after approval by the key-users, the training and qualification of the other users involved must be structured, as well as the deployment planning and assisted support.

Phase 5 – Results monitoring, control and analysis

In this stage, the processes are monitored through performance indicators and reports that enable the identification and automation of process bottlenecks, in addition to supporting audits.

The most commonly used indicators to support reports that analyze the results of process automation are: average time to complete activities, cost to complete activities, average time to complete processes, and satisfaction reports.

It is important that in this instant there is an assisted accompaniment of trained professionals to help the users in relation to eventual problems arising from the automation of the flow.

Phase 6: Refinement (automation improvement and expansion)

Also called continuous improvement, the last phase should be carried out based on the analysis and insights generated in the previous stage. It’s important to establish a process change committee, which should hold periodic meetings to monitor indicators and make suggestions for improvement. Registration processes and process change treatments should be created as well.

The committee should also maintain process version control and, in addition to improving the processes that are already in place, seek to identify new processes for automation.

In closing

The implantation of processes, when carried out effectively and relying on a robust tool, offers companies transparency, control, productivity, automation, agility, efficiency, cost reduction, and security.

In this article we gave you a complete overview based on five other articles of ours:

• What is Process Management (BPM) and what are its benefits?
• Checklist: Is it time to invest in BPM?

And to continue to understand more about the subject and avoid falling into traps, check out our e-book on How to avoid the 7 sins in adhering to Process Management.

Still don’t know the Fusion Platform yet? Try it free for 15 days.