What is Business Process Management (BPM) solution ?
Any organization works like a system. System is entity comprised of interrelated and interdependent part. The entity is much bigger than the sum of individual parts of system. The system shall be able to interact outside its boundaries. Organization has its departments and all departments put together create a much bigger entity called organization. The departments interact with each other to carry out certain activities and produce results. One has to think beyond the departments to produce good results of for the organization. As a sales consultant in NCR I lay particularly high emphasis on system thinking and working. Because if you only focus on production or only on sales, it does not lead to sustainable results.
In organization the departments interact with each other with the help of business processes. So, managing Business processes to produce results is key aspect of business productivity. Following are the key components of Business Process Management:
- Business Processes and workflows and SOPS: As first steps all the business workflows are documented in the form of Flow charts and Standard operating procedures are written. For this input are taken from process participants and standard documents are created. For documenting work flows a standard format is used. Similarly, for SOPs as well a standard format is use including the activity, timelines or frequencies and the responsibilities are defined.
- Internal SLAs: Every department in the business is related to each other as a customer and supplier. For example, sales department is customer to production. Accounts is supplier to purchase for funds to buy raw material to Procurement. A supplier is under obligation to deliver the agreed services to customer in committed time and with quantity and quality. These internal agreements of time, quantity and quality are called internal SLAs. Internal SLAs put responsibility on the supplier to delivery the service as per agreement so that customer must receive quality from his supplier and in turn can deliver quality to his customer. As business Growth consultant I have seen the value of internal SLAs in the Business process management. I have implemented the internal SLAs in various organizations and have supported the organizations to deliver better and faster results.
- Alignment of team and processes: In business process management the processes and SOPs are not documented in isolation. Rather all the functions are interdependent. Also, inputs are taken from relevant teams for documenting the processes. Aligning of teams for documenting of processes is the key for successful implementation of business process in the organization.
- Training of team on the processes: Once the processes have been documented, teams must be trained for their implementation on ground so that consistent results can be produced. The organization must ensure that listed trainings must be conducted for ensuring the predictive results. Therefore, as Sales trainer and business Trainer I strongly recommend that organization must be committed to training. All processes must be delivered to organizational teams through trainings. As one of finest Sales Trainer in India I have seen the impact of sales training on results. For sales process, the training is highly impactful.
- Consistency of implementation and Audits: Constant focus on the implementation of processes is a must for the business. The implementation of processes is always incredibly challenging and getting the processes implemented on ground can become a real challenge for the organization. As business Growth consultant I have seen many clients starting on process journey with high level of energy but soon losing enthusiasm. So we focus on audit of process implementation. Continuous focus gives huge support in process implementation. Consistent implementation is key to success for Business Process Management
- Measurement of process effectiveness – PPIs: All business process must produce results for being effective. Therefore, it is imperative to measure the performance of a business process. Every process is followed with Process Performance Indices. These process performance indices (PPI) must be measured.
- MBF – Management By Facts (Measurement and data analysis and decision making): In business everything is a data. Activities and results must be measured at every stage for each person and each department and team. MIS must be worked out and time to time analysis of MIS is must activity in any business. Improvement action plan must be created post every MIS analysis. Business process management will work only if the organization is having a comprehensive method of collecting the data. For this purpose, the data collection technology and automation is a must for any business.
- Continuous improvement: No process is cast in stone forever. Instead every process is dynamic. So, organization must define the SOP for process improvement as well. Every now and then whenever any best practice is identified the process must be open to be modified. The organization can define its frequency and SOP steps and empowerments in the system to incorporate the improvement. The process owner’s approval and control procedure must be followed for the improvement.
- Process Automation: Technology implementation is a must for process automation and for making it optimally efficient. Lots of steps can be automated with a thoughtful implementation of technology. Technological interventions like CRM, ERP etc can be implemented to automate the process. In the manufacturing area lots of steps can be automated through artificial intelligence and robotics. All opportunities for process automation must be evaluated.
- Process re-engineering: A process must be re- engineered time to time. New ideas of doing the business keep emerging time to time, reduction of cycle time and new technologies must be incorporated in process. This is major steps in Business process management. The best practices identified must be included in the process to reengineer the process. The process must be re- engineered at certain periodically.
About the Author –
Author, Rakesh Sharma is one of the best business coach in India. He is a business growth consultant . He has coached hundreds of clients. As Sales Trainer in India he has trained coached and trained thousands of trainees across country. He is the best business coach in NCR .
