Business process management (BPM) attempts to align all aspects of an organization from suppliers to internal resources and systems to products and client needs. This comprehensive approach to running an organization focuses on the effective, efficient operation in support of customer satisfaction, innovation and agility through the use of technology (principally information technology).
SPS Workflow espouses and iterative and incremental approach to improving business processes on a continuous basis, which moves an organization up the capability maturity model steps and increases profitability as a result.
A
business process an ordered collection activities that produce some meaningful output such as a product or service delivery. Because internal operations are one of the largest (if not THE largest cost) of delivery, optimizing operations through efficient processes can play a substantial role in profitability. It is this reason why BPM should be viewed as a strategic advantage and asset.
Key to BPM is its ability to leverage and be supported by technology, which enables visibility, measurement and task assignment. At this execution level, BPM is often referred to as workflow, which ties both people and technology into the process. This enables human resources to act on information (custom requests, engineering change orders, etc.) in a timely and efficient manner. These actions can then be recorded for review, reporting, and optimization. Our view is that BPM and the associated workflows are the mechanism through with enterprise information should be managed.
An example of BPM is IT Service Management in the form of ITIL or CoBIT. These specification have defined processes for the delivery of information technology services.
What makes the
ShareVis Workflow System (used by
The SharePoint Workflow Factory) so valuable is its agility and speed. The world of business changes at an ever faster pace, and business processes must keep pace to keep the business competitive. ShareVis provides this agility.
The Life-cycle of a Business Process
We see BPM as being developed in a five stage
methodology: Discover, Design, Deploy, Monitor and Optimize.
BPM Discovery
Process discovery encompasses identifies existing processes or the lack thereof within an organization. In this stage, business analysis is done to define the current state of the process including the
actors and
activites they perform in support of some business capability. It is at this stage that a determination as to whether change and/or automation in the form of workflow should be undertaken based on ROI or other financial metrics. It is here where
business process consulting can be particularly powerful as it brings a breadth of knowledge from other enterprises into the discussion, allowing a broad range of options for solutions.
BPM Design
The design of a solid business process eliminates needless steps, and ADDs needed steps, while improving visibility to those who need it. It is at this point that many political battles are waged since, to many, information is power, and automation through workflow can appear to eliminate visibility and authority. This is a valid concern and is taken into account during a cost/benefit analysis.
A key to communicating the design of the business process is
modeling in a way that is well understood by all of the stakeholders. For this, we use the swim lane enabled activity diagrams within the
ShareVis Designer. The advantage here is that with virtually no training, all stakeholders can understand exactly what the business process is. Additionally, the designer makes quick work of deployment and maintenance of business processes, adding agility to the enterprise.
Other analysis tools include ROI calculations, Payback, etc.
Running Business Processes Live — SharePoint Workflow
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Executing business processes can be a straightforward exercise for all human resources and systems. Essential elements for this include:
- Task List — to keep every activity in front of the user (actor) who must act on that task
- Process List — to keep an eye on each process, either from the initiator's standpoint or management.
- Repostitory — to keep all documents and forms well organized as the traverse and eventually come to rest in the enterprise content.
Monitoring Business Processes
Reporting is key to determining the effectiveness of actors, and process cycle times, and to gain business intelligence about what information is most/least used, costly, or to determine the state of specific business elements such as orders (#ordered, #awaiting delivery, #invoice, etc.). With this information, more robust relationships can be built with customers and suppliers using metrics such as defect rates, on-time delivery, etc. This informs the optimization stage.
Optimization
Process optimization uses monitored process data to determine and correct bottlenecks or spot cost savings or time savings opportunities. Assuming the overall design was done correctly, optimization is simply the incremental change to the business process or workflow specifics. For example, adding more resources to process orders due to unacceptably long wait times, or eliminated resources that are idle too often.