How BPM Empowers Operational Excellence

How Does BPM Help Operational Excellence?

“An organization cannot simply shut down operations while processes are re-tooled for operational excellence.”

With greater flexibility and a framework for innovation, business process management (BPM) is improving how organizations apply technology towards their digital transformation goals. More than ever this connection is integral to an organization’s cultural improvements, as well as their contributions to overall operational excellence. BPM is driving digital transformation, and with it, is delivering greater efficiency, more widespread user adoption, and agility. All of these create an environment of continuous innovation. And now everything from meeting business goals to the management of IT infrastructures are undergoing a rapid evolution of operational capabilities, paralleling the evolutionary path of BPM technology itself.

Better outcomes through BPM and Operational Excellence

There is not just a single way to apply business process management for operational transformation. Organizations must be thoughtful in their approach— perhaps it’s employee efficiency, more collaboration, reduction in paper-based processes, or any myriad of outcomes. For organizations that have a concept of what “ideal” looks like, they will find that BPM provides them a platform to make the changes required to transform the way they operate and the results they get.

With an organizational mindset that encourages collaboration, efficiency, and continuous improvement towards becoming a true digital enterprise, BPM acts as a foundation for transformation. The right tools in the right organization can go a long way towards helping transform how work is accomplished, but giving people the ability to actively engage with these tools and contextual data to effect change is what truly has a transformative effect.

Process Director delivers a complete operational platform for on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments, one that provides low-code development, application integration, AI-driven decision-making capabilities, and other elements that map to organizational transformation goals. For those who rely on processes to drive their business goals, Process Director is recognized as much more than workflow software - it's a fundamental platform for how they operate their business.

Organizations that want to improve their operations through their digital transformation efforts need to concentrate their efforts around three key areas:

BPM Adoption and Usage

To build engaging tools that meet the needs of fast-moving organizations, Process Director delivers a way to create sophisticated, low-code digital applications that take into account the necessary data and workflow sources on the back-end, and considers how users on the front-end will actually use an application within a process. By being able to create simple apps that integrate relevant information, including smart forms and processes, users can get information they need, can contribute with their own informed input, and can glean insights that will help them perform better.

To truly enhance operational efficiency, processes must be easy to use for those who need to build and use them. True BPM provides that and reflects it in elegant, simple usability that encourages repeatability and adoption.

Collaboration is Key to Operational Excellence

With capabilities that facilitate connecting and communicating across departments, and even externally, BPM enables organizations in creating a digital environment where applications, forms, and data sources can be included into a collective portal. This delivers the assets, timelines, and other important information needed to change how work gets done. It enables more engagement and participation, too, because it is optimized to deliver and transact through digital channels that older systems cannot do.

The digital transformation of enterprises cannot happen on an application-by-application basis, however. Companies that want to align their processes to business goals need the ability to apply digital transformation through the use of smart workflow and processes. To serve these needs, Process Director provides digitally transformative and contextual workflow solutions, facilitates efficient distribution of documents and assets, and streamlines the monitoring and management of information.

Transparency Provides Clarity

Process Director maps directly to operational excellence is because of the transparency it provides. BP Logix has customers who, prior to using Process Director, could not place the location of a document during its approval routing, and did not know when to expect a business action to be completed. By employing BPM technology actions are now automated and each status is given real-time visibility, enabling quick remediation. That visibility means that goals and deadlines can be applied and met rapidly and in context with business goals. That, in turn, leads to far more efficient planning according to whatever schedules (quarterly, yearly, by-project, by team) are demanded by the organization.

With the added level of visibility comes the ability to review and analyze outcomes. Knowing where things tend to stall, and where there is room for process improvement enables the business to continuously improve and optimize its actions -- and as they do, purposeful transformation begins to take shape. There are huge advantages to being able to review and understand in the midst of a transformation project. Like a continuous post-mortem, this allows a team to identify areas that can benefit from being modified or changed — and can bring together the players that will help them achieve their goals. This can be done concurrently with an eye towards efficiency and profitability, and involves all necessary decision makers in the process.

This is how transformation happens. An organization cannot simply could shut down operations while process are re-tooled for operational excellence. This is not a “lift-and-shift” activity because for it to be successful, it requires context for those who will be close to processes - end-users, LOB managers, decision makers; pretty much everyone in the organization has to internalize operational excellence into their business approach. Process Director enables consistency and enhancement of technology by creating better, more inclusive processes.

BP Logix recognizes that those closest to business issues are in the best position to create corresponding solutions. Having the ability to adapt as goals and business needs change, all without having to engage with IT or apply technical expertise results in faster implementation of meaningful solutions. People being able to respond rapidly to issues, coupled with tools that support their need to make changes, all leads to the best kind of digital transformation.

The transformational advantages provided by Process Director are championed by a wide variety of BP Logix customers in different vertical markets. While they may seek different goals, the common thread among them is less about the computing capabilities themselves, and more about the benefits an organization realizes from more visibility, more collaboration, easier ways to collect and distribute information relevant to processes, and a culture that is steeped in the idea of operational excellence.