Business processes are present in each company and organisation. Effective management thereof with the use of properly selected and highly functional IT systems guarantees effective, proper and reliable flow of information, allows adjusting time to business and guarantees achieving the best possible effects of work while moving the company towards the so-called process excellence, and thus, implementation of its strategies and achievement of business objectives. What does Business Process Management involve and how to take care of its effective implementation in practice?
Business Process Management – the approach that effectively optimizes business processes
Business Process Management (BPM) is the approach to managing a company and an organisation including identification, analysis, optimisation and measure of processes with the use of a system of measures and indicators. It is a modern approach to management focusing on the optimisation of business processes, the basic element of which comprises processes occurring in the enterprise. Its main objective is to ensure full visibility and transparency of processes occurring in a company, as well as optimisation and improvement thereof, to which end, properly selected programme tools and services are used.
Skilful management of a business process is of crucial significance for the functioning of each enterprise. Processes are, in fact, present in each company and organisation and lead them to achieving specific, measurable work results and business objectives. They can be divided into two groups. The first one comprises core processes, which are fundamental for the enterprise’s operations and exclusion or improper functioning thereof may even stop its work. Core processes are strategic processes and contribute to achieving financial results by the company. They are also characterised with creating value added. It can be, e.g. service of the sales process or quality control.
The second group comprises back-office processes, which are aimed at supporting and improving the company’s work. However, their aim is not to create value added, but to generate additional costs. In contrast with core processes, exclusion of back-office processes may hinder, but does not halt the company’s operations in the most important areas. Core processes include, among others: customer service; whereas, back-office processes such activities as: managing delegations, vacation requests and other internal procedures binding in the company. Division of processes into core and back-office may be different for different companies – processes that in one company are core may be back-office processes in the other and vice versa.
Business Process Management and its meaning for companies’ functioning
Business Process Management plays a very important role in functioning of each company by ensuring coherence of the flow of information inside the organisation and allowing adjusting all aspects of enterprise’s functioning to individual needs of its services’ or products’ recipients. The main aim set by the modern approach to Business Process Management comprises increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of performed activities, as well as systematic improvement of business processes. It is achieved due to the skilful Business Process Management, monitoring the course thereof and increasing quality thereof by striving for the so-called: Process Excellence.
Achievement of this complex and demanding task is significantly facilitated by modern IT tools – BPM systems. The main task thereof is to digitalise and automate processes, support electronic flow of tasks, information and documents and take care of the proper course of all processes implemented by the organisation. The most advanced BPM systems, supporting agile methodologies of delivering solutions, also allow verifying and testing new ideas for optimisation of processes and implementation of new services of customer service forms (so-called Rapid Prototyping or Failure as a Service, FaaS). It allows the company to safely and not expensively test new solutions in practice.
Modern no-code/low-code platforms for effective Business Process Management
Business Process Management systems should not only allow swiftly delivering and developing new solutions, but also be flexible and allow introduction of changes and modifications in compliance with current needs of the enterprise. While using the high-tech IT solutions, it becomes possible to introduce necessary changes with immediate effect and accurate documentation at any stage of the lifecycle of the business application even just after production implementation. However, the limited access to specialists able to create and serve such IT tools may become a hindrance.
Nevertheless, this issue can be effectively solved by using modern no-code/low-code platforms, with allow automating business processes completely without coding or with the use of elements thereof where it makes be biggest technological sense and is the most time-effective (e.g. with more complex business scenarios or advanced integrations with other systems, such as e.g. ERP).
Low-code platforms specify the new path of software development in the organisation, allow combining expertise and skills of the IT department with the knowledge on current market needs and conditions of the business division. They allow entering into force the assumption of the innovative approach Citizen Assisted Development, in which business and IT experts jointly create, develop and on an ongoing basis adjust IT solutions for business divisions, ideally fitting in the company’s technological ecosystem.
Thus, no-code/low-code platforms allow users to proactively participate in the process of developing new business applications and positively influence the quality of communication and cooperation between the IT department and business divisions in the company.
