Business process management (BPM) enables companies and organizations to take charge of their processes by creating repeatable steps designed to streamline workflow, enhance efficiency, and maximize productivity.

A good business process management design allows companies to monitor their business processes, quickly identify pain points and areas that require improvement, and quickly implement changes to ensure smooth and steady flows in core processes.

A business process management solution enables companies to document and track compliance with procedures aligned with the company’s goals, as well as accelerating repetitive tasks through automation, reducing operational costs.

1. Increasing Agility

The business world is transforming at a rapid pace. Your company needs to keep up if you want it to remain competitive. One way of ensuring that is to quickly adapt your business processes when new conditions and requirements arise, such as when new regulations are promulgated or a competitor makes a breakthrough.

According to 2018 emerging BPM trends published by BPM Online, 49% of businesses around the world said additional investment in BPM is needed due to potential changes in their organizational structure.

Most people think of BPM projects as an effective way to create and implement a set of procedures for existing core tasks. However, BPM also helps teams to quickly reevaluate their operations and generate business processes designed to meet changing conditions.

They are able to do this because each step of the process is documented, providing business process management teams an existing base of knowledge they can quickly refer to whenever they need to reexamine workflows.

2. Improve Workforce Productivity

One of the advantages of having business process management software is that you can streamline and standardize procedures to keep the repetitive tasks running smoothly. This includes many of the daily tasks that are done manually, such as systems checks and inventory audits. BPM takes working with a checklist to the next level.

With a BPM solution in place, increases the range of personnel to whom you can assign labor-intensive tasks. With critical procedures documented, you can quickly dispatch people with limited expertise and experience, as they will benefit from following established procedures, especially when training is included. Thus, response time to issues can be greatly reduced and effective resolutions quickly discovered and implemented.

3. Reduce Miscommunications and Errors

Among the many reasons companies experience internal issues are miscommunication between individual workers as well as dropped hand-offs between different departments.

Adding fuel to the fire are the human errors arising from inattention, distraction or forgetfulness that plague manual processes. These errors, such as missing a certain step of the quality check, or failing to cite a small yet critical observation in a status report, can create a ripple effect with huge adverse consequences.

Business process software allows you to plan, implement, and in some cases, fully automate workflows to ensure the proper process is followed down to the last detail. It guarantees consistency and eliminates problems arising from errors and inconsistencies.

4. Ensure Compliance

The majority of business process management implementation initiatives focus on how BPM can automate repetitive, time-intensive processes while significantly lowering their operational expenses. Others demonstrate how BPM can integrate various systems to ensure operations run smoothly. However, BPM can also greatly improve your organization’s compliance with prevailing industry or mandated regulatory standards.

Government rules and regulations as well as accepted industry standards determine the legal limitations and accepted norms for business operations. These are put into place to maintain standards of quality, ensure a safe working environment for employees, and to make sure companies operate within the confines of the law.

Such industry rules and regulations can change frequently, especially in fields such as financial services and pharmaceuticals. BPM solutions reduce the pain of compliance changes, allowing you to implement processes that are not only efficient and productive, but standards-compliant as well. Documenting critical business processes along with the associated regulatory standards makes you aware when to undertake projects such as upgrading your CRM or moving to a different accounting software that complies with the standards you are adhering to. When regulations change, your BPM solution facilitates modifying your processes to ensure your company remains compliant.

Is It Worth the Investment?

The price of a business process management software varies from vendor to vendor, system to system. For enterprise solutions, the range for an on-premise solution is around $250,000-$500,000 including set-up costs and technology consultation fees. Cloud-based BPM systems can set you back hundreds to thousands of dollars every month.

That said, a class of affordable BPM solutions like TaskTrain give businesses comprehensive packages that don’t break the bank. While simple to use, TaskTrain offers advanced features such as Multi-Level Checklist-Based Procedures, Multimedia Procedure Content, and Task-Level Comment Threads to mention a few features. Monthly plans range from $6-$30 per month per user. Discounted annual plans are also available.

If utilized properly, the return on BPM investment can be hefty. BPM systems are designed to cut your operational costs significantly through the implementation of faster, error-free business processes and reduce your losses by decreasing your downtime and wastage.

Profitability also increases from the delivery of high-quality product or service, with impeccable output creating higher customer satisfaction. This allows competition on quality, not price, with higher market prices also adding to your bottom line.

This is supported by findings published in The State of Business Process Management 2018: 65% of the respondents said that BPM technologies greatly enhanced their efficiency and quality, resulting in significant costs in savings as well as better customer satisfaction.

Is BPM software worth the investment? You have to answer this question for your own business and then review available alternatives before joining those companies that have increased efficiency, quality, and profitability through successful BPM implementations.

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