Business processes play a key role in every company and organization operating on today’s market, and their overall functioning, growth rate and its position in the market hinge on whether they are all handled in a proper manner.
These days, businesses can effectively support their work with the help of modern IT solutions developed and tailored to help them manage their business processes. What should business process management look like in a modern company that keeps up with the times and wants to ensure its competitive edge?
What is business process management all about?
The essence of business process management is to ensure full transparency and optimization of all processes handled by an organization, since they are the lifeblood of every business, and the main purpose of their existence is to coordinate all activities carried out within them. The most common definition of business processes sees them presented as repetitive individual activities or sets of such activities, which are carried out with the aim of achieving a specific, visible and measurable end result – making a decision, developing a product, implementing a service, creating a document, an e-mail or achieving another clearly defined objective. Business processes comprise a sequence of steps or activities that need to be performed to achieve a goal.
Business processes can be divided into two key categories – core and back-office processes. As the name suggests, core processes are fundamental to the functioning of a company – they directly contribute to its business performance and impact its bottom line. If they break down for any reason or worse – come to a screeching halt, this situation can completely shut down the company’s operations. Back-office processes, on the other hand, serve an auxiliary function, supporting the operation and proper handling of core processes. One of the most important characteristics of back-office processes is that they generate relatively high costs, while core processes bring in the majority of revenue. However, these two layers of processes are interconnected and mutually dependent on each other, and one should not forget about this connection – without well-functioning back-office processes, the operation of key processes becomes difficult, less efficient, resulting in disruptions and even breakdowns in the long run.
The theory and practice of business process management
Business process management is a modern approach to managing business processes, the main objective of which is to optimize their execution. As a methodology, the concept of business process management (or BPM for short) is supposed to improve the quality of operations of the enterprise as a whole while boosting the efficiency of its daily operation, thus allowing it to achieve its business goals faster and more effectively while ensuring sustainable growth and keeping up to speed with current technological trends. Proper business process management is also key for every company to gain and maintain a leading position on the market, which is particularly important for companies with serious aspirations that set a bar high for themselves in order to join or stay among the group of industry and market leaders.
Modern business process management is more than just a theory, since these days all of its assumptions and ideas are made possible by highly advanced, state-of-the-art enterprise IT systems, which enable business process automation, as well as workflow and documentation management in in the company, thus contributing to the increased efficiency of its operations, better organization of its business activities and increased competitiveness in the industry. Business process management systems are currently a must have for any company that wants to be among the leaders on the market and keep up with the requirements of digital transformation. With effective and efficient business process management, the company gains a full insight into all the processes taking place within the organization, thus moving closer towards achieving process excellence.
Business process management systems and their features
Modern business process management systems are technologically advanced solutions developed in line with the highest standards of enterprise IT solutions, which enable developing and building modern business applications, efficiently managing business processes in an organization, and handling simple and standard process scenarios, as well as their more advanced and complex counterparts What is more, BPM-class systems can be easily integrated with other software solutions and suites already deployed within the company, including ERP and CRM platforms, as well as domain systems. Some of the most noteworthy among the business process management solutions available on the market include innovative low-code platforms.
Low-code platforms are highly-advanced tools, which enable their users to quickly and easily build business applications, thus eliminating the need for knowing programming languages and learning how to code. The best such platforms on the market take advantage of bespoke technologies to enable efficient real-time change management, which offers the users the ability to implement changes and modifications in both currently developed, as well already deployed applications, according to the rhythm of business, with immediate result, thus making sure that the time-to-business is as short as possible. Such capabilities are critical for fast-growing companies, as they ensure a smooth response to the ever-changing business needs, with no downtime or transition periods and full control over the business application stack.