Why Should You Care About Process Management?

John: She has coffee, I don't have coffee.

Speaker 2: Do you need some coffee? We've got time.

John: No, no. It's alright.

Interviewer: I was going to say, they may have a pot.

Speaker 2: I don't mean to sound like I'm showing off, but I can get you coffee here.

John: Oh, wow.

Speaker 2: I know where it is.

John: Now we know the important person.

Interviewer: John, today we're going to talk about why businesses should care about process management. So, let's first describe someone who has no idea what the letters BPM means. Tell me, what is Business Process Management?

John: Business Process Management is both a methodology and a type of software. Why BPM? Well, BPM, Business Process Management; is based upon the idea that the most reliable way that you can improve your business is by really improving your business processes. For example, you get an order from a customer and you prepare that order, and you deliver that order. Now, that's a process. Over years of working with companies both from a perspective of simply analyzing their processes and improving the processes just simply through analysis and documenting the processes and suggesting changes, that definitely improves businesses. That definitely makes businesses more profitable, but we also find that if you take the extra step to where you start to automate your business processes using software, that is absolutely the most reliable way that you can improve your business operations. By improving your business operations, you're going to improve your profitability, and you're going to improve your customer satisfaction.

Interviewer: What kinds of businesses benefit from the use of BPM?

John: The simple answer would be: All of them. Because all businesses are, in fact, at their heart, their processes. Whenever you have a business where multiple people are involved, where multiple steps have to take place between the initiation of an order and the delivery of that order, every step along the way, BPM can help you improve that. Rhetorically speaking, what kind of business would improve by reducing the number of errors and by increasing the speed of delivery?

John: Virtually, all businesses will be able to improve using BPM techniques.

Interviewer: If all businesses can benefit from BPM and using BPM techniques, how do businesses actually get started?

John: The first thing that a business needs to do, if they want to get started in BPM, is to identify core processes that you have a feeling these processes could be more efficient. You have a feeling that the error rate in the process could be reduced. Now, the other thing that you need to do is: You need to identify processes that you would have executive buy-in to improve those processes.

John: BPM is not just a technology. BPM is a mindset. It's a methodology. So, it's a way of thinking and it could be a culture change in your company. So without executive buy-in and executive sponsorship, it would simply be another development project.

John: That should be-

Speaker 2: Do you want to cut that one and move onto the next one?

Interviewer: I think we're good.

Speaker 2: Okay, let's cut that tape. Thank you.