Business Process Management best practices are a way of understanding, fine-tuning, and improving business processes. It is a manner to distinguish companies, to improve what is already good and is crucial to the financial survival of some organizations. However, it is not enough to acknowledge that, we need to know the best way actually to implement it in the business.
It can happen that the BPM implementation is fast, but bumpy, full of holes and disapproved by the team. It does not have to be this way. Now we will approach 8 business process management best practices to ensure that your company gets the promised results.
8 business process management best practices
Measure well
Analyze and measure what is the work, and not what you want the work to be. Is only by fully understanding the processes that changes can begin to happen. Prioritize the important processes, and leave the others for later. Nobody will appreciate if the first BPM change is in a low important process that does not affect the job. Measure what can be measured and find a way to measure what it cannot. Measuring the financial results or the product costs is easy. We must, however, try to measure everything in the business, since the numbers until the employees’ performance. It is fundamental to implement improvements efficiently. To understand more see: process mapping techniques.
Find the balance between efficiency and efficacy
A company might have a process that is highly efficient, but the effectiveness (the end product) is terrible. On the other hand, an organization can have a high-quality product, yet it costs way too much and takes too long to produce it. Either of these scenarios is costing the company money and resources, and holding back the growth. To further know about this difference, read about BPM methodology.
Understand and address the internal difficulties
Human change is not part of the process. It is the process. When implementing business process management best practices, we are not just using new technologies or new procedures. We are bringing people aboard, gathering enthusiastic participants, finding supporters. The staff should feel a sense of contribution, of being part of the process. It is important that everybody see how the changes will affect their work, their client’s satisfaction, in that way embracing the changes. It can only be achieved by a clear, trustworthy communication between all the levels.
Talk to customers
It may seem obvious, but you would be surprised to see how many companies implement changes without listening to the customers. Your client has the best view of your business, as he knows what he wants and what the problems he faced were. An accurate survey or an effective campaign may give you answers you never thought about.
There is nothing wrong with going slowly
It is better to take six months and implement changes that will stick than to change everything in a month and see it back to the way it was in the next one. It may be positive too, after identifying, measuring, redesigning, and executing, take some time before optimizing and automating. Give time to the staff get used to it, and learn to appreciate the new ways.
Be prepared to fail
The new process will never work as expected, even if that means it works better. It is virtually impossible to predict all that will happen in the execution step, and the impact in most cases is unsatisfactory. If you are prepared for that, there will be no surprises, and you can act accordingly, taking the necessary precautions and arrangements.
Choose the BPM tool that best fits your needs
Is KPI indicated for this process? Should I use benchmarking to understand my performance? Is the human-centric better than the systemic-centric way for my company? There are many BPM tools and ways of implementing it available in the market and is crucial to choose the ones that best fit your needs.
Check out this tool for process modeling and create your free account: HEFLO BPMN Modeling Tool.
Use what you have
The IT team can change model processes into practical applications. The end users of the process can give useful change suggestions. The employees can show you the daily demands and consequences of the process. Use the people in a right way, and you will see that, besides staff satisfaction, you will get practical results.
To know more about how implement BPM into your company and other business process management best practices, see: business process improvement steps.
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