A business process is a lot like driving to
work. You’re trying to get from point to
point in the most efficient manner but traffic, construction and detours often hinder
your trip. Having a road map and navigation
technology can help manage the trip.
Business process management, or BPM, is
about making critical business processes
more agile and efficient by improving or
automating these processes.
“There are a lot of business processes that
are not addressed by the way of their ability
to be improved or automated,” says Bill
Russell, executive vice president, Allegient.
“The emerging business process management tool kits are targeted at that.”
Smart Business spoke with Russell about
how the emerging BPM tool kits are improving business process performance and making a significant difference in closing the gap
between a company’s business and IT sides.
How do you define BPM?
In its broadest context, BPM refers to a
management discipline targeted at improving
business performance or agility by understanding, improving and reporting about or
controlling the business process environment. That includes the application of technology in order to automate parts of it,
including workflow and business rules. It’s a
business-process-centric solution model.
How is BPM success measured?
It’s measured by improved business performance or business value, and that usually
translates into a set of key performance indicators (KPIs). In other words, you have to be
able to tell yourself how your business is running. BPM gives better insights as to the how
or what a company does or is actually operating, which then leads to improvements like
cycle time reductions, cost reductions, higher output and greater innovation.
If mapping identifies areas for improvement,
what are the next steps?
Process-mapping is about the as-is or current state. Modeling exercises define the tobe or future state or how you might improve a process. You then need to implement those
improvements and make sure there is a feedback mechanism that measures how those
improvements are doing and your ability to
control them. Now you can evaluate emerging tool kits or automated technology to
implement the improvements.
Where are the biggest opportunities for BPM
and the new tool kits?
BPM is really a big step forward for all businesses. Big companies typically already have
implemented a business process improvement method, such as Six Sigma or Total
Quality Management, but not necessarily
applied technology yet because of cost or
technical constraint. BPM is effective for the
types of processes not addressed by the big,
static software systems that people have put
in traditionally. There are a lot of business
processes not yet automated by older software systems or unaddressed by technology
in small- to mid-size companies. BPM introduces new technology capabilities by way of
integrated tool kits that make it possible to
address these manual processes.
What are tool kits?
Tool kits are a collection of integrated
engines that form a base platform. There’s an engine for mapping, one for modeling or optimizing, and one that can take the model and
convert it to a software language and then to
a module of software code that can actually
be executed. Also included is an engine for
reporting the metrics of how a newly executed process is actually operating and the
results that come out at the end.
Why are the new tool kits gaining popularity?
One of the reasons BPM is getting so much
traction is because of the emergence of a
new class of tool kits called Business Process
Management Suites. They’re not vertically
oriented, so any company can buy them and
configure them according to its industry or
needs. They are fairly generic in that they can
address a wide range of different business
processes. But the biggest reason is that they
are being built to an emerging set of standards. As examples, the modeling standard is
called BPMN for business process modeling
notation. The language it gets converted into
before software code is called BPEL, or business process execution language. When the
tool kit has to hook into other systems and
other data, it uses as its integration layer a set
of Web services standards like XML.
Who initiates and implements BPM?
Both the business side and the IT side collaboratively should be involved in the initiation and the implementation. The business
side should own it, but they need the help
and assistance of the IT organization for two
reasons. First, whenever you do BPM, the
business side provides the knowledge
around the workflow and the business rules.
But the IT side can provide the information
that may come out of other systems or the
data model that’s required to really support
that process. Second, IT can guide whether
or not you should apply new technology
against either the improvement or the business process itself. In reality, BPM and the
emerging tool kits are forging a new collaboration between IT and business, closing the
gap that’s prevalent in many companies.
BILL RUSSELL is executive vice president of Allegient. Reach
him at (317) 564-5701 or [email protected].