A straightforward answer to the question "What is BPM?" is that it is the secret recipe behind an organization's success. It's the strategic approach that helps companies achieve their goals, whether they're short-term objectives or long-term visions. It's all about making a company's operations smoother, more efficient, and ultimately, more successful.

When we say operations, we mean everything that happens inside a company—the tasks, the processes, how teams collaborate, and, most importantly, how they deliver top-notch products or services to customers. In a nutshell, BPM is like the superhero of the business world, ensuring everything runs like clockwork. And if you're someone who loves the idea of optimizing processes and driving an organization's success, a career in BPM might just be your calling.

Importance of BPM to Sustain Enterprise Agility

Technological innovations, evolving customer expectations, and volatile geopolitical conditions create constant disruptions in the business landscape. Amidst such chaos, BPM takes center stage to provide the foundation for organizational resilience.

Through thorough examination, improvement, and seamless coordination of workflows, BPM enhances the allocation of resources, fosters better collaboration, expedites the process of decision-making, and guarantees compliance with industry regulations.

Introducing this concept streamlines the operational flow in an organization, making the lives of professionals easier. Pro-employee companies like HGS have taken long leaps to enable a seamless flow of information across departments. BPM tools have allowed HGS, a digital-first BPO enterprise, to put the correct data and technology within agents' fingertips, making their jobs less chaotic and more productive. These efforts have earned the company a name among the best companies to work for in Asia.

Here are some ways BPM fosters operational flexibility and process efficiency.

Streamlined Workflows

A few years ago, work-from-home was considered an impractical idea for a contact center owing to its customer-facing operations. The onslaughts of the Covid-19 pandemic made this idea a mandate for all enterprises.

IT services and business process management companies like HGS in the Philippines harnessed the benefits of streamlined workflows to facilitate the right work-from-home environment for their employees without compromising customer service quality.

BPM tools offer visual representations of workflows, making it easier to comprehend the entire process from start to finish. This visualization aids in identifying areas that can be tweaked to accommodate the new operational requirements. The visibility also aids in the identification of areas for improvement, leading to more efficient and logical workflows.

Customer-centric Agility

Customer prioritization is not a new concept, yet many enterprises fail to incorporate the value in their operations today. It is primarily because of organizational failure to quickly adapt to changing customer preferences and market trends.

A BPM company leverages agile business models. These models are easily modified and adapted to accommodate changing customer requirements without causing disruption. Such customer-centric agility is crucial for businesses aiming to stay ahead in a dynamic market.

BPM solutions often come with real-time monitoring and analytics capabilities. By closely monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs) and customer interactions, organizations can quickly identify emerging trends and shifts in customer behavior. This data-driven approach empowers informed decision-making.

Data-Driven Decision Making

Businesses have an extensive repository of data that they can utilize to turn around their operation quality and process efficiency. In a constantly changing economic environment, data-driven decision-making is critical to predict unprecedented scenarios and act accordingly.

Advanced BPM platforms can leverage historical process data to predict future trends and outcomes. This predictive capability aids in identifying potential challenges and opportunities, allowing for proactive decision-making.

BPM tools facilitate the collection of data from different sources across the organization. The data can include process times, bottlenecks, user interactions, and more. Integrating these data sources creates a comprehensive view of operations.

Efficiency Breeds Innovation

Innovation is the cornerstone of business success; no sector is an exception. However, inefficient processes and the lack of a structured workflow are not conducive to the spirit of innovation across a BPM enterprise.

BPM begins by dissecting the various processes within a company to identify pain points, bottlenecks, and inefficiencies. By analyzing these areas of concern, organizations can target their efforts towards the most critical areas for improvement, creating smoother operations and enhanced productivity.

BPM tools offer visual representations of workflows, making it easier to comprehend the entire process from start to finish. This visualization aids in identifying areas that can be tweaked to accommodate the new operational requirements. The visibility also aids in the identification of areas for improvement, leading to more efficient and logical workflows.

If you are new to this field and wondering what should a job seeker focus on? Our tips for transitioning to corporate life will be to look for a place where you get to work in a highly interactive environment. Seek a tech-enabled workplace where tools eliminate mundane tasks, allowing you to brainstorm and pitch ideas that can make a difference on the service front.

A Unified Approach

Operational silo is a familiar saga across many organizations caused by departmental divisions, differing goals, or communication gaps. It hinders productivity, innovation, and overall success.

