Our 10 Best BPM Practices

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Lorenzo Del Marmol

January 22, 2016

BPM-Business-ProcessManagement-best-practices-list

10 Best BPM Practices from the Experts

Business process management is about more than optimizing efficiency and improving profitability. While these are well and good, BPM can also take into consideration your own business goals and objectives. If you want to incorporate corporate social responsibility and added work-life balance to how your business runs, this approach can accommodate your preferences.

But what are the best practices associated with BPM? Take a look at what experts and leaders in this discipline say:

  1. Establish a benchmark and work with what you have. Instead of reaching immediately towards goals and objectives, establish a model of how you and your company actually work. Determine your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats as well as the processes you’re using right now before you seek to change anything. Once you’d determined your base line, that’s when you create a workflow model and apply improvements.

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  1. Use a pilot project. While a lot of change managers want something ‘transformative’, hitting your whole system at the same time can cause lots of damage. Choose a project that can have all the changes applied so you can continue learning what works and what doesn’t. Starting with a smaller project can produce measureable results since it’s a more controlled sample. Make sure that you implement changes to crucial processes instead of menial, unimportant and minor tasks.

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  1. Collaboration and support at all levels are necessary. You can’t implement business process management without executive-level support and top-level direction. Encourage as much collaboration as possible and show the actual people implementing and performing the process changes that the higher-ups support the change.

continuous-improvement-quote-Teruyuki Minoura

  1. Keep in mind that your case is unique and you need to choose your tools. It’s important that the software, approach and tools you use address all your stakeholder’s needs and preferences. Executives want something with maximum ROI while users want something that’s easy to use. Developers and IT personnel on the other hand, want open-source software so there is transparency and ease of use.

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  1. Select a leader. While not necessarily a manager, a leader for the change is supposedly a champion for the planned BPM movement. His or her job is to overcome changes and seek support for the business process management changes.

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  1. Implement a solid project management plan. While planning can be difficult especially if you want to establish milestones in the project, preparation can greatly reduce risks and give people a better picture on how the project is progressing.

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  1. Report results promptly. If your metrics are on point, make sure that you get the results of your business process management case to your stakeholders. This way, you can gain more support and adoption of the BPM throughout the whole organization can be easier to handle.

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  1. Avoid management disconnect. Even if you want one project to be the proponent for BPM, try to get as much support from other departments, top level executives and every person involved. There should be a space or mechanism for discussion and common resources for everyone involved.

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  1. Measure and monitor. While you cannot control everything, you can always document and measure every single step. This lets you track progress and demonstrate to later projects the effectiveness of the changes you’ve implemented.

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  1. Don’t be afraid to outsource. Unless your people have received training on business process management, it’s best that you get outside help such as software developers, consultants and other personnel that are more versed in implementing BPM.

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In the end, the best practices for business process management have to be meticulous planning, collaboration and outsourcing.

 

Learn more about our Business Process Management training services.

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