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Do you ever have the feeling that your management system excels at some processes, especially at the basic ones which are common to all organizations, but fails at those that could really make a difference to your company? For this reason, are you constantly arguing with your supplier trying to get him to update the solution to better support you?
- If your answer to these questions was negative, it means your company currently uses a management solution that meets all your needs in terms of business processes (from billing to industrial), without excessive bureaucracy, errors in controlling approvals and without demanding a great number of manual activities. In this case, this article is NOT for you.
- Now, in case your answer to the questions was YES, then continue reading this article and learn more about how it can help you.
In the process of Digital Transformation each company establishes its processes looking to create a competitive edge, which makes many of these processes exclusive. This way, when the organization looks for vertical solutions, it is quite common for them to imagine that a software will offer support to the features of these exclusive processes (the so called “out-of-the-box” solution). When looking over to the suppliers of vertical solutions, it is possible to see that their softwares evolve in a way that enables them to offer their solution to as many companies, from as many sectors as possible.
So, if this is how it works, how can a company such as yours, which has unique processes, be able to implement their business processes swiftly, and at the same time creating a competitive advantage and imposing the dynamic of continuous evolution within your organization? The answer lies within the BPMS – Business Process Management System Solutions.
What is BPMS?
We know that BPM refers to the process management discipline (Business Process Management). But what about BPMS (Business Process Management System)? BPMS is a tool used to design, implement and improve a task or a set of tasks that are used to reach an organizational goal.
In other words, if BPM is a methodology, then BPMS is the tool to manage processes, being the Business Process Management System a type of solution that automates the information flow and tasks of a process. This way, a BPMS tool helps managers to continuously improve business processes by offering:
- Process modeling tools;
- business rules engines and workflow, and;
- simulation and testing tools.
In summary, BPMS is used by business process professionals, business analysts, IT professionals and system developers to improve productivity, efficiency, performance and profitability in the organization. However, in order to make it possible, the BPMS solution must add value to the management systems.
BPMS: how to add value to the management systems?
Whether it is an ERP, CRM, HR or any other type of solution, the fact is that there are some key aspects that must be considered about a BPMS, as follows:
- Integration
- Electronic forms
- Automated processes
- Documentation
- Indicators, Key Performance Indicators and Dashboards
Each of these aspects is detailed below:
Integration
It is estimated that 80% of projects for implementing the process management culture fail due to the complexity of the required integration. For this reason, we recommend you look for BPMS solutions which are highly integrable, called low code. Remember: BPMS solutions must allow the processes to be automated in a simple way.
Electronic forms
The topic of integration has already been tackled, but not being able to do it properly is not the only reason why your BPM strategy can fail. You certainly have already heard about electronic forms. As you know, these forms are structures of data that store the information about your processes.
If it is necessary to develop HTMLs, build database charts and create a robust development to give these forms life, it is certainly the right time to make a cost vs. benefit analysis, after all, your business is not to develop a system (unless you are a software house).
Automated processes
You may have already seen, or even used a wide range of process modeling tools. Nevertheless, when we talk about BPMS we need to be aware that drawing the flow is important, but it is even more important that you hit ‘play’ and the process is automated.
Having that in mind, make sure your solution allows you to, in a single environment, draw a process and create business rules in the transitions (also testing conditions with information coming in through the forms or other systems) that make it possible for the flow to be documented. Although these may seem like small details, they are the ones which will enable your company to rapidly evolve.
Documentation
What to say about documentation? We sure have tried to get rid of documents, but, the more automated a process is, the more we generate PDF files, reports, excel sheets and others, and this needs to be kept in check somehow. (Take a look at our article about the Paperless Company)
We have already addressed integration, right? Well, if your BPMS has to be integrated to your other management systems, you should look for a BPMS solution that supports the integration to market ECMs, or better still, which offers an ECM embedded in its solution (I won’t even mention that this ECM should also have resources that allow a simple document management, because this will be the topic of another article).
Indicators, Key Performance Indicators and Dashboards
I bet you hear about these every day, isn’t that right? Well, you will either do that through a conventional BI solution, or check if your BPMS offers the option to extract indicators without the need for programming, and programming and more programming.
If you hear any of the following: “For that you need to build a data extractor”, “all you need is to know SQL”, be careful. Sure, you will need technical support, but remember: you can’t depend on IT all the time.
The best solution is that IT provides you with the information so you may create your own KPI or Dashboard yourself.
Finally, Process Management Culture
BPMS solutions aim at making business processes and workflows more efficient and adaptable to the constant changes that happen in the organization. That is part of the process management culture, and we know that there is still a lot of concern when it comes to the return on investment of BPM projects. To know exactly the return on investment your project will have, download our ROI calculator.
Try Neomind Fusion Platform, a solution that optimizes and integrates Process Management (BPM), Documentation Management (ECM), Capture, Portal and Analytics, enabling integration to employees, clients, suppliers and any other individual in an easy and simple way.
Read more: How BPM potentialize your ERP.
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