COEPD – Center of Excellence for Professional Development Happy Learning
It is an systematic method or an approach which companies use to design, model , execute and optimize business processes. In absence of well established business process, a business becomes disrupted and becomes a potential failure. To solve this disruption process, companies have to realize the impact of process failures and adopt measures for business process management.
When processes are inefficient and not streamlined, time is lost, deadlines are missed, customers are not satisfied.
There are 5 stages to BPM lifecycle-
Design– It’s the first step in lifecycle which is analyzed and understand how the process is carried out. This step may be conducted by interviewing all stakeholders, studying documents and observing it in action. It gives an overview of how the process is initiated, what is the process flow, end result, identifying each task, what are the various types of tasks.
Example- Credit card payment system in financial institutions. Have manual entries. A credit card payment user has to come to manually make a payment where employee of the institution checks for the customer’s data and checks available payment limited, followed by payment and generation of bill receipt.
Model-The purpose of modeling is to provide a visual depiction of process phases. First as a BA, it is important to understand the current AS-IS process and how to implement them in future (to-be changes). All these changes should be submitted to stakeholders for further approvals.
Ex- the credit card system is manual where (current as-is), desired future state (to- be changes is designing online payment system for customers).
3) Execute- The third step is to “execute” and to see when the new model is tested in order to carry out and see the processes in action.
Even if processes are carried out manually in a credit card payment system, when many human interventions are required, it is advisable to carry out some automations in existing business processes so that organization can reap benefits and run more efficiently.
Example- When a software is tested and after deployment is set to go- live, it is advisable to be tested in smaller groups and ensure it is working properly and concerns and issues are resolved properly. This is important since it will give confidence to the stakeholders that this automation process is trustworthy.
Monitor– This is the 4th step in Business process management. At this stage, business processes are carried out and data is gathered on how critical activities are moving over time. Data collection from stakeholders on how the software is working, has benefitted the company, detect any bottlenecks of the developed software and any potential mistakes have been identified by the users will give an idea automation of manual entries.
Optimize– Last step of lifecycle is to optimize. Based on 4th step of monitoring phase, all the gained insights will help improve the business process and remove blocks, it helps in streamlining company’s operations, maintaining efficiency, shorten execution time and improve the output of the operations department. Examples would be removing duplicate entries in a credit card system due to manual errors through automation, removing false positive hits in case of delinquencies in a payment where customer has already paid the bill but system rule shows payment has not been made due to missed deadlines.
