Tap into BPM's agility

Having a great idea is a good start, but efficient processes to back it up are key to success.

In the fast-moving world in which we operate, there are many sources of frustration. How many times has a great idea been overtaken by competitors; or competitors taken advantage of an opportunity the company did not even know existed? How about losing a customer because of being unable to address their needs or not even knowing they needed something?

Innovation, time to market, knowledge and ability to execute differentiate the leaders from the followers. Great ideas or great intentions are not much use without the processes to bring them to fruition.

Organisations spend a great deal of time focusing on improving efficiency and productivity. But there is another important concern: agility. Through a lack of agility, a wealth of opportunities is untapped. Approached and implemented correctly, business process management (BPM) enables this agility.

In the ideal situation, there would be a strong strategy and operational plan in place that a company could execute throughout the year, while at the same time being able to take advantage of new opportunities as they arise without disrupting the day-to-day performance. To do this successfully requires several capabilities:

* Visibility into opportunities that exist in the market.
* Innovative thinking that allows companies to create opportunities.
* Accurate knowledge that allows companies to identify the most profitable opportunities.
* The agility to seize and execute on the right opportunities faster than anyone else.

Few organisations have all these characteristics and as a result they miss opportunities. After all, every opportunity has a lifespan, a time during which the opportunity provides value; the proverbial window of opportunity. Missed opportunities are a constant source of frustration for executives and management teams in any industry.

Doing something new changes the dynamics of the environment and the chain of events that occurs in the future is altered.

Trevor van Rensburg, head of the products business at DVT

The majority of high-value opportunities have a short lifespan, enhancing the need for visibility and agility critical. First a company needs to know that an opportunity exists, preferably before anyone else discovers it. This is made possible through visibility. Then it needs to respond quickly to the opportunity and adjust its business processes to take advantage of it. This requires agility.

BPM technology combined with a process-centric view of operations can help companies transform into a forward-looking organisation that is better equipped to respond quickly to market changes, issues and opportunities. At a high level, BPM helps achieve this through a combination of three things:

* Process automation and integration
* Process analysis and flexible design tools
* Process simulation capabilities

Process automation and integration allows companies to close organisational and system gaps by streamlining a process from end-to-end and removing inefficient silos. Closing these gaps increases collaboration and opens up broader visibility across the process so that people can monitor the big picture in real-time. This creates a whole new level of visibility and empowers people to take advantage of this increased knowledge to proactively address issues and opportunities. It also allows for faster response times so decisions can quickly be transformed into action.

Process analysis and flexible design tools allow business managers to report on and learn from actual results at both the process and line-of-business level. The close tie that a BPM suite affords between process and analytics can be leveraged to drill down from a dashboard level into the process detail behind a critical key performance indicator. This insight allows business managers to identify inefficient areas of the process and empowers users to identify new opportunities for leveraging processes to improve overall performance.

Process simulation capabilities allow business managers and analysts to model process changes and simulate results. As part of a BPM suite, the simulation is based on actual process data and incorporates actual process flows, roles and performance metrics, thereby ensuring an accurate picture of the situation and the impact that a change in any of these areas will have on overall organisational performance.

The ability to take advantage of new opportunities is critical to market leadership, financial performance, innovation and strategic advantage. But there is a secondary, even more powerful impact that occurs when a company can execute an opportunity effectively: it can create and make available a new set of opportunities that may not have existed without the first one.

Doing something new changes the dynamics of the environment and the chain of events that occurs in the future is altered. If companies execute effectively, the future is usually altered for the better. This ongoing cycle of one opportunity leading to another opportunity is the snowball effect.

Greater visibility and faster response times help close the window of missed opportunities. More accurate knowledge about how an organisation operates lowers risk and enables informed, effective decision-making. Combined, these capabilities as delivered via effective BPM, afford companies greater opportunity and greater potential for success. And all that's needed to begin is just that one opportunity.