Gone are the days when business objectives are set in stone. Today’s businesses are dynamic, and when objectives change processes also need to transform. Business process management (BPM) - the practice of managing and leveraging business processes to achieve organizational goals can help enterprises keep up.
How do companies do BPM?
Digital business automation is a form of business process management that builds a workflow system that automates tasks or processes while being guided by a business rules engine. The benefits of BPM include its mobile adaptability and built-in social tools that promote personalization and collaboration.
Who uses BPM tools?
Regardless of size, most businesses will find BPM useful, especially SMEs.
Graphical capabilities or process editors
An important component of business process management is the modeling and design of business processes. At this stage, organizations utilize applications that have graphical capabilities, such as AUTTO’s component-based workflow tool.
A process editor is an intuitive technology that saves time in building a process, generally using a drag-and-drop interface. This no-code, intuitive way of building processes removes the burden for employees of having to learn new skills in order to complete their work and organisations to supply additional training.
An example of a business process model.
Workflow system or engine
Workflow systems offer a company increased agility because it does not have to follow traditional and protracted methods of changing business rules. Workflow-based systems, such as AUTTO enable these types of tasks. Moreover, a workflow system reduces administrative work so increase the quality of their outputs.
System integration
Business process management tools are often developed for the cloud. This means that they have a native capability to function well with APIs.
Why does this matter? That capability allows a BPM solution to integrate with third-party applications, especially with data repositories and other sources, as well as with accounting management technology, cutting out the need to replicate information and the risk of inaccurate information, incomplete data, and redundant information.
Integration also allows for the connection of a document management system so paperwork can flow at the same rate as processes and reduce or prevent bottlenecks.
Business analytics
Business analytics or business intelligence, the process of gathering and analysing information to help an organization optimize its processes is vital at all stages between implementation and assessment of business procedures.
Sophisticated BPM tools have business analytics modules included that present data in an engaging, graphical way in dashboards and reports. BPM solutions also enable users to drill-down into datasets from the dashboard.
Mobile and social tools
With the inclusion of native mobile versions of the software employees use every day, an organization can empower its workforce to be more creative, more mobile and more flexible in the way it works.
The current state and the future of BPM software
Big players in the software industry have their own BPM platform offerings but that does not mean that these are the only options. Smaller vendors are emerging that focus solely on BPM. This single focus gives opportunity to concentrate on specific innovation and develop something that goes beyond standard use cases.
Mobility is a hot trend with business process management platforms as organisations create interfaces that are adaptable to smaller screens. You can find a good overview of best practice at: Finances Online guide for business process automation.
Overall, the BPM solution market has great opportunity for growth as organizations become aware of how the latest technological innovations can help them address their business challenges.
Download our latest whitepaper today
See our latest research on productivity, process and the micro automation opportunity in legal and professional services.
Topics in this article: Automation business process automation
