Business Process Management (BPM) is about managing the way work is done with your target customers in mind.  Processes are a series of interconnected activities that transforms an input to an output. No process is "perfect" therefore opportunities for improvement can be continuously discovered and then acted upon to make gains.

Consider a restaurant.  Every restaurant designs recipes, menus, buys food, prepares food, cooks, serves, cleans, markets, sells, etc.   Some will focus on the high end others in the fast food markets.  The winners are the ones with consistently delivered processes aligned to their target market, such as those with Michelin rosettes at one end and McDonalds at another.  By keeping your target customers in mind and continuously improving your processes then the return on investment (ROI) will include

• increased market share
• increase revenues and profits
• reduced waste and costs

The ROI benefits come from implementation of the improved processes such that they guide day-to-day processing at the individual level.  Staff no longer have worries what their next activity is in a process, what they need to do, how they do it, when they do it, and where it is performed.  Processes makes it difficult for staff to skip activities, do them in the wrong order, or too late or too early etc.

The benefits are increased efficiencies, improved quality, increased output, fewer errors, and improved compliance all leading to better customer outcomes.

One of the most important impacts of BPM on an organization is 'consistency' in output.

Business Process Management as a discipline starts by identifying the existing processes in an organisation.  These are sets of input and output activities, that helps an organisation create value for its customers.  They can include Operational, Maintenance, Supporting, Marketing, Supply, and Sales Processes and more.  They need to define what a customer is in the context of them and include:

• Those that receives output from the process
• Those who have a legitimate interest in the outcomes
• Suppliers can equally be customers
• Someone that gets “value”

By then visualising processes:

• It is easy to communicate and explain the activities
• It can show you how one process is connected to another
• It is often blatantly obvious how they can be improved.
• You can add information to each activity, such as the purpose, inputs, outputs, user operating instructions, measurements (costs, resources, timings etc.)

Once visualised you can using the information to:

1. Discover efficiencies
2. Discover ways to make it more effect
3. Find areas that can be automated
4. Discover the most valuable processes for improvement
5. Induct and train new hires easier
7. Simply the job of change management

To learn more please contact Company Alliances