Business process management (BPM) is not a cost-cutting exercise; it's a revenue- generating methodology.
This is the view of Pieter Neveling, senior SOA architect at SoftwareAG, speaking at the ITWeb BPM Summit in Midrand, yesterday. He said that BPM, above all else, is about driving a culture change within an organisation.
“Business leader priorities are clear - 68% of businesses are looking to cut operating costs. But this is not always the best way. Cost cutting has become benign because IT has got nothing else to cut. Businesses simply can't cut budget anymore,” he said.
According to Neveling, around 53% of businesses want to increase revenue as a top priority. “In the business world we need to increasingly monitor the way we do business and the design of processes and metrics that fulfil the desired strategies.”
He explained that workflows and business processes are nothing more than a delivery framework.
“Yet, organisations need to take the road that makes business sense, not to give in to the first decision to cut costs, but to increase business revenue. And the way to do this is by enabling a process and performance driven environment.”
Neveling said an organisation will never be able to cut out risk completely; however, business process excellence will help a business plan for risk management.
“Companies need to achieve a certain level of collaboration with business users, partners and customers,” Neveling noted. “Process excellence enables an organisation to take the company information and client information, and to bring all the streams together in real-time, so managers can make informed, pro-active decisions in real-time.”
He added that organisations need to have a full understanding of what is happening in the business.
“The big picture for process excellence is to integrate and have visibility of the business processes to continue getting continuous real-time information on those processes, and take immediate action.”
Neveling pointed out that process excellence leads to operational excellence, which leads to business performance.
He explained that process performance helps define weaknesses and strengths within a BPM project and helps a business to design process improvement objectives.
According to Neveling, process intelligence works hand-in-hand with business intelligence to create view of the organisation in real-time, to help make strategic decisions for the business.
“It's about taking all the pieces of processes from multiple platforms and systems, and coming together to give a company the ability to make better business decisions.”
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