Harnessing Business Process Management: Top 10 Strategic Objectives for Organisations

While considering the rapid change in the business world, organisations need to adopt efficiency and agility to grow and achieve sustainable success. Business process management is a tool that can help them to streamline operations and enhance productivity, ultimately supporting them to gain a competitive edge in the market.

By implementing BPM strategies, organisations can achieve a myriad of strategic goals, each crucial for enhancing operational effectiveness and driving sustainable growth.

In this blog, we delve deeper into the key goals that organisations achieve through BPM, illustrating its transformative potential across industries.

What is Business Process Management?

Business Process Management (BPM) is a systematic approach to making an organisation’s workflow more effective, efficient, and adaptable to changing environments. It involves the analysis, design, implementation, monitoring, and continuous improvement of business processes to achieve organisational goals. BPM seeks to align processes with the company’s strategic objectives, ensuring that every action taken contributes to overall business success.

The core of BPM lies in understanding and mapping out the processes that underpin business activities. This includes identifying the sequence of tasks, the flow of information, and the roles and responsibilities of individuals involved. By doing so, organisations can pinpoint inefficiencies, redundancies, and bottlenecks that hinder performance.

BPM integrates methodologies and technologies to automate and optimise these processes. This often involves the use of software tools that provide capabilities such as process modelling, workflow automation, performance monitoring, and data analysis. The goal is to create a seamless, agile, and responsive operational environment.

By adopting BPM, organisations can achieve significant benefits including cost reduction, improved customer satisfaction, enhanced agility, and regulatory compliance. It fosters a culture of continuous improvement, where processes are regularly reviewed and refined to adapt to new challenges and opportunities, ensuring sustained business excellence.

5 Stages of the BPM Lifecycle

The Business Process Management (BPM) lifecycle consists of five key stages that systematically guide organisations through the optimisation of their business processes. Each stage has specific objectives and activities that contribute to the overall effectiveness and efficiency of the BPM initiative. These stages are Process Scoping, Process Review, Process Improvement, Process Implementation, and Process Monitoring.

1. Process Scoping
   Process Scoping sets the groundwork for a successful BPM initiative by identifying and prioritising processes for enhancement. This stage involves the following activities:
   • Pinpointing the key business area or process that significantly impacts organisational objectives.
   • Engaging in workshops to grasp current activities and processes.
   • Using insights to craft a comprehensive process architecture outlining functions and supporting processes.
   • Evaluating processes against criteria like execution challenges, customer interactions, risks, and volume.
   • Prioritising high-impact processes that align with organisational goals for initial improvement efforts.

2. Process Review
   This step involves a detailed exploration of processes through interviews and documentation by following these steps:
   • Conducting in-depth interviews to grasp roles, responsibilities, and interactions.
   • Creating a detailed process map adhering to BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) standards.
   • Uncovering bottlenecks, redundancies, and areas ripe for enhancement.

3. Process Improvement
   The Process Improvement stage bridges the gap between identifying issues and implementing changes:
   • Employing methods such as time, cost, value, and root cause analysis to uncover inefficiencies.
   • Using insights to streamline activities and eliminate waste.
   • Highlighting potential benefits to secure stakeholder buy-in.

4. Process Implementation
   Process Implementation turns redesigned processes into action. Here’s how:
   • Outlining specific steps for transitioning to improved processes.
   • Clarifying roles to ensure accountability.
   • Continuously aligning with Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
   • Integrating redesigned processes into daily operations.

5. Process Monitoring
   The Process Monitoring phase ensures the sustained benefits from the improved processes. It involves:
   • Communicating changes effectively and providing necessary training.
   • Using KPIs to assess and optimise process performance.
   • Ensuring consistent delivery of expected benefits with flexibility for adjustments.

This structured approach to BPM empowers organisations to evolve, adapt, and thrive in dynamic business environments.

Top 10 Goals Organisations Can Achieve Through BPM

Organisations are increasingly adopting Business Process Management (BPM) to address various challenges and leverage opportunities in a rapidly evolving business environment. BPM offers a structured approach to managing and optimising business processes, helping companies achieve several key goals. Here are the top 10 goals organisations aim to achieve through BPM:

1. Business Transformation
   BPM is a catalyst for business transformation, enabling organisations to fundamentally change how they operate. By analysing and redesigning processes, companies can shift from traditional, manual workflows to efficient, and agile processes. For example, an insurance company can use business process management strategies to modernise its operations, automate repetitive tasks, standardise processes and improve customer services.

2. Improved Productivity
   One of the primary goals of BPM is to boost productivity. By streamlining processes and eliminating inefficiencies, employees can focus on higher-value tasks. BPM also gives an insight into repetitive tasks to understand the right opportunities for automation.An example is a manufacturing firm implementing BPM to automate production scheduling, reducing downtime and increasing output without additional resource costs.

