How to keep the BPM wheel rolling

By Dr. Grzegorz B. Gruchman, Managing Director

“The BPM wheel has to begin to roll and must do so continuously. However, it must roll on a solid foundation, comprised of an enterprise architecture and process governance structures”
-Dr. Grzegorz B. Gruchman

What is BPM? Business Process Management is an IT-enabled management discipline that helps companies to implement their strategies, improve operational performance and facilitate change. It is based on a principle of continuous process management as a cycle, where all processes undergo analysis, design, implementation, execution and controlling within a company-wide business process strategy.

Business Process Management (BPM) is where the operational management meets IT. It has a business-oriented side and a technical side. Both are part of the same coin, cannot be separated but look differently. Business-oriented BPM takes care of all tasks performed within a company, regardless whether they are performed by managers or employees, by software and computers or other machinery. It is supported by process modeling and analysis tools. Technical BPM takes care of tasks performed by software and computers. Technical BPM is enabled by the so-called Business Process Management Systems (BPMS), which take care of process execution and data flows across various application systems.

Provided the strategy is good, BPM is the primary tool to execute it in an effective way. Its benefits are many. There are no executives who would not like to increase quality of products and services, deliver them faster and increase satisfaction of customers. These are the impacts of process transparency and standardization, improved task coordination and a better match between business needs and IT support. This in turn is achieved, if BPM is applied. Companies and agencies which discovered the secret of business process management are simply better than others.

Enterprise Architecture. How to achieve and sustain such benefits? The BPM wheel has to begin to roll and must do so continuously. However, it must roll on a solid foundation, comprised of an Enterprise Architecture and Process Governance structures. A perfect Enterprise Architecture inventories all business components of a company or agency, such as objectives, performance measures, units and departments, processes and tasks, jobs, documents and the like. It also inventories all technical components of a company, such as applications, databases, computer hardware and networks.

What is more important however, it also describes interrelationships between those components – who does what and how, in short. To track those relationships and to keep them updated, a software tool, such as ARIS IT Architect has to be used. Enterprise Architecture supports achievement of many objectives, but from a BPM perspective it allows to define exact process boundaries – where it begins and ends, as well as which departments, tasks, jobs and applications involved in process execution. It also makes it easier to define process performance measures. If it is not done and done properly – good luck. The only way to really improve and sustain work result delivery is to manage an end-to-end process. If its boundaries are too narrow, you have only 25% chance to really improve overall results, 25% chance things will get worse and 50% chance process management will make no difference at all.

Once an end-to-end process is properly delineated and defined, somebody has to be put in charge of its management. In traditional companies, the focus of management is on resources, particularly people and money. Therefore, management system has to be augmented by process-related duties and procedures. A high-ranking executive or a managerial team has to assume responsibility for process result planning and monitoring of its execution. A methodology such as ARIS Value Engineering for Process Governance is very handy for that purpose.

Process Design, Execution and Monitoring. Once we know where the process begins and ends and who is in charge, the BPM wheel begins to move. A process modeling and analysis tool, such as ARIS Business Architect can be used to map existing process in a more detailed way. The process maps are used to find improvement opportunities or to define how best practices will be applied in a company or agency. The future process maps are formatted and published using ARIS Business Publisher, to distribute new procedures among employees in an electronic way.

The process maps are adopted using technical tools, available within a BPMS such as webMethods, to develop blueprints for execution of the automated process segments. The BPMS engine executes the blueprints for each process instance, handling data flows and coordinating humans/system tasks.

Data on execution of process instances is extracted from application systems and stored within a tool, such as ARIS Process Performance Manager. The data is used to compute performance indicators, presented to a person or team in charge of the process performance.  If the performance indicators indicate something is wrong, the same data is used to analyze the process and to find reasons behind unsatisfactory results.

Once a required change in process organization is suggested and designed using ARIS Business Architect, one of its add-on modules, namely ARIS Business Simulator can be used to test if implementation of intended changes will lead to expected results. The future process maps are formatted and published using ARIS Business Publisher – but you know already what comes next. This is how the BPM wheel keeps turning. Would you like to try?