Unlocking Business Process Management for Modern Enterprises
1.?????? What is Business Process Management?
Business Process Management (BPM) is pivotal in enhancing operational efficiency and fostering a comprehensive organizational understanding of end-to-end processes. It, in turn, leads to increased transparency, improved process comprehension, and enhanced direct communication across departmental boundaries (Minou Benraad et al., 2022).
a.???? Process Improvement:?Not every process requires immediate improvement. It is essential to carefully evaluate areas for enhancement, plan changes, and prepare for their implementation.
b.???? Key Contributions of BPM:?BPM assists in identifying pain points within processes that require improvement. By involving the right stakeholders and evaluating improvement opportunities collaboratively, BPM paves the way for effective change management and training for process participants.
c.???? Process Transparency:?Documenting processes while making them accessible is vital for collaboration and execution. BPM aids in modelling and designing processes while offering a holistic view of relevant information, structuring processes, and providing intuitive navigation for employees, suppliers, and external stakeholders.
d.???? Process Implementation:?A transparent foundation is imperative before any implementation. BPM aids in integrating processes into the company's structure, disseminating them to internal teams, and automating manual tasks and processes.
e.???? Crucial Benefits of BPM:?Agility, productivity, efficiency, risk reduction, compliance, transparency, employee satisfaction, and measurable outcomes are among the top benefits of embracing BPM.
f.????? Process Lifecycle:?The journey encompasses process documentation, execution, and analysis, collectively contributing to continuous improvement.
g.???? Process Architecture:?Starting with high-level value chains, organizations can structure, organize, and control business processes, delving into specific business areas to define final processes. This approach uses concepts, including value chains, end-to-end processes, process areas, and sub-processes (Georgi Dimov Kerpedzhiev et al., 2020).
h.???? Customer Journeys:?Dedicated customer journeys link to affected business processes, offering insights from a customer-centric perspective.
i.????? Reality vs. Models:?While models can not capture the full complexity of reality, they provide crucial insights into tasks, responsibilities, and interactions that drive initiatives.
j.????? Process Documentation:?As-Is and To-Be process modelling is fundamental for process design and analysis. Problem diagnosis, root cause analysis, potential estimation, change management, IT projects, and process automation contribute to successful implementation.
2.?????? ?What affects BPM in practice?
Minou Benraad, Baris Ozkan, Oktay Turetken, and Irene Vanderfeesten (2022) propose that cultivating a BPM-supportive culture has a profound impact on individuals' attitudes and behaviours, resulting in heightened Individual Process Orientation (IPO). This cultural shift also positively influences individuals' adherence to established processes. Regarding BPM implementation, practitioners must regard culture as a pivotal driver and primary consideration. Embracing a holistic approach that prioritizes a BPM-supportive culture can function as a strategic management method for achieving organizational goals. Moreover, insights from works by Grau and Moormann (2014) and McCormack (2001) underscore that strategic orientation, organizational structures, management styles, and leadership practices significantly shape the perceived quality of processes. Rosemann and vom Brocke (2014) advocate for a broader perspective, highlighting the importance of core BPM values and governance structures in decision-making and process-related roles.
Wil M. P. van der Aalst, Marcello La Rosa, and Flávia Maria Santoro (2016) emphasize the alignment of research with BPM's original goal of enhancing business processes rather than solely focusing on refining process models. This observation resonates with Marlon Dumas, as evidenced in his recent keynote speech at BPM’15 (Dumas 2015). Organizational resistance, they note, can pose substantial obstacles to the successful execution of BPM initiatives. To this end, their paper underscores the significance of research that targets tangible business process improvements rather than merely enhancing BPM techniques and tool artifacts, such as process models. While a considerable portion of BPM and Workflow Management (WFM) literature revolves around process models, it is essential to note that process models only deliver value when they actively contribute to process enhancement. Verification of model integrity is a prerequisite for process automation. However, possessing sound models alone does not inherently lead to improved performance. A model's efficacy depends on its alignment with strategic objectives, emphasizing tangible contributions to organizational goals, be it increased operational efficiency or competitive advantage.
Using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) becomes pivotal to gauging process improvements. Dumas et al. (2013) categorize KPIs as quantifiable metrics encompassing dimensions including time, quality, cost, and flexibility. These metrics serve as benchmarks for process performance. The choice of KPIs should harmonize with an organization's strategic intent. For instance, companies often employ time and cost metrics while aiming to enhance operational efficiency, while quality metrics become pertinent when targeting improved market penetration. KPIs must be tied to specific target values, aligning with the overarching strategic plan.
A promising avenue to establish a more powerful link between BPM and tangible process enhancements involves harnessing event data within an organization. This approach emphasizes specific process steps or aggregate measures. Relying on logged data rather than manually collected data lends greater accuracy, as insights drawn are grounded in evidence rather than subjective confidence. Process mining amplifies these insights, enabling the augmentation of process models with real-time performance information. It empowers organizations to delve into end-to-end processes comprehensively.
