The business process management discipline. Tommy & Clerius [Chapter 4]

Blog: Flokzu

Our heroes Tommy and Clerius have already applied the business process management discipline (also called BPM). But maybe they didn’t know it.

They already solved growth problems, their workflow of deliverables approval and claims handling in the 3 previous chapters.

They are taking their consulting firm, CleTo, to a new level. One in which they can compete with any other organization in the world. And win.

The business process management discipline

Tommy, with his typical capacity for study, analysis and abstraction, summed up the subject for Clerius in this way:

Look Clerius, the business process management discipline is composed of methodologies and technologies. It is not just one, or just the other. They are both, and must be applied together.

From a disciplinary point of view, processes are the muscles that move the organization. You can evaluate and improve them, applying a formal and detailed analysis. It can be complemented with other disciplines, such as process reengineering and organizational change management.

But in general lines, we can summarize that the application of the discipline of business process management is based on 4 main pillars: Modeling, Automating, Measuring and Improving.

Modeling

To model the process, that is to say, to achieve an abstraction of the process, which can be formalized by means of a graphic diagram, discussed and understood by those involved. Usually, the BPMN standard is used, the best known worldwide.

Automating

Automate and execute the process. This is the most technological part, in which you use specific software (a BPM Suite). There are several classifications for the BPM Suite, such as Monolithic or service-oriented, On-Premise (like INTEGRADOC) vs Cloud (like Flokzu), etc. Each organization must choose the one that best suits its needs.

Measuring

Measure and analyze. After executing the processes for a while, they must be measured. There you can use tools in real-time or oriented to historical analysis. For example, in the last semester or year. The idea here is to obtain objective process performance indicators (KPI’s), which allow you to extract conclusions about how your processes are running.

Improving

Depending on the indicators obtained, the last stage should be to identify and introduce improvements in the processes. After all, this is “managing”. For this, the team of process analysts will decide where the opportunities for improvement are and will introduce them into the process model, restarting the cycle.

In sum…

Business process management is a discipline, not just a technology. It must include a methodological factor, which is very important. It is based on four major stages: model the processes, automate them (in a software), measure them, and introduce improvements. Every organization should have initiatives in this discipline, given that as Tommy & Clerius have clearly seen, it is the way to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the processes that support the operation of any organization.

In Flokzu we offer a free trial of our Premium service for 14 days. We also offer free advice to help you set up the first process and start automating your processes, without pain.