Organizations cannot automate what they don’t understand - Before digitize , get the process managed - 7 tenants of BPM

Success of any business is decided by the process management, this practice makes business processes fit to the purpose to deliver the highest quality with constancy. Process management is a management practice or approach that defines the governance of specific business processes, enabling improved business agility and operational performance. Years of process-based research have uncovered seven essential tenets on which to establish a strong process capability. Seven Tenets of Process Management

Seven Tenets of Process Management are:

1.????Strategic alignment

2.????Governance

3.????Process models

4.????Change management

5.????Process Performance

6.????Process improvement

7.????Tools and technology

Creating a process-focused organization not only requires time and resources, but most importantly, it requires a fundamental shift in thinking about how everyone contributes to the organization’s products or services. This shift helps each contributor think about what occurs upstream as well as downstream from his or her individual activities within the process. This horizontal view of work provides a more holistic understanding of how work is accomplished and the requirements to effectively execute the process end-to-end. These tenets of process management are seen time and time again in best-in-class organizations and consistently enable the success of process management programs and initiatives.

STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT

Strategic alignment refers to how well process management links to organizational objectives. Strategy and process management activities should be integrated and form a symbiotic relationship. The focus of process management depends on current strategy, and process management activities and measures help decision makers track progress toward goals and determine where to make strategic changes. Subcategories of Strategic Alignment The following concepts comprise the major components involved in the strategic alignment tenet

Alignment includes the integration with business and organizational strategies, as well as integration between the business on their process management strategy and approach. Execution refers to the standardized approach of conducting process initiatives (typically using project management methodologies). Strategy is a plan to achieve a specific end-state, goal, or objective. Effective business leaders integrate process management into the business model. Frameworks like the Malcolm Baldrige model, EFQM help organizations see the connections and points of alignment between actual work processes and strategic objectives.

GOVERNANCE

Governance is the most important of the tenets because it assigns accountability for process activities. Governance encompasses all the structural elements that help process management function. It is concerned with roles, responsibility, accountability, oversight, sponsorship, and management structures. The governance of process management often dictates the efficiency and speed at which an organization implements and embeds process management into its practices.

PROCESS MODELS

Process frameworks and models ignite understanding. By establishing a framework, organizations are better able to understand core processes as well as supporting processes, and they can plainly see how the supporting processes affect the performance of core processes. Attempting process management without a model is a losing battle. Models make abstract, complex processes more tangible by providing a concrete illustration of how processes work and how they fit together. When an organization can visualize how its processes interact, it can better coordinate improvement projects, choose measures, and manage personnel.

CHANGE MANAGEMENT

Change Management is the act of proactively managing change and minimizing the resistance to organizational change by engaging key stakeholders in the change process. This is often accomplished through the application of a structured process or set of approaches to transition employees, teams, and/or an entire organization to a desired future state. Without a planned change management approach, organizations are doomed to fail in establishing and internalizing process thinking. The change management plan must include a comprehensive communication strategy to ensure that the workforce understands the new focus. Best-practice organizations repeatedly cite promoting the value of process management as the most important component of their change management strategy

?PROCESS PERFORMANCE

Levels of performance and maturity within an organization must be evaluated regularly. These factors indicate how processes are performing as well as the overall effectiveness of process management efforts. Process performance encompasses the measurement, monitoring, and control of processes. This tenet asks the following questions: How well do you know your processes? And how effectively can you identify which changes need to be made? Measurement enables you to answer those questions with more confidence. To grow process performance maturity, Experts advise organizations to focus on three key elements:

1.????process measures,

2.????process analytics

3.????maturity assessments.

PROCESS IMPROVEMENT

The goal of process management is to improve performance. Whether the emphasis is customer retention, cycle time, employee satisfaction, efficiency, business growth, productivity, or any other goal, organizations implement process management to improve something. Although you can pursue process improvement without the benefit of process management—as many organizations do—this typically results in fragmented, random acts of improvement. The improvements may look exciting individually; but without an overarching management strategy, they often breed unintended consequences that harm other parts of the organization.

?TOOLS AND TECHNOLOGY

Tools and technology enable automation and standardization. This, in turn, improves processes, thereby enhancing performance and potentially leading the organization to a greater level of process management maturity. When tools are created that facilitate the execution of the BPM vision, the work force is better able to contribute to improvement efforts. When an organization implements measurement technology, performance progress can be effectively tracked and cited to gain executive, cultural, and financial support. Process management could not stand up to the rapid pace of today's business world without the tools and technologies we have grown accustomed to; but tools and technology do not replace the sound principles that drive process management.

Organizations cannot automate what they don’t understand. It is essential to think through and make value-based decisions about what to automate or support with technology and which parts of the business to include in the technology or automation implementation. Beyond making those decisions, organizations must employ solid change management techniques that support its goals and culture