Digitising and managing business processes with BPM software

BPM software: the key to structuring, optimising, analysing and monitoring your business processes. Develop coordination within your organisation and gain in agility!

This content on BPM solutions and software is part of our dossier on Business Process Management.

The challenge of digitising and governing business processes

Business Process Management is designed to put in place a structured, consistent and cross-functional approach to managing business workflows within your company. BPM or BPMS solutions are essential to support its implementation. They enable workflows to be designed, automated and supervised so as to improve the coordination and efficiency of business processes.

3 essential functions for process management are at the heart of BPM solutions:

Graphical modelling to represent the sequence of business interventions in their entirety
Automation to sequence actions, collect and update data and delegate simple tasks to the machine
Monitoring to take a step back from your organisation and quickly identify sources of error, bottlenecks and areas for optimisation.

Managing processes with Excel: the wrong way round!

Excel is used in all business sectors and by the vast majority of company departments. It's an everyday tool, familiar to everyone, and easy to learn. Excel therefore has real advantages. The objective for your company is therefore to concentrate its use on its strengths, and limit its use to areas where it generates risks and inefficiencies for your organisation. Managing your processes using Excel is a perfect illustration of this. In theory, Excel can be used for any purpose. However, in reality, the process never follows the perfect path that was planned! There are many pitfalls, and it is essential to identify the risks: recurring delays, tension between departments, inefficiency, poor data quality, limited security, etc. To digitise, automate and optimise your processes, you need to get out of Excel, at least for the consolidation and information-sharing stages.

Examples of processes digitised using BPM software

Business Process Management solutions are suitable for all sectors of activity, from private companies to local authorities and public bodies. The BPM approach applies in particular to administrative processes linked to purchasing (investment requests, order tracking, flows between the accounting and purchasing information systems, etc.) or decision-making, but also to all support and customer relations processes. Bringing complex, interdependent processes back under control, where employee or customer experience is at stake and deadlines have to be met, brings major gains in efficiency and agility.

The concept of Social BPM

Business Process Management (BPM) tools model and digitise the business and human aspects of corporate processes. This second component is at the heart of the Social BPM strategy, which is designed to encourage interaction between the people who make up the organisation's DNA.

"These solutions democratise digital transformation and enable IT and business departments to work together to model workflows.

The benefits of Business Process Management solutions

The implementation of a software dedicated to Business Process Management approaches provides an effective response to the risks and limitations of palliative solutions (Excel, e-mail, etc.): no more unchecked mailboxes or forgotten e-mails, and no more manual reminders and the tension they cause between departments. Information can no longer be inadvertently deleted or sent outside the company!

The implementation of these solutions, through the automation of processes and the analysis enabled by data consolidation, also improves coordination between teams, the efficiency of procedures and business acts, and operational agility. Supervision of all business processes also provides a strategic vision of the business and the levers for optimisation.

"By optimising business processes, Business Process Management saves a considerable amount of time on a day-to-day basis."

What are the methods and best practices for using BPM software to manage your organisation’s processes?

Business process management approaches are structured around three main phases:

Design: Design and create the process in collaboration with the various managers (IT and business) and a panel of users in order to agree on a global and synchronised vision: who, how, what, etc.
Materialising: Materialising the workflow electronically and generating the various input pages and forms.
Integrate: Integrate the process into your company’s Information System, and link it with other applications to consolidate information.

These are transformation projects that involve taking a step back and aligning departments around a cross-functional vision of processes.

"I regularly talk to departments whose main challenge is to implement an operational excellence approach by optimising their business processes!

1^st recommendation

What criteria are essential when choosing a BPM solution?

Certain capabilities of Business Process Management solutions are essential if the solution is to be deployed quickly and successfully, and if users are to get to grips with it more easily. Among these points, the following should not be overlooked:

Ease of use of the tool: low code and intuitive graphical modelling using drag and drop, use of the BPMn 2.0 standard, pre-designed process models available, automated routing, alerts, delegation, etc.
Simple and complete integration with the Information System: solution integrated with the IS to reinforce process/data interoperability, equipped with a supervision console, can be combined with other data transport and qualification tools, etc.
Flexibility and scalability: responsive and multi-media portals and forms, adaptable to changing processes, etc.

2^nd recommendation

Requirements to be included in your BPM software specifications

Within your company or organisation, digitising processes using a BPM (Business Process Management) solution must offer at least :

An ergonomic workflow design workshop for simple process modelling and intuitive creation of screens and forms (WYSIWYG)
Automated technical actions and sequencing of the various stages
Easier data entry and day-to-day work: list of values from the information system, pre-filled fields, etc.
Advanced control and verification of data entered: type of data, terminals, etc.
Functionalities and tools for comfort and collaboration: save as draft, comments, request for additional information, etc.
Consolidation of information within the Information System, linked to each application, and retrieval of business and open data information
Total security of the workflow, both internally and externally (partners, suppliers, customers, etc.)
A natively Responsive Design interface to improve mobility when carrying out actions and tasks, whether viewing or entering data
A collaborative monitoring portal for each stakeholder to give everyone visibility of the tasks they need to complete or have initiated, as well as their KPIs
Supervision of workflows and processing to provide dashboards, trace all actions, deadlines and incidents, and archive completed processes

3^rd recommendation

Identify upstream the levers for user adoption

Deploying the BPM software itself must be simple from the outset. If all users can get to grips with the software quickly, backed up by a library of models, you can be sure of speeding up the development of new services as the organisation evolves, so you can react quickly to change and facilitate adoption of the solution.

In addition to the essential functions, additional modules can be added to the BPM software, such as simulation tools or tools for deploying collaborative portals. These devices contribute to the development of “augmented processes” and real-time enrichment of workflows.

They are an excellent response to specific or sectoral needs, such as setting up a supplier portal. However, all organisations can implement them to facilitate the involvement of business lines and the adoption of the solution internally, but also externally with the ecosystem (suppliers, customers, partners, etc.).

BPM : a new strategic priority for operations and top management

Choose Process Governance to deploy BPM in your organisation

Process Governance is the module in our Phoenix Data Platform dedicated entirely to process management. It covers the essential points mentioned above, with :

Compliance with the BPMn 2.0 standard to standardise processing, easily import existing processes, manage authorisations, etc.
Interaction and drag and drop for rapid process modelling
Integration of human intervention in hybrid processes
Portal generation to speed up user take-up
Comprehensive management functions: automatic process documentation, timeline and tracking, etc.

You can optimise your business workflows and guarantee a 360°, real-time view of processes and work in progress, their flow, waiting times and any functional or technical problems encountered.

"BPM initiatives need to meet both the need to optimise processes and the need to circulate data in a cross-functional and efficient way".

Our assets for the success of your BPM strategy

Quality and respect for the process

Controls, checks, alerts, traceability of actions and flows...

Intelligent, enhanced workflow

Input assistance, automation, enrichment, perspective, correlation...

Scalability and durability

