Understanding the Revolutionizing Power of BPM

What is BPM?

We can always come up with obvious answers as to how successful business succeeds and why others do not. Typical answers being:

• Branding – how their products appeal to their target customers
• Customer service – how a company responds to customer concerns
• Added Experience – how each customer enjoys the product beyond their expectations
• Price – how customers relate the value and service vs. the pricetag

When you get straight A’s above, you’re doing great — but there’s always room for improvement.

Meeting the expectations of the customers once in a while does not guarantee that one company can thrive in a changing business environment. One has to be diligent and consistent and most of all, one has to be flexible.

Sticking to one business philosophy could mean that you can keep your current customers but you cannot get new ones. You are trapped in the niche that you built yourself into and embracing change can be difficult. But it can also be worth the effort as is the case of Business Process Management or BPM.

BPM is using technology to make your business more efficient, and effective at the same time measurable. It is used to optimize your business processes for accuracy and higher satisfaction, especially with your customers.

However, not all companies are open to the idea of BPM, fearing that they don’t have enough knowledge to incorporate new technology in their growing business.

How can BPM help revolutionize businesses?

The misconception about BPM being overly complex or requiring a technical background is what limits traditional companies from trying it. But in truth, BPM will not run without human input requires little technical knowhow to get started.

BPM is just a modelling and tool (that can grow to entail automation and execution) of systems you want your company to adhere to.With the birth of BPM, it is further possible to reduce mistakes within your business.

One example would be fixing miscommunication between the customer and the service representative.

When a customer calls in to file a concern or get some information from the company, a ticket is made for the customer service department to address. BPM assigns the ticket to one available representative and the latter takes care of the issue by contacting the customer. Once the issue is resolved, the ticket is removed from the department. The customer will not be receiving other calls from other representatives since the ticket has already been taken out of the system.

If BPM is not used, there’s the chance that the customer will get a call from a representative even if his concerns were already taken care of. He might feel annoyed, or worse customer dissatisfaction.

In the example above, we can readily see that BPM does’t just help deliver good customer service, but also helps the company become more efficient. There will be no time, materials, money, and other resources wasted in addressing issues of customers. Perhaps one day this company even automates to send a follow up email a week after the ticket is closed out just to go the extra mile.   The possibilities are endless.

BPM can also help companies make their employees aligned to their goals and standards even without having to interview them one by one. How does this work?

Because BPM is a system and one step has corresponding consequences, employees cannot simply override the company process. They really have to strictly follow the steps that should be taken sequentially to meet the end of the process.

This in turn can help them become more compliant to standards set forth to assure quality products and services are delivered; making the experience more consistent for customers in every transaction.

Who can use BPM?

BPM can be expensive and free at the same time. There are various suites, like Bonitasoft BPM, that offer both paid and free subscriptions. Of course, there are limitations for those who are going to available suite for free and more features for those who are purchasing the license.

Any business can use BPM. It doesn’t matter whether you are earning millions or just getting started. As long as you see there is a need for a more systematic approach in your processes, BPM could be a good fit for you.

What are the downsides of BPM?

Because technology is the main component of BPM, hiring a programmer is critical if the BPM suite that you have chosen requires lots of coding. But there are also suites which do not require high technical knowledge that even company owners themselves could configure.

BPM is not magic. If you think your company’s sales performance would soar easily after employing it, it is just half of the truth. What BPM really does is it optimizes your existing business processes. So the very first thing that you need to do is make sure your processes are right.

When BPM optimizes bad processes, you will get worse results. If you have good processes, you will get great outputs.

What’s the difference of having BPM and not having it?

As mentioned earlier, analytics are done regularly for you to see how your business is faring. BPM allows you to get results real time and gives you a view as to where or how you can improve your existing components. You can improve your processes every time without having to worry about information dissemination since you can change the system instantly that can be readily used by your users (both staff and customers).

If you are not using BPM, it may take you a lot of trainings and getting used to before you can straighten things out and get your desired results. Of course, that would mean more expenditure and delayed performance.