3. Knowledge Management
   By properly documenting and mapping business processes, organisations can better manage knowledge. Accurately capturing, storing, and disseminating process-related information ensures that the knowledge is retained within the organisation even when a key employee leaves or retires. BPM also ensures the availability of the relevant information for the right roles, ensuring seamless operations and faster induction and training of new employees.For example, a consulting firm can use BPM to document best practices and standard operating procedures, making them easily available for training and reference.

4. Cost Reduction
   Reducing operational costs is a significant motivator for adopting business process management methodologies. By identifying and eliminating wasteful activities, organisations can optimise the process, manage resource requirements appropriately and achieve substantial cost savings.For example, an Australian council could demonstrate 60% cost savings through resource optimisation and efficiency improvement. Read the case study.

5. Enhance Customer Service
   Improving customer service is a critical goal for many organisations. With BPM in place, companies can design and implement processes that enhance the customer experience. Organisations can also map processes with long customer wait times and identify and remove inefficiencies to optimise processes. BPM also helps standardise processes across branches to ensure a unified experience for customers.For instance, a bank can manage its processes to streamline loan approval processes, reduce turnaround times and even standardise the process across branches to ensure consistent experience for customers with documented processes.

6. Organisational Restructuring
   When a company undergoes restructuring, BPM helps identify core processes, pinpoint inefficiencies, and realign workflows to match new organisational goals. It enables leaders to visualise current operations, simulate proposed changes, and implement new structures more effectively. By providing clear insights into process interdependencies and impacts, BPM facilitates smoother transitions and helps mitigate risks associated with organisational change.For example, a multinational corporation merging two regional offices could use BPM to harmonize disparate processes, eliminate redundancies, and create standardized procedures across the newly combined entity.

7. Digital Transformation
   Business Process Management (BPM) is a key enabler of digital transformation, providing organisations with the tools and methodologies to reimagine their operations in the digital age. It helps companies identify areas where digital solutions can have the most significant impact, whether through process automation, data analytics, or customer-facing digital interfaces.For instance, a traditional retailer could use BPM to map out its current sales and inventory processes, and then redesign them to incorporate e-commerce platforms, mobile apps, and real-time inventory tracking systems. This approach ensures that digital initiatives are not just technological overlays but are deeply integrated into the company’s core operations.

8. Drive Business Continuity
   BPM helps organisations identify and prioritise their core processes. This allows companies to focus on devising strategies to maintain essential operations during disruptions. BPM facilitates the development of detailed continuity plans for each critical process and helps in ensuring they are continually reviewed and improved, as well as available for the right stakeholders.For example, a financial services company can create disaster recovery plans for its core banking operations, ensuring they remain functional in the event of a crisis.

9. Increase Operational Efficiency
   Through process mapping and analysis, BPM helps organisations identify inefficiencies and bottlenecks, enabling targeted improvements. It promotes standardisation, reducing errors and variability, while facilitating automation of repetitive tasks. BPM optimises resource allocation, improves cross-functional integration, and fosters a culture of continuous improvement.For example, a logistics company can might manage business processes to streamline its shipping and delivery processes to identify opportunities to reduce transit times and improve efficiency.Read real-life case studies of 5 organisations across industries demonstrating operational excellence with BPM.

10. Ensure Risk Management
    BPM supports risk management by identifying potential risks on a task-by-task basis within processes and implementing controls to mitigate them.For instance, a pharmaceutical company can use BPM to ensure compliance with regulatory requirements, reducing the risk of non-compliance penalties.

Achieve Your BPM Goals by Implementing the Right Software

To fully realise the benefits of Business Process Management (BPM), implementing the right software is essential. PRIME BPM is an excellent choice for organisations looking to accelerate their BPM journey. The tool allows you to map, analyse, improve, and automate your business processes all within a single integrated platform. Its intuitive interface caters to both process experts and business users, ensuring that all team members can contribute to process optimisation.

PRIME BPM offers powerful features like an in-built methodology and BPMN 2.0 for standardised process documentation, one-click analysis on process efficiency, value time and cost, and process approval capabilities. These features facilitate end-to-end process improvement, making it easier to identify bottlenecks, streamline workflows, and enhance overall productivity.

Many leading organisations have successfully used PRIME BPM to maximise the output from their BPM initiatives. By leveraging this tool, businesses can achieve their key goals of business transformation, improved productivity, cost reduction, enhanced customer service, and more.

Interested in discovering how PRIME BPM can transform your business processes? Check out some success stories and take a free trial to explore its powerful features and functionalities. Start your BPM journey with PRIME BPM today.