Every organisation—big or small—relies on business processes to function. In fact, business processes are at the heart of your organisational capability and how they perform directly impact your organisation’s success. So, while inefficient processes slow down decision-making and hurt employee productivity, optimised processes increase efficiency and greatly improve overall organisational performance.
According to the research firm IDC, companies lose up to 20 to 30% in revenue each year due to inefficiencies.
Given the importance and focus on managing, streamlining and optimising the processes, the adoption of Business Process Management (BPM) is on the rise. Implemented correctly, BPM delivers significant benefits right from bringing down costs, improving operational efficiency to mitigating risks and improving customer service.
That said, effective BPM implementation requires careful planning, communication and collaborative organisation-wide efforts. While organisations start the BPM implementation project with a bang, many get stuck in the middle or fail to achieve their goals.
In this blog, we share a 6-point checklist to follow to ensure successful BPM implementation and derive maximum output from your investment:
- Be clear on your goals beforehand
To set the right foundation for your BPM initiative, it’s crucial that you clearly define your purpose. You should be fully aware of:What objective do you want to achieve with BPM implementation? Is it increasing productivity, reducing cost, improving efficiency or customer service? For the right start, the real goal should be identified before embarking on the initiative.
What problem is it going to solve? It could be end-to-end business transparency or achieving standardisation, whatever be the goal, the team should be on the same page in terms of recognising the key problem to address.
- Identify the right processes for improvement
Understanding from where to initiate the BPM initiative can be overwhelming for organisations. However, identifying your purpose and goal points you to the right processes to get your BPM project started. For instance, if your goal is improving customer service, then you need to start with high-frequency customer service processes with a low rating or with higher execution or delay time. Similarly, in case your goal is reducing cost, then you should start with processes with the higher cost of doing the process or higher resource cost. - Capture process-related analytics
A majority of organisations spend a lot of time in mapping business processes but want to quickly get past the analysis stage. However, gathering process analytics is a key step that points to the process issues and in turn, helps in identifying improvement opportunities. Process insights, such as time and cost of doing a process, non-value-added activities within a process and process cycle efficiency prove crucial in identifying process bottlenecks and deciding the business improvement journey. - Ensure team participation and involvement
Team-wide participation and engagement is a critical ingredient to gain the maximum output from your BPM initiative. Apart from the leadership team, it is important to involve the frontline employees right at the start of the project. Keeping them updated about improvement goals and objectives makes them feel connected with improvement ideas and addresses the issues of resistance to change. Also, since the frontline staff is closest to executing the process, they can give crucial insights on process performance and areas for improvement. - Select the right-fit BPM software
A lot depends on the BPM software you choose. Hence, it’s imperative that you evaluate the software’s functionalities carefully. Look for powerful features, such as an in-built analytical engine to provide you with process-related actionable insights and one-click process prioritisation to help you identify the right processes for improvement in a click. A tool that comes with an in-built improvement tracker to assign improvement tasks and monitor their progress till completion also helps you ensure the BPM project is on track. Furthermore, it is equally important that you choose intuitive software with a user-friendly interface. - Make Business Improvement part of organisational DNA
Business improvement is not a one-and-done initiative. It is a continual journey. You need to continually monitor, measure, and improve the process and expand BPM to other processes. Thus, the focus should be on driving cultural shift within the organisation, making Business improvement business as usual. Understand there will always be room for improvement. Continually measure your process performance and take into account process doer’s suggestions and concerns to look for opportunities for further improvement.
Are you looking to simplify and fast-track your BPM journey? See how PRIME BPM, with its intuitive functionalities, can and help you get the maximum ROI with the BPM initiative. Experience the ease of quickly building process maps with drag and drop features, one-click access to powerful process analytics, collaboration features to drive continuous improvement, and more.
