What exactly does business process management mean? According to the United Nations, BPM is a system that supports the workflows necessary for running a successful company. You can invest in BPM software for all aspects of your business, from design, control, enactment, and even analysis of performance and data.

Companies that use BPM technology are able to address challenges and recognize future opportunities before their competitors do. Without it, businesses are unable to compete in the current marketplace. This is why BPM is the latest buzzword: Businesses are scrambling to include BPM software into their day-to-day business practices.

Examples of BPM

Business process management is simply a rule-fast guide to getting a task done. The more tasks that abide by it, the more BPM-friendly a business is. You can use BPM processes for any business project, in any department:

• Purchasing and Finance

To maximize income, it is essential to manage financial assets properly. BPM software can manage and track expenses, as well as monitor suppliers and subcontractors. BPM technology allows you to oversee and coordinate crucial activities, such as invoicing and billing, purchase requisitions, reimbursements, payment collections, budget approvals, and even travel requests.

• Human Resources

BPM make it much easier for human resource departments to oversee important employee data, such as training, vacations, hiring, firing, performance reviews, and management of certifications. These processes become quicker, more consistent, and more efficient with BPM technology. Ready access to such information gives HR departments the data needed to make good employee decisions.

• Marketing and Sales

Process-driven applications will support a business’ marketing and sales teams by saving valuable time and resources. In these departments, BPM software streamlines pre-sales processes, while allowing staff to respond quickly to prospective clients and adapt appropriately to evolving client demands. BPM workflows for sales and marketing can include promotional campaigns, customer inquiries, handling bids and proposals, launching new products, and managing sales process.

• Customer Relations

Employees dealing with customer relations will be able to use BPM workflows to solve issues efficiently and provide clients with information that is up-to-date and accurate. It is imperative for BPM software to integrate smoothly with a company’s sales, marketing and support systems. When done right, BPM can automate and organize crucial activities, such as acquisition of new clients, managing service calls, resolving customer complaints, approving credit, managing tasks, and conducting fraud assessment.

Features of BPM

So, how do organizations use BPM technology? Companies invest in BPM software to streamline their business operations – by executing, monitoring, and automating beginning-to-end business processes. They do this by incorporating these features into their BPM practices:

• Data Analysis

Making a good business decision relies heavily on having the most accurate and complete information at your disposal. Using current data drives the best results. If data is out-of-date, inaccurate or incomplete, businesses make bad decisions. BPM software stores data in one place, so that decision-makers can take the best action necessary in any possible circumstance.

• Automation

Every company uses business processes to accomplish their goals, whether they are fulfilling orders or sourcing strategically across enterprises or supply chains. Outdated procedures and manual tasks can cost a business time and money. BPM automates tasks to improve efficiency of operations, driving more oversight, growth, compliance and risk, while boosting engagement between employees and customers.

• System of Rules

To achieve consistent automation, a BPM platform must have rules as a core component. It needs a dynamic rules system not only to automate repetitive processes, but also complex ones that have many variables. Business rules facilitate optimized and consistent process around almost any circumstance.

• Device Mobility

BPM technology must be accessible on both mobile devices and desktop computers. Nowadays, more people use their tablets and smartphones to access information than they do their desktops, both personally and professionally. To achieve maximum productivity, companies must expand the toolsets workers have to any device, without lessening impact, usability or functionality.

• Data Accessibility

The capacity to store and use your BPM software both in the cloud and on your premises provides the maximum flexibility for companies needing to store data and processes behind their firewall. Making your BPM technology accessible in any environment will help you meet your unique data and process needs. This is particularly true when managing sensitive data.

• Security

Security is of utmost importance when BPM software drives the core processes of your business. It must provide sufficient security to protect your operations and data from hackers, disaster, or any possible catastrophe. You cannot be overly secure in today’s world. Almost every day, major hacks make headlines. Monitor and security-test your BPM systems continually.

• Inclusive Collaboration

One of the biggest BPM benefits is its ability to maximize interaction and information sharing among all employees. Social collaboration is inclusive of every person in an organization or group, enabling them to achieve common goals together. With the right BPM software, they can access workflows in one place, much like a social network.

Benefits of BPM

Why do companies go through all this bother? According to Forbes, the BPM benefits are tangible and extremely valuable. Increased revenues and decreased costs are obviously advantageous, but the connectedness of business objectives and technology remain unmatched by any other process management platform today.

BPM software enables companies to adapt to changing business environments quickly and successfully, simplifying the ability to handle changes, manage processes, and drive projects to completion. Companies of every size can take advantage of these five BPM benefits:

• Cost Efficiency

In recent years, simply cutting budgets is not viable for businesses responding to leaner global economic conditions. There is just not enough left to slash. To thrive, however, companies must still maximize cost efficiency of expenses and profits. BPM allows them to do this, as it streamlines business collaboration and operations, automates repetitive tasks, reduces corporate risk and improves product quality.

• Satisfied Customers

The modern customer makes serious demands. They need extensive proof-of-concept processes. This means that companies must provide self-service Web 2.0 capabilities that document exactly how the business meets their needs.

Business process management allows companies to combine technology and people to get new customers, while satisfying and keeping them. It gives each customer a security role within his or her own account, paving the way for real-time, ongoing collaboration with the company that provides customization, access to information, personalization and responsiveness.

• Flexibility and Agility

Businesses are relying on the more nimble processes of BPM technology to respond to new trends in the marketplace. There is now a huge demand for extremely flexible tools that can be changed, deployed and designed quickly and easily. Business agility generally incorporates these three elements: automation and integration, rule management and process management.

Automation and Integration
BPM software offers solutions to support case management and business process that integrates fully with Project Management. A single company-wide database provides total visibility, control and real-time analysis and reporting abilities.

Rule Management
Work management is more collaborative and unstructured than ever before. To stay adequately compliant, visible and governed, rules are imperative, and managing them even more so. BPM allows companies to configure rules, as needed, for each project, function or department.

Process Management
One of the most useful BPM benefits is the ability to customize and re-use workflows – as you need them, wherever you need them. This type of process management is invaluable for production and collaboration.

• Happy Staff

A rewarding, satisfying work environment can boost staff performance and productivity significantly. Companies are always finding ways to motivate and reward their staff. BPM provides documented, developed processes to help motivate professionals, leading to enhanced collaboration and increased task focus. Staff can access information in one place, and managers can monitor everyone easily.

• Improved Compliance

Legislative changes and other factors have made it compulsory for businesses to have a flexible system in place to handle and demonstrate compliance. If they fail to do so, reporting and penalty costs can be exorbitant and unforeseen. Businesses can integrate compliance into their day-to-day business practices if they include it in their BPM system.

Business process management is an ongoing activity to improve a company’s operations, not an actual product. It takes time, effort and investment. BPM software helps businesses with any and all of their business process efforts, using several tools and applications to create a customized solution for the company using it. Organizations can choose software from a variety of vendors to integrate and streamline their BPM goals into their daily practices.