In order to stay relevant and competitive, modern enterprises need to optimize their workflows, look at how they handle data analytics, decide how to use automation in their business strategy, and much more. Core business processes need to be reevaluated constantly to discover ways to boost efficiency, cut costs, and improve the customer experience. Business process management (BPM) is the discipline of creating, analyzing, and changing business processes in order to boost performance.
Unlike task management or goal setting, BPM is about improving the repetitive and ongoing processes within an organization. These days, it’s often done with the help of business process management software (BPMS). These are automated tools that can pinpoint weaknesses and inefficiencies in individual processes and help business leaders improve them. All of this is made significantly easier with full system integrations. This is the cornerstone of modern digital transformations, and integration makes it much easier to keep business data accurate and current, which is when data is most valuable.
Making truly effective use of a BPM system means automating repeatable processes as part of the improvements. This is done by analyzing the “as is” processes to discover bottlenecks and latencies. The software can then design a new process that eliminates the delays in workflow. It can then create business process models that show off the proposed new process, complete with conditional loops to address unique scenarios. The new process will then be tested before it’s rolled out across the organization. At this point, the BPMS tool will continue to monitor the new processes and look for ways to optimize them. Here are just some of the many practical benefits of BPMS systems.
Employee Onboarding
Your human resources department performs various repeatable and ongoing processes every day, and BPM can make things much more convenient for both business users in this realm and your applicants. Automated HR solutions can handle everything from gathering all digital application materials into one folder to guiding new hires through the onboarding process.
You can set up an automated system that analyzes application data to pull the candidates who best fit the job description. You can divide employees into tiers that automatically assign the appropriate benefits packages once they’re hired. Integration of every process also ensures regulatory compliance at all times.
Supply Chain Management
One of the best uses for business process management tools is to locate inefficiencies in your supply chain, as most businesses will be able to find some. Delays in workflow can occur anywhere from the ordering process all the way until a package is delivered. With automated inventory management, the system can report when certain products are running low and place an immediate order for restocking.
Integrate a configure, price, quote (CPQ) system into your business processes, and you can instantly update customers with new price information for any changes made to complex products, so they can move through the ordering process as quickly as possible.
Thanks to IoT technology, it’s even possible for fleet managers to automatically gather geolocation data, analyze it, and plan more efficient routes later down the line. IoT sensors can also be used for predicting when machines will likely need maintenance.
Marketing
Every business needs robust marketing efforts to keep ahead of the competition, and when it comes to online advertising, nothing is better than original content that shows off your products and expertise.
Content marketing goes through so many processes for each piece, including writing, editing, branding, and publishing—not to mention that you need to monitor the performance for each piece of content. With an automated workflow, you can ensure that each piece of content receives a quick response from the appropriate team members and is immediately sent to the next stage.
This just scratches the surface of what a business process management suite can offer. Once you’ve had some practice with a system, there’s little doubt that you’ll come up with even more creative ways to improve business processes.
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