Process
A process, in general, is defined as the approach about how a business converts its inputs into outputs to determine organizational productivity. It is all about how you add value to your inputs and convert them into desirable outputs resulting in achievement of set organizational goals.
Process can be divided into four sequential steps about how it works
- Known and Predictable inputs
- Logical sequence and flow for converting inputs into outputs
- Defined tasks and activities to be pursued in order to achieve results
- Desired result or set goal to achieve
Managing your business processes in an efficient manner has great impact on the organizational productivity of overall business and many would agree that if you can remove discrepancies from the processes or the elements which make your processes get slow, then in very limited resources you achieve big and become quite competitive business which develops ability to survive successfully in recession times as well.
Business Process Management
Business Process Management is the determined sequential steps to be taken for generating results which takes relatively faster approach in terms of delivering results because competition is quite stiff, and processes are needed to be tightly monitored for bringing efficient results while working in competitive markets, in most cases it should not take month to get result of your efforts else you need to rethink your strategy about where you are going wrong. Currently, many organizational collaboration tools have become available which are designed to help organizations in streamlining and monitoring their processes.
The core objective of business process management is to serve customers in a better way as with each passing day market is getting more competitive with new players are entering the market. Currently keeping up with your market share and increasing it, requires some serious efforts and skills, from internal stakeholders (employees) to ultimate stakeholder customer each one is having its own importance.
BPM and Competitive advantage
Competitive advantage is like life blood for any business to survive and thrive. There are two major types of businesses.
- Cost benefit by producing in mass amounts and reducing fixed cost per unit.
- Building competitive advantage or Uniqueness in the product offered.
Mass production and cost benefit
It is pretty hard to become a market leader by capturing such great share of the customers that you benefit from efficiencies to scale by reducing your fixed cost per unit because players already being in the market, do not let new players penetrate in the market as they enjoy cost benefits because of being early entrants in the market who can offer price reductions as well as other promotions in order to hinder and block entry of new people coming in the market.
BPM in Dynamic businesses
Some business models are more complex and unstructured which is because of the work nature, as dynamic and complex work requires a creative approach to get the work done efficiently because this is the only way of having a better impact on organizational productivity. People generally require more time and flexible structures in order to solve dynamic and new problems which are why businesses keep flexible and loose structures for helping their business survive grow in a prompt manner. These type of businesses strive for building unique and competitive edge by offering creativity and some uniqueness in their offered product so that their survival in the selected niche market gets easier by charging some extra on their competitive advantage.
Benefits of managing your business processes efficiently
Business process management is a wide subject and many industries are using it in different manners for improving their organizational productivity in order to get most out of their business while ensuring survival. If organization is good at managing and controlling its operations than it enjoys several benefits along the line which includes
Flexibility
Core benefit which BPM provides to an organization is high and easy adaptability of changing business environments. In current times it has gotten very difficult for organizations to continuously develop their structures and strategy to ever changing market requirements. As an organization grows it gets difficult to show the same adaptability to the changes happening in the external environment of the organization which includes customers changing needs, government regulations, and economic fluctuations in the country as well as market competitiveness.
Faster approach
BPM helps organization in structuring its repetitive tasks bigger organizations find it harder to respond environmental changes as quickly as smaller size organizations do which hinders their continuous growth, to solve this issue BPM helps bigger size organizations by structuring methods for performing continuously occurring repetitive tasks which are faced on usual basis so that time can be saved for responding to more complex internal and external challenges faced by the organizations.
Reduced Risk
When organizational operations are structured, risk of error reduces and efficiency increases because rules and regulations prevent employees from making mistakes in the process. When industries are more technical and are faced with similar challenges on a continuous basis then implementing standardization and formalization within the organization is most beneficial for enhancing organizational productivity because there is no creativity required in the work of employees so having loose structures would only result in performance discrepancies and stress for the work force. Several industries require loose structure because there is a lot of ambiguity in work processes so it is recommended to have loose structures so that creativity fosters and employees find enough independence to do more research for bringing efficiencies in the process which ultimately contributes to the overall organizational productivity.
Reporting
With BPM measurability and reporting gets easier employees are cleared of what is expected of them and how to do it which in turn makes it easier to interpret results achieved in front of senior management. Currently, technological implementations with BPM has made it quite easier to bring more practical and quantifiable approach to the results achieved. All the processes get streamlined which help an organization in easily determining how each process is helping the organization in achieving its goals and objectives.
Relationship between Organizational Culture and BPM
Culture is becoming a new way of getting your business process management implemented easily and without any opposition, normally when BPM is implemented within organization, it is faced with resistance from different employees as they feel threatened, because in their view it poses a threat to their stability which in turn might cost them losing their job.
New approach to BPM
Modern organizations now in order to effectively implementing changes happening in the environment try to embed changes in culture by bringing change agents in the organization, or through making senior management role models for all the employees to see. There are many strategies implemented such as some organizations tend to give promotions and extraordinary perks to those who show positive and adaptable approach to the changes brought to the organization over time, by rewarding those who show positive approach to organizational changes and punishing in terms of perks to those who show resistance, this makes workforce adapt to changes faster, as employees keep on comparing their growth to other employees growth so everybody tries to adapt change which helps organization in easily implementing changes essential and it desires to make for impacting organizational productivity in order to survive in more competitive markets.
Conclusion
BPM brings enormous benefits to adaptability and overall competitiveness which makes it very important for all the businesses but the thing which comes first is to take imperative of determining what your key business processes are, because all the processes and standardization comes after you determine what will be key areas within organization which are going to be focused. The other part is to cope with the resistance which is generally faced by organizations while keeping employee motivation and morale high. Total three methods are discussed within the article to make implementation of changes go swiftly without any hurdles.
- To enter change agents within organizations who adapt to changes and become role models for others.
- Taking senior management in confidence while making them as leaders and role models for the whole organization to follow.
- Giving more perks and faster promotions to the people who adapt to change while keeping resistant employee’s growth very limited.
Business process management is necessary and all organizations must take it into consideration or set some technostructure department which oversees all the processes standardization and improvements.