A company with multiple operating departments should optimize and automate a number of business processes in order to maintain its competitive edge as well as improve productivity/efficiency in its business operations.
Business Process Defined
A business process is a series of detailed measurable activities performed by individuals under an established operational system designed to attain a predetermined outcome.
The procedures have these important characteristics:
The procedures have internal and external users.
They occur across or between the organization’s departments vis-a-vis different organizations.
They may be based on how work is performed in the business.
The business processes have three key components -Entity, Things, and Tasks.
Entity refers to how the procedure is followed.
Things refer to the fact that procedures are designed in response to how actual or informational items are managed.
Tasks refer to completed work or outcomes to deal with the things or the procedural workflow.
The following are types of business processes:
a) Mortgage Process
b) Credit Verification
c) Product Development
d) Business Trip Preparations
e) New Accounts Process
f) Quotations
g) Product Shipments
Companies are working to improve their business processes using the latest computer technological applications and workflow software. In light of this development, across-the-board execution of business-process management should be established.
Automating business process management comprises of a series of steps:
The first step is enterprise resource planning. It involves the review of areas where automation has already been installed. Operating areas such as logistics, accounting, procurement and manufacturing should be looked into under the automation project. If these areas are already automated, then we go to the next step.
The second step in the automation process is in the area of marketing or customer relationship management and revenue-generation process. The third step is in the area of supplier relationship administration or the procurement process.
Business organizations are adopting BPM in these areas where it might make a difference. Majority of these procedures involve internal departments of the organization while a few of them are the results of real-time interactions between the business organization and its external partners such as its service providers, customer base and other investors.
Interest in business process management software (BPM) is expanding rapidly, as shown by a study from Forrester Study in which one third of organizations surveyed by the business are using or piloting BPM, a dramatic increase compared with mid-2002, when just 11% were attempting BPM.
Business Process Management (BPM) automates and streamlines the business processes which are vital for the organization in order to improve business efficiency. From the business process of hiring an individual to processing a purchase order, BPM aids the restructuring,controlling and handling of workflows involving employees and functional systems in order to produce a much better operating procedure for each business area.
In order for business process management (BPM) to become an effective tool, attention should be given on the outcomes of the actual business process and the designed workflows . It is capable of mapping out the interactions among the procedural workflows under which entities, things, tasks operate. Company rules utilized in the business process also should be defined. As a result of automating a business process, one could easily streamline procedures and thus control its impact on the various business processes.
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