UseCase

What is Business Process Management?

Whether you're an enterprise or small to medium business, process management can be a challenge. Fortunately, there are software platforms and tools that can help any size business keep track of its processes.

Accurately managing your processes can be difficult. Companies often have to grapple with unwieldy processes because there has not been enough time or resources to standardize them. This leaves many organizations with processes that are inefficient and end up wasting even more time and resources.

In order to have efficient processes, it’s necessary to take a look at what exactly business processes are and how to best manage them.

What is a business process?

Business processes are a set of structured steps or tasks that empower teams to achieve their goals. Processes are usually designed with many stakeholders involved in order to ensure that every step of the process is documented in a realistic manner.

Crucial components of a process include:

  • The exact tasks involved

  • The roles and people that will handle the tasks

  • The time it takes for a process to be completed

  • The correct approval roles for each task and process

In a nutshell, a business process creates transparency throughout the whole organization. Employees know what tasks they are doing when, and the management can see that the processes are helping the company achieve its targets.

What is business process management?

After the processes in your ecosystem have been standardized and implemented, the processes have to be continually managed and updated. Business process management or BPM is an organizational discipline that allows a company to get a bird’s eye view of all the processes in their company and update them accordingly.

In the past, processes were recorded in an analog fashion using paper, sticky notes, and pens. These days, business process modeling software is used to keep track of company processes and optimize them.

Digitally recording your processes ensures that nothing will ever get lost and that the processes can be shared, collaborated on, and updated according to the real-time changes at work.

Why is it important to manage your processes?

Digitally managing your process ecosystem can propel your organization forward. When processes are left unorganized, not formally defined, or improperly communicated to the team, it can be a huge drain on resources and lead to wasted time, missed deadlines, and added frustration.

Consider BPM if you want to:

  • Improve collaboration company-wide. Siloed working has been a real problem for businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic. Digitizing all your processes in one place helps break down barriers between departments and remote employees. Everyone knows exactly what their tasks are and what stage the process is in, without long email chains.

  • Reduce rising costs. To beat rising costs, it’s necessary to increase productivity and set realistic deadlines. Business process management helps your company to increase productivity, while also cutting costs associated with costly on-premise solutions. Cloud process management solutions may help many businesses be more agile without a hefty cost attached.

  • Manage remote working better. The rise in remote working means companies have to be able to track tasks and workflow progress digitally. BPM helps employees stay on the same page as management from wherever they are.

  • Boost employee motivation. More transparency, greater flexibility and increased trust in employee capabilities all help boost morale in the long term. Given the worldwide instability, it’s a huge benefit to give employees a reliable single source of truth they can rely on.

How to create a business process

Creating a business process from scratch may seem daunting, but with these simple steps, business process management can be easy, enjoyable, and effective.

Step 1: Map and model your process

Design your process by firstly mapping out the ideal process and then modeling it visually. In this phase, you should clearly define the tasks in the process and the roles that will be assigned to each task.

In FireStart, this process is made easy with the visual process modeling tool. Drag and drop your tasks into the workflow and then assign roles to each task. The roles in FireStart can be assigned to a whole team, so you don’t have to worry about minute details like which specific people will handle each task.

Step 2: Deploy your process

The deployment phase turns your process into a workflow. When a process is active and running, it becomes a dynamic workflow. In this phase, it’s important to test and see the effectiveness of your workflow. If tasks are missing or some stakeholders have been left out, now is the time to add them in before rolling out the process to the whole department.

With FireStart, running workflows is really very simple. All you have to do is hit the “Start Workflow” button in the corner and the workflow will run automatically when new data is added. For example, in an HR process when a new candidate applies for a job, the workflow will automatically start to collect the resume and notify the HR manager.

Step 3: Monitor your process for optimization

Over time, the process needs may change or you may identify bottlenecks. Monitoring the processes on a regular basis allows your team to be even more effective and more productive.

In FireStart, you can monitor workflows at a glance in the “Workflows” tab. Check in to see where your workflows may be getting stuck to improve the process. We always suggest automating tasks where possible to avoid manual tasks.  This is what’s called business process automation and it can speed up your process cycle times so you can make the most of your team’s resources!

Want to start implementing business processes?

Learn how to standardize your processes for seamless implementation.

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