Another avenue for refining processes involves integrating Operations Research (OR) techniques into business processes. OR techniques offer avenues to streamline processes by optimizing execution sequences or minimizing resource allocation costs. This integration, advocated by John Buzacott, demonstrates the value of linking Operations Research and BPM. While OR techniques have found success in addressing specific process challenges, their systematic application to broader process improvement problems remains relatively unexplored.
3.????? Paving the Future of BPM
Recent discussions on the future landscape of BPM highlight the imperative to challenge existing BPM capabilities. Georgi Dimov Kerpedzhiev, Ulrich Matthias K?nig, Maximilian R?glinger, and Michael Rosemann (2020) propose a refined set of BPM capabilities for the future. Anticipating the next 5 to 10 years, BPM is poised to encounter various challenges and opportunities that will influence its core components. These changes will reverberate throughout all facets of BPM, shaped in part by digitization. The essence of streamlining and innovating business processes through purposeful strategies is intrinsically related to the digitalization drive. The study emphasizes the pivotal role of delivering strategic results with purpose and creating customer-centric process designs, analysis techniques, and methods for improvement. Furthermore, fostering an opportunity-oriented mindset within BPM practices emerges as a major theme.
Addressing the identified challenges and opportunities necessitates a balanced approach. We must develop an equivalent number of new BPM capabilities. The scope of BPM supposedly expands, encompassing knowledge from diverse disciplines, including innovation management, entrepreneurship, customer relationship management, data science, and agile software development. Crucially, the horizon of BPM extends beyond conventional process technologies, embracing advancements like the Internet of Things, blockchain, and artificial intelligence. As researchers in BPM advise, it is crucial not to lose sight of practitioners' daily challenges while also ensuring to adopt the latest accomplishments.
Van de Aalst (2012) outlines process modelling languages, process enactment infrastructures, process model analysis, process mining, and process flexibility as pivotal domains for exploration. Rosemann (2014) advocates for value-driven BPM, ambidextrous BPM, and customer process management. The updated BPM capability framework operationalizes the principles of good BPM, incorporating elements like context awareness, holism, technology appropriation, and purpose from von Brocke et al. (2014).
This updated framework, particularly in Methods, IT, and People, illustrates the need to enhance corporate BPM training programs, empowering employees with future-focused skills. Practitioners are encouraged to forge stronger collaborations across corporate functions and actively engage with BPM researchers, staying receptive to the latest research and experimenting with emerging technologies to remain attuned to industry progress.
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We must acknowledge the study limitations, including a limited number of experts drawn from specific networks. Design decisions influence the results, including the application of Bruin and Rosemann's (2007) core BPM elements and the total number of capability areas. These constraints, however, serve as catalysts for future research and inspire further exploration.
Minou Benraad, Baris Ozkan, Oktay Turetken, and Irene Vanderfeesten (2022) admit another limitation pertains to the methodology used to measure process conformance. The study acknowledges that perceived and actual process conformance may diverge in specific scenarios. Further research can ascertain true conformance, potentially through process mining or similar techniques, to establish a more accurate relationship with the Proxy Process Conformance (PPC). The relatively modest R2 values imply additional influential factors in IPO and PPC. Extending the research model to encompass these factors is an avenue for deeper understanding. Although the research sites span different countries and continents, the uniformity of the organization and industry domain introduces external validity risks to the findings. Additional variables such as organization size and the role of individual employees can shape the relationships among the core concepts investigated in this study. Future research can incorporate these variables to enrich insights.
Tahir Ahmad and Amy Van Looy (2020) highlight the significance of focusing on Industry 4.0 support using intelligent tools and technologies, such as sustainable smart waste disposal processes. Business processes, aligned with digital innovations, must seamlessly integrate with existing IT infrastructures within the Industry 4.0 landscape.
In line with future advancements, Wil M. P. van der Aalst (2013) encourages authors and tool developers to transparently delineate the specific BPM use cases targeted by their results. The author encourages practitioners and academics to share open-source software and data sets encompassing process models and event logs.
IBM envisions Hyperautomation as a transformative paradigm akin to a second industrial revolution. Characterized by the automation of various processes within an organization, this approach enables repetitive tasks to operate without manual intervention. Coupling hyperautomation technologies with business process management (BPM) can drive the production of higher-quality products at scale.
According to McKinsey (2017), Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) will become integral to the next-generation operating models of companies. This evolution hinges on five core technologies: Robotic Process Automation (RPA), smart workflow, machine learning/advanced analytics, natural-language generation (NLG), and cognitive agents.
?References
An Exploration into Future Business Process Management Capabilities in View of Digitalization | Business & Information Systems Engineering ( springer.com )
Sustainability | Free Full-Text | Business Process Management and Digital Innovations: A Systematic Literature Review ( mdpi.com )
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