BPM encourages the documentation and standardization of processes across the organization. This provides a common understanding of workflows and enables efficient handoffs between teams.

Tools run on BPM principles promote collaboration by encouraging teams to work together on process design and improvement. Cross-functional teams can provide diverse perspectives and create more effective solutions.

BPM in Action: Steps Toward Agility

Agility is an advantage and a dire necessity to thrive in an ever-changing business scenario. BPM empowers organizations to embrace agility by offering a systematic approach to designing, executing, and facilitating process optimization.

Process Analysis and Mapping

BPM tools enable organizations to create visual representations of processes, such as flow charts or diagrams. These visualizations clearly understand how tasks are interconnected and help identify redundancies or gaps in the process.

Data collected through process analysis techniques allows organizations to make informed decisions. They can identify patterns, trends, and deviations, leading to targeted improvements.

Process Automation

Efficiency and streamlined operations have become paramount, driving organizations to implement various automation solutions.

Before automating any process, it's crucial to have a comprehensive understanding of the existing workflows. BPM involves analyzing and mapping out processes, identifying bottlenecks, and optimizing them for efficiency. This step ensures that automation efforts are focused on the right areas, leading to more significant benefits.

BPM doesn't stop once automation is implemented. It involves ongoing monitoring and analysis of automated processes to identify areas for improvement. This iterative approach leads to higher efficiency and adaptability in the long run.

Introducing automation can disrupt established workflows and roles. BPM incorporates agility in change management strategies that help employees transition smoothly to the new automated processes. This ensures minimal resistance and maximizes the benefits of automation

Continuous Improvement

Enterprise agility is a cornerstone of success in today's ever-changing business landscape. Continuous improvement serves as the bedrock upon which this agility is built.

BPM relies on data collection and analysis to monitor process performance. Organizations can measure key performance indicators (KPIs) and gather insights into process effectiveness. These insights pinpoint areas that may need improvisation, thereby paving the way for organization-wide continuous improvement.

Embracing Technology

One of the initial steps in technology adoption is assessing the existing processes to identify inefficiencies and areas for improvement.

BPM provides a structured framework for analyzing processes and spotting bottlenecks and redundancies. With a clear understanding of current processes, organizations can facilitate the integration of agile business strategies to automate, streamline, and optimize these processes for enhanced efficiency.

Business Process Management Examples

Integrating BPM tools in the operational fabric empowers an all-around process optimization for the digital customer experience company, HGS, enabling enterprise agility. Here are a few instances:

AGENT X: The highly customizable and enterprise-grade cloud contact center solution automates repetitive tasks and enables omnichannel support. AGENT X conducts customer sentiment analysis to provide insights that facilitate personalized customer support

LEANOPS: The LeanOps ROI calculator is an innovative and mobile-centric digital evaluation instrument designed to help HGS gauge real-time savings on operational expenditure achieved by rapidly implementing RPA and LeanOps practices.

CONTACT CENTER ANALYTICS (PULSE): The platform enables a 360-degree view of customers using different ways to connect. The tool helped HGS leverage important business information from contact center analysis to make better decisions and witness a 40% improvement in reporting.

Business Process Management Tools

BPM tools offer a structured way to handle and improve their business processes. These tools help organizations plan, create, put into action, and track workflows and business rules. They often let people who are not IT experts build business workflows and link different systems together.

Here are some of the critical capabilities of BPM tools:

● Workflow management: The tool creates, tests, and executes structured workflows to facilitate seamless interaction with departments, data, and systems.

● Business rules engine: The capability enables BPM tools to create business conditions and rules.

● Form generator: BPM tools make web forms.

● Collaboration: The ability of the tool includes decision and idea management.

● Analytics: BPM tools enable defining and tracking KPIs and generating reports.

● Integrations: The tool allows for leveraging data across systems and through interfaces.

Conclusion

In a world where agility and efficiency are paramount, Business Process Management stands as a beacon for organizations striving to stay competitive and deliver exceptional value to their customers. However, companies must understand that BPM is not a one-time magic. It must be inherited as a practice within the fabric of an organization to drive continuous process efficiency and enterprise agility. If you're ready to embark on a transformative BPM journey and be a driving force in shaping the future of business processes, join us at HGS Philippines. Together, we'll create a more efficient and agile tomorrow.