Business process mapping (BPM) is a process of visualizing the standards, responsibilities, and roles within the organization so that you can easily understand and evaluate a business method or transaction. Companies use BPM to understand the workflow process and determine whether it needs tweaking or enhancement.
Mapping involves documenting the workflow and employs visual design tools and symbols for immediate comprehension. For instance, if you run a bakeshop, the BPM process would be 1.) bake bread; 2.) sell bread, and 3.) receive payment.
Why business process mapping is important
BPM helps companies accomplish a lot of things in its operations such as complying with government or institutional standards, hiring new employees, enhancing productivity, and preparing effective marketing campaigns.
It is particularly helpful in internal audits. This is because BPM visualizes whether the department or company complies with the standards.
With BPM, hiring and training new employees will be smoother. The existing staff can train a new employee, encourage productivity, and ensure consistency of production output.
BPM is also essential if your organization seeks compliance with ISO 9001. A business process map helps companies comply with the International Standards Organization which imposes standards on every aspect of the business.
A business process management map also contributes to better productivity. It helps avoid repetitive tasks, streamlines the workflow processes, and reduces bottlenecks.
A company using BPM is seen as more visible. BPM equips companies with tools to analyze, monitor, and measure results, which in turn increase transparency.
This also reduces process complexity. BPM enhances the existing workflow and complements the existing applications and software that make the procedure easier.
What are the important applications for BPM?
BPM is useful in the following areas: human resource, reporting, and tracking, employee training or onboarding, offboarding, manufacturing processes, scheduling patients, processing warranties, quality control, purchasing, and complying with government requirements.
What are the BPM tools?
- Visual design tools for modeling. To represent processes, a person will need to use tools or graphical software to visualize processes.
- Cloud storage and management. With this feature, you can easily retrieve, share, and organize data with an internet connection. BPM allows easy access without the need for hardware storage devices such as USB or hard drives.
- Metrics or graphical reporting tools, and analytics consist of pie, line, and bar charts, as well as histograms. With analytics, one could easily understand the workflow process.
- Integration with CRM. Customer Relationship Management or CRM refers to the process and software that allow interaction between vendors and customers. Newer BPM tools have similar CRM functions.
What are the components of a process?
- Decisions are actions implemented in accordance with the guideline.
- Inputs make the process flow. For instance, the input for a chocolate factory is raw cocoa. Inputs may also include people, raw material, and information.
- Output refers to the end result that must be constantly monitored.
- Tasks are activities that need to be finished within a specific time.
What are the steps in business process mapping?
1. Clarify the BPM purpose
One must clarify the purpose, objective, and the problems that a BPM process and software can resolve.
2. Design your process
This involves turning the ideas and concepts into graphical representations using the software. Such designs include roles, workflows, process flows, and task management.
3. Develop a model
It uses the design and applies it to various situations. For instance: What if the point of sale system fails, what if the customer escalates the call to the manager, and what if half of the staff don’t come to work? With BPM, you can model various scenarios.
4. Implement the process making
With modeling finished, the personnel can implement the process making, process flows, data mapping, data sources integration, and user role setup for each of the process steps.
5. Apply the business process
This includes using the business process such as ordering, purchasing, hiring, training, and manufacturing processes.
6. Monitor the process
It involves using analytics or graphs to measure the success of the BPM. The analytics can be a part of the software BPM package or a separate software.
7. Optimize the BPM process
This last process constitutes analyzing the graphical or analytics data to know if the BPM process implemented performs well in real-life situations.
What are the essential BPM software features?
A BPM software has the following features:
It allows for activity tracking and audit trails for better monitoring.
It automates manual activities such as certain repetitive tasks, including making templates, filling up orders, tracking time, issuing bills, and shipping.
A good BPM software has a Cloud feature. With ubiquitous access, you can easily share data with anyone using the BPM. It also features fluid editing tools which can easily allow you to change the flow chart, arrows, and boxes.
A BPM software should also contain measurement features, which include analytics or graphs to provide a good analysis of a process’ effectiveness.
Finally, a good BPM can integrate personal information, databases, processes, and software.
The best BPM software
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