By Diana Wilusz Published on The Pendolino Group
The benefits of business process management (BPM) are helping organizations improve efficiency, agility, and employee satisfaction. Here’s a look at the top 6 critical benefits available when BPM is in place.
What is BPM?
Business process management (BPM) is a systematic method that provides greater efficiency and effectiveness to the workflow of an organization and creates better adaptation to an ever-changing business environment. BPM allows stakeholders to focus on their roles and shrinks the chance for human error in business processes.
BPM can be applied in many different process management areas of an organization, from new hire onboarding to automation of repeat functions. With the constantly evolving tech in business comes better ways to care for customers by creating internal business processes that make your external face look wrinkle-free.
Recently, I was talking to a CTO who had just completed an overhaul of the company’s BPM software, namely their website and automation wizard. Their workflow management goals were threefold:
- To improve user experience by reducing the number of steps needed to open an account
- To give the customer a better interface with which to talk to account managers
- To create an online method for customers to track account progress
By overhauling the automation wizard, the company was able to decrease the frustration customers felt filling out multiple forms for an account and increase conversions from their website. When they made it easier for customers through BPM tools, they found that customers were more likely to follow through with the process of opening an account and purchasing.
Further, the company has set themselves up to improve upon customer experience when their customers’ needs inevitably change, making them agile and prepared for the future.
This example shows three of the six critical benefits of business process management (BPM) application: agility, customer focus, and measurability. The other three, employee satisfaction, cost efficiency, and risk reduction are equally as important.
Let’s dive into these six critical benefits and how BPM can deliver them to you.
6 Critical Benefits of Business Process Management
1. Agility
Disorganized and complex business processes hinder flexibility when changes in the market occur. Alex Espenson says in his blog Why Every Company Needs Business Process Management, “Companies whose processes are inflexible to change are going to get left behind” as change can come from anywhere: Federal, state, or international regulation, business partnerships, new tech opportunities, or internal procedure needs or conflicts. The ability of your company to be agile in the face of transforming expectations and tech will be the difference between becoming a laggard and leading the way. Ask yourself what are bpm tools that you can begin to utilize to be proactive instead of reactive.
2. Customer Focus
Streamlined processes give your employees an edge when it comes to customer satisfaction. BPM development leads to automation of mundane or frequent requests that create robot-like employees. This, in turn, frees employees up to provide customers with personalized, attentive focus as employees are not burned out on the routine.
Take for example the company whose online-based customer service department frequently answers questions like “How much does the service cost?” or “Where can I find my billing information?” Eventually, employees burn out on answering these questions and are not as thoughtful when a real problem pops up.
BPM software automates the process of handling FAQ so customers with real problems receive the focus they deserve and expect.
3. Measurability
Through BPM, data is stored that is used to create powerful insight into where a company excels and where it trails. Measurability in business processes is incredibly important in today’s business world. With mountains of data at your fingertips for anything from which product performs better to what emotional response to customers have to your brand, there is no excuse to not be measuring your results. BPM generates the facts and figures you need to make high-level decisions about all process management—hiring and firing, product/brand performance, productivity, marketing results, etc.
4. Employee Satisfaction
Employees are constantly pushed to perform quicker, get results faster, and achieve more. It can be daunting, and more so, it can be difficult when the processes built to aid them are from the dinosaur era.
An advertising company who still sends all proofs through interoffice mail, for example, is fundamentally decreasing productivity for its workers in an age when everything is digitized. Clients must wait longer periods for ad results which frustrates their executive team and ends with dissatisfied employees who are constantly harped on for slow outcomes.
Were that same company to incorporate BPM software that allows multiple individuals (artists, writers, proofers) to work on a document in real-time, leaving comments and messages for improvement, the business process would be smoother, result in happier clients, and make communication methods more reliable.
As Charles Araujo says in his write-up, Why BPM is Now Taking a Central Role in Digital Transformation, “Organizations realize that creating transparency and enabling staff to break through barriers to see across the expanse of the enterprise are becoming critical capabilities in the era of digital transformation.”