Business Process Management (BPM) focuses on improving corporate performance through managing and optimizing processes.
Is your company a player?
Mid-market companies (those earnings > $50M in revenue) already have various operational processes in place. Smaller mid-market entities, with revenue streams between $10-50M, are establishing these processes.
The key is integrating what you need to know (information) with what you need to do (revenue generation activities) to grow your business.
That strategy is nothing short of Innovation. That strategy is nothing short of Change.
The issue is that too many businesses continue to be mired in What I Want to Hear rather than What I Need to Know.
Take a look around your organization. Identify the catalyst for change. Technology.
Regardless of what you want to hear, what you need to know is the pace of transformation in technology waits for no one. It outpaces your company’s capabilities to keep up on all levels.
Take a look around your organization. Identify your common denominator. Your People. Are you hiring for What’s Next? For Tomorrow? For the Future workplace?
Your problem? Where to Start combined with How to Integrate.
Business process management systems marry up data with people and business operations with IT capabilities. The recognition by smart organizations that they need to either: 1) establish and institutionalize or 2) streamline and optimize BPMS is a huge step in growing their businesses.
BPMS should make you feel more than a little bit uncomfortable. Otherwise there would be no innovation involved.
Business process management is not an intellectual exercise. Nor is it a 100% automated process (yet). Strategy and processes are executed by more than one individual in your company. Business is not conducted in a vacuum nor transacted in one either.
The type of horizontal workflow and throughput required by BPM systems is catalyzed by cross-discipline teams who are masters of collaboration.
Is your corporate culture prepared to execute cross-functionally? Are your teams of people merely aggregates of individuals hired because of homogeneous professional attributes?
Nothing stands still in the business and technology ecosystem. You and your organization do not have the luxury of taking a “time out” while you visualize, measure, analyze, improve, institutionalize, control and re-engineer your business process management strategy.
There’s nothing linear about visualizing, measuring, analyzing, improving, institutionalizing, controlling and re-engineering. Is your company ready to move away from its task-oriented, linear focus?
It’s like trying to hit a continuously moving target. It’s like trying to get on a speeding bus.
Recognizing the importance and place of business process management systems undoubtedly will drive innovation in your organization, as you focus on aligning business units. By choosing and executing projects wisely, your company can target achievable outcomes which will permanently impact the direction your company takes tomorrow and the future.
Rationally, your organization will opt to focus on short and medium term innovation in one or two critical areas.
BPMS is best executed when there is strategic foresight in choosing the right teams with the right mindset and the right capabilities to meet these objectives.
Where are you on this continuum?
Babette N. Ten Haken builds innovative, productive and profitable teams focused on excellence in the execution of strategy. Her Playbook on collaboration hacks, including tools, Do YOU Mean Business? is available on Amazon.com.
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