When to Use Business Process Management?

Speaker 1: Figure it's like ...

Zach: Can you see the thing? Is it good?

Speaker 1: I like the set up. It's cool.

Speaker 3: [inaudible 00:00:05]

Speaker 2: Just look past the camera at me like I'm a more handsome Zach.

Speaker 1: Okay.

Speaker 2: Okay. How do we feel guys? Do we feel like talking about when to use BPM?

Zach: Do you guys know what BPM is?

Speaker 2: Business process management, of course.

Zach: All right.

Speaker 1: So Zach, today we're gonna talk about what is BPM and when you should use it, so let's just start out by defining what is business process management.

Zach: So business process management is a set of tools or solutions used to automate processes, but actually goes much more beyond that. We're looking for a process that has multiple activities that span multiple participants, so work being passed off from one group to another. We're also looking for something with a definitive start point and endpoint and a rigid, repeatable set of steps that are typically long-running.

Speaker 1: Well, that's great. So now we know that a process is repeatable, has [inaudible 00:00:54] predefined start and endpoints, and it transfers work between people. Are there other things that are like business process management?

Zach: Yeah, so oftentimes people might confuse case management systems with a business process management system or solution. At BB3, we actually have projects in both.

Zach: BPM is a repeatable set of steps with a definitive start point and endpoint where any exceptions to that workflow are gonna be built in and predefined, and defined by the business. The opposite of that is a case management solution where we know we have certain activities that need to take place, but we may not know the order. Exceptions that would occur in a case management solution are typically handled by the knowledge worker themselves as opposed to the business rules defined by the process.

Speaker 1: What's the biggest immediate impact of process improvement on a company?

Zach: What BPM allows you to do is make sure that you have the same repeatable steps across your business. There may be small changes between, but we can build those into the system. The most important gain you'll see is that your visibility into your process may not have existed at all before your BPM solution. Now, you're gonna be able to see how long each step took, who took more time on what steps, exactly where you business process is at at any given state.

Speaker 1: You've talked about the immediate impact of process improvement, but what are the three most important aspects to a successful BPM program?

Zach: The three indicators, I think, that would make a BPM project successful ... The first would be a knowledgeable team of subject matter experts or SME's. These are the folks that we're gonna be working with day in and day out to get the business requirements and then not only understand what they are, but when we go back and build them, we wanna make sure that we're constantly working with those SME's to make sure that we're playing back for them what we built and it's exactly what they want.

Zach: The second one is process ownership or executive buy in. With strong project ownership, somebody who has responsibility for that process, they're able to make the tough decisions and say what's in and what's out. That's incredibly key for getting a good solution out the door.

Zach: Then, the third, and arguably most important part, is having a very competent development team, so building a solution that's gonna scale and that's gonna last. By following these best practices, you're gonna build a system that can last a long time, is not gonna have any performance issues, and is gonna be built in the most efficient way possible to meet the needs of your business.

Speaker 1: You might as well just ... Don't drop the loud mic, but that was awesome. That was everything that we needed.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Totally nailed it.