Business process management is a vector of efficiency and quality within an organization: companies are increasingly aware of this. This issue is gradually becoming a new strategic priority for operational departments and general management. What is business process management (BPM)? How to implement it in your company? With what tools? Appetizer answers your questions about BPM issues.
What Is A Business Process?
A business process refers to a sequence of tasks or activities carried out successively by different stakeholders to achieve an objective and create added value for a company. It highlights the interactions in the form of exchanges between the actors of a company to benefit from a global view. This concerns several types of businesses:
- exchanges between internal and external actors (salesman, technician, supplier, etc.),
- discussions with applications or services (email, billing management, customer management, etc.),
- sales of information with other business processes.
A business process can be transversal to an organization: it relies on several structures and teams without necessarily being limited to one person, group or department.
What Is Business Process Management?
Business process management is often named after its English equivalent, BPM (Business Process Management). It is a set of tools, methods, and services for creating, analyzing, and monitoring a company’s operational processes. This involves process modeling, in other words, a graphical representation of the company’s activities and their sequences in a given context. It is the combination of several elements:
- the company’s information system,
- governance methods,
- Cooperation between actors.
Focus On The BPMN Standard
This business process writing standard was born in 2011 and aimed to collaborate and harmonize the various departments of an organization, in particular through the combination of a process modeling standard and new symbols for diagrams. Of the business process. This writing standard includes the following:
- actors and stakeholders,
- the stages of the process (activities),
- occasional events,
- The sequence of actions or sequence flows represented by an arrow,
- And logic gates are used to join or separate sequence streams.
The Benefits Of BPM
If you are not yet convinced of the usefulness and benefits of BPM for your company, we give you the three main advantages:
- Organization: streamlined processes save you time; your teams benefit from a better visibility on their role; risks are better controlled; provides a global vision of the organization of the company;
- Communication: exchanges are made more fluid; facilitates cross-functional communication and decompartmentalizes interactions between departments; improves collaboration between actors; formalizes the course of procedures;
- Management: information is centralized; decision-making is facilitated; highlights performance indicators; improves monitoring and measures the objectives achieved and the delays.
How To Succeed In A BPM Project?
BPM projects aren’t just for big companies. SMEs and small businesses also find their interest in setting up a BPM project. Count on a few weeks to six months maximum to deploy a successful BPM project in your company. Here are the three main points of attention to be taken into account for the success of your BPM project.
Communication
This is the key to the success of a project. The project can succeed with communication between the DSI and the operational departments. BPM software acts as a tool to formalize and structure exchanges and to streamline a language that must be common between stakeholders.
A BPM Approach At Your Scale
Don’t try to go too fast: think big, but start small. You are putting the cart before the horse could waste your time. On the contrary, beginning with a small BPM project from which you can see significant results is more prudent. You put in place solid foundations to grow the project afterward, thanks to cross-functional communication, better risk and error management, the implementation of indicators, and the analysis of reports, for example.
Build On What Already Exists
Before setting up your BPM project, it may be interesting to audit your current operation. How is the information transmitted? What are the points of attention that deserve to be improved? What tools are already in place? This gives you a foundation to start your project, starting with optimizing existing processes.
Rethink Your Business Processes In The Digital Age
Companies are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of precise and structured processes to optimize their operations. They wish to implement continuous process improvement initiatives or have already started to deploy a BPM project. The digital transformation of companies brings new elements to decision-makers to reinvent the internal functioning of organizations.
Beyond tools, projects are becoming agile and increasingly collaborative; collective intelligence takes precedence over individuality; design thinking makes it possible to introduce innovation into the company while maintaining the communal aspect, etc. All these elements accelerate the structuring of internal business processes and their modeling needs. They also allow you to bring a competitive advantage to your company, making you stand out even more.
Process Management Software Comparison Chart
Comparison table of 4 process management software
Agilium
Agilium is a 100% French BPM software allowing you to automate your business processes easily and quickly, thanks to its low-code approach. Use the dozens of templates available in the tool and adapt them to your needs or create your business applications. The choice is yours; both options are possible. The tool allows you, among other things:
- to connect your applications,
- to create automation and workflows,
- Monitor all of your ongoing processes using a process monitoring tool (BAM),
- Collaborate effectively remotely by accessing your documents, information, and indicators from the web.
Agilium offers an approach based on process management that is particularly effective in the industry, allowing you to create tailor-made processes and integrate your own business rules. Examples of needs handled: Business follow-up, reception management, production progress, production planning, electronic document management, or even non-conformity management.
Agilium is a perfect complement to an ERP to manage company-wide processes and centralize data in a collaborative platform accessible from the web. As a bonus, take advantage of the training included in your pack, with or without commitment! A simple business application on the low-code Agilium platform costs around 2000 euros. It is also necessary to provide a SaaS subscription for using the platform, which includes maintenance, support, and hosting from 150 euros per month for five users.
Interop
Interop is an online software that manages your company’s processes throughout its life cycle and adapts to their evolution. It allows:
- to model the processes in a few clicks,
- to define the tasks,
- assign them to your employees or external service providers,
- to configure special conditions, alerts, sending emails, etc.
It is possible to define, for each task, the person or the group of persons who can carry it out. It’s an ideal solution for formalizing your company’s internal workflows and connecting the applications you use to each other. The direct integration of the information exchanged has several advantages: fewer information dissemination modes, therefore centralization of the data, and less loss of information.
Everyone involved in a process is notified as soon as a collaborator triggers the process. Interop also serves as a monitoring tool to monitor the activity of employees. The solution is accessible from a computer, tablet, or smartphone. It requires no technical knowledge, thanks to an intuitive drawing tool. Business teams only have to fill in dynamic forms so that the processes meet everyone’s needs. Interop has obtained ISO 9001 certification.
Hello
More than 70,000 users trust Hello. The software is aimed at SMEs and all business sectors combined. Its users are diverse:
- consultants and business managers,
- process analysts,
- HR, sales, marketing, and IT departments.
The solution offers an intuitive modeling tool: a simple drag and drop of elements is required to build your processes. This guarantees immediate handling of the device. The following video (in English) gives you an overview of the interface through a short demonstration:
This collaborative tool complies with the BPMN 2.0 standard. Hello offers a free plan for businesses without a budget. However, with this offer, support is only available for 30 days, and certain functionalities are not accessible, such as personalization of your brand or authorization of modification by the process.
ProcessStudio
Edited by Avanteam, Process Studio allows companies to model and automate business processes while gaining agility and traceability. This collaborative, customizable, contextual portal is compatible with the BPMN standard. It presents itself as a generator of process-oriented applications: with one click, it generates the target application.
Are available in Process Studio, among others:
- management of actors, roles, and access rights,
- a graphic design workshop for forms and workflows,
- history and full traceability of stakeholders and changes.
The tool integrates into the Avanteam application suite, which automates document management, workflow management, electronic forms, scanning, etc. It also integrates easily with your devices (ERP, directories, messaging). Dashboards allow you to follow your processes’ progress thanks to indicators you have defined.
Integrate BPM Into Your Strategy
It’s a fact: the awareness of business management on the importance of business process management has taken place. However, two-thirds of companies need to take the plunge and be equipped with BPM software. However, it is a must for those who wish to obtain a faster ROI on their BPM project while gaining a competitive advantage.
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