Optimising the enterprise using BPM

Efficient processes are the key to reduced cost, high productivity, and healthy bottom lines. Business Process Management (BPM) is a concept that enables efficient processes. Guan Tan explains some of the key business benefits of BPM

Today, companies need every advantage to differentiate themselves, maximise competitive edge, and increase shareholder value. Business processes have become a critical success factor, and companies using Business Process Management (BPM) are seeing dramatic performance improvements that are helping them establish a strong competitive foothold in the new millennium.

BPM allows companies to analyse workflow and initiate best practices to manufacture, market, deliver and support their products and services in the most efficient manner possible for better bottom line performance. Through BPM, organisations can streamline, automate and optimise their business processes to continuously improve and enhance business performance, for maximum competitive advantage.

Companies are employing BPM to achieve better business results each and every day:

CNA Insurance lowered claims handling costs by 11 percent and improved claims processing productivity by 53 percent. CNA now pays 1.7 million claims automatically, and 93 percent are paid within 28 days.

The Missouri Public Services Commission in the US, which regulates 1,100 public utilities statewide, has seen average productivity savings of an hour and a half a day per employee—an estimated RoI of more than $3 million a year.

Standard Bank of South Africa has seen improvements in productivity of 140 percent, turnaround on financial decisions reduced from seven days to an average of seven minutes, and reductions in headcount by 50 to 60 percent in one location, resulting in significant cost savings.

BPM: Delivering better business results

Business processes are the paths of decision making. They involve people, business systems and content and are woven through your business every day. Companies are gaining a true competitive edge by using BPM to automate, integrate and optimise these processes. Let’s take a more in-depth look at the key business benefits of BPM:

Automatic vs. manual transmission

When companies automate processes, they reduce the need for human intervention in routine or low-risk decisions. This eliminates both the cost and potential for errors associated with human-based workflow, and allows companies to apply expert human resources when and where they add the most value to the decision-making process. What’s more, this allows companies to realign their resources to focus on higher revenue-generating activities.

Better, faster, cheaper

Automating processes helps reduce cycle time. The faster you can process a business transaction, the more transactions you process. The more transactions you can process, the more business you service, and the more revenue you generate. Faster decision-making not only shortens cycle time, it reduces handling costs too—and ultimately increases profitability.

20/20 operational visibility

BPM enables critical visibility, key to both business agility and continuous process improvement. Businesses can track, monitor, measure and optimise processes in real-time to quickly identify operational bottlenecks and fine-tune processes ‘on-the-fly’ for optimal results. Processes supporting millions of transactions and thousands of users can be quickly deployed or modified as needs warrant. Additionally, enhanced operational visibility helps companies respond quickly to changing market conditions, ensure regulatory compliance and make better decisions faster.

Power to the people

Today’s BPM technology is powerful, yet easy to use, administer and deploy. BPM enables business analysts and line-of-business users to modify processes, as opposed to the IT professional—putting power in the hands of business users who know the process best. Taking the onus for support off IT also effectively reduces total cost of ownership. Additionally, BPM features integration technology that enables businesses to extend processes, as well as more easily integrate legacy, stove-piped applications to link customers, suppliers and other third-party entities. This promotes collaboration, allowing companies to partner and address new business opportunities.

While these are compelling reasons for companies to incorporate BPM, companies can leverage a convergence of technology to achieve even greater RoI by linking their processes with the creation, management and delivery of content. Most definitions of BPM incorporate the following components:

• Process modelling helps businesses capture and articulate business processes that may involve content from disparate applications and supports long-term, complex and human-factor processes.
• Process automation drives processes without end-user interaction.
• Workflow incorporates rules and logic to govern the movement of information and sequencing of processes.
• Business process intelligence enables performance monitoring and measurement for real-time optimisation.

The author is the sales director-Asean with FileNet Corporation Asia Pacific. He can be contacted at gtan@filenet.com