Combining Business Process Management and IT

• Automates and improves processes
• Manages change
• Allows ongoing change
• Incorporates metrics that measure process efficiency in terms of business objectives

BPM allows companies visibility, insight and scrutiny into business processes, allowing their enhancement and execution on an ongoing basis. Additionally, BPM

• Provides objective-optimization tools that let users model, simulate and analyze business processes
• Separates user-defined policy changes from any application, building its own general process base. This allows companies to respond to and implement business process changes rapidly
• Provides an organized, formal framework for handling business processes consistently
• Provides a framework for both unchanging and flexible processes, as and when they are applicable
• Provides focus on vital business processes, allowing companies to offer them (optionally) as services to partners or associates

With this kind of empowered structure in place, it is not surprising that corporate giants are pumping up IT investments to realize the potential of the next generation of digitization. Newer BPM software solutions are allowing larger companies to stay flexible and compete effectively with younger ones that are already using tailor-made responsive software.

User-Defined Changes

Conventional software requires changes to application codes themselves, a process that is so time-consuming and inconvenient as to be ineffective. Conventional software cannot provide the flexibility that today's dynamic business environment demands or needs.

Today's software solutions, conversely, allow users to define policies independently of any application. By separating those parts of business processes that can change quickly, BPM users can easily alter or change rules to reflect changes from industry, legislature or internal policy, and can update customer status and contract information.

This flexibility also allows companies to map and vigorously initiate strategic ventures with confidence. Secure in the knowledge that they can respond quickly to internal or external change, companies can outsource and expand globally, and they can speedily pursue mergers, acquisitions or consolidations.

Key Process Indicators

Essential to determining Return on Investment (ROI) on deploying BPM, analyses of operational and business KPIs help highlight and eliminate bottlenecks in the system. No mechanism exists, however, to track KPIs at the moment. For example, what should companies do if they need to interpret three separate KPIs to meaningfully assess the demand of a new product line and take further action? At present, users must rely on other tools to analyze KPIs deeper.

Optimizing Performance

Taken with such analysis tools, BPM can transform computer systems from mere data-processing machines to management tools. By incorporating analytical feedback into business operations, companies can improve business efficiency, boost productivity and record growth. Called closed loop business intelligence, or Business Activity Monitoring (BAM), this function follows the following precepts:

• BPM fundamentally changes the way companies handle business operations management.
• Information analyses fuel business processes.
• KPIs help improve business processes.
• Businesses need meaningful KPIs that report on fundamentals vital to the success of the business.
• Companies need real-time access to critical business events reports that they can quickly act on for business operational and processes improvements.

Monitoring and improving services therefore means using the five "Rs" of BAM:

• Recognize events in the business environment
• Respond to them through interpretation
• Resolve them by taking appropriate action
• Review to function
• Delivering ROI

A BAM solution identifies events, interpreting their meaning in way that relates them to the history of the company, and then takes action. With so many events occurring in a typical business day, automation of events is a crucial aspect of any business if it is to stay on top. By automating processes, BAM helps to optimize business methods and provides insights into operational and strategic performance.

BPM: The Technology of the Future

The future of BPM lies in IT with embedded BAM. Experts predict that tomorrow's tools will provide fully digitized intelligent software solutions. Today, with 90% of companies recovering ROI in about 6 months, and many small, medium-sized and large organizations opting to go the BPM route, the future is bright – for both BPM software and the businesses that employ it. BPM and IT allow businesses to define, manage and optimize processes easily. Using IT with BAM gives organizations the cutting edge in today's marketplace, where only those companies that keep up with change will flourish.