The success of any Business Process Management (BPM) initiative is as reliant on the accuracy of the mapped processes and staff buy-in, as it is on the efficiency of the elected enabling software.
The Importance of Accurately Defining Processes
When defining processes for automation capture not only the documented process, but also the informal practices that employees use to ensure their tasks are completed. Focusing solely on formal processes and not informal practises can create more resistance from staff, and ultimately lead to the new BPM processes simply being ignored. Mapping out the real as-is processes will not only aid in preserving an organisation’s competitive advantage, but also reveal areas that would benefit from digitisation.
Where is your organisation’s tacit knowledge stored?
Much of an organisation’s competitive advantage lies in the way that things are done and less in what is done. Even if you are the first to offer a product or service, there will soon be emulators hot on your heels chasing the same market share. The knowledge personnel gather with experience and experimentation is often lost when that person retires, passes away, or simply leaves the company. How do you ensure that tacit human capital is converted into explicit structural capital?
Identify, capture, document your business processes.
Any organisation that wants to succeed and excel should ensure that their business processes are defined and documented in detail.
Keep people in the loop
Be aware that restructuring the way employees work can be a profound change and many people resist change for fear of the unknown. People’s lives may be disrupted; star performers could fear their skills will become obsolete; slackers may find their laziness discovered and their jobs on the line.
By optimising your business processes, you are going to change how time is spent and how excellence is measured. Be aware that in many instances, you may be changing the way customers and suppliers engage with the company. Make sure that employees, suppliers and customers are continuously informed about the proposed changes. Their feedback may be critical to the project’s success.
Before embarking on any BPM initiative, ensure you have buy-in from the executives and that all modifications fit into the larger strategic plan.
How does the FlowCentric Platform address these concerns?
The FlowCentric Platform cultivates on-going collaboration between IT and Business. Together the two departments can build unique applications that will connect people to their processes by means of their devices. This collaboration encourages greater understanding of each other’s requirements, knowledge sharing, and aids in providing the organisation at large with the best IT-enabled and business-based systems.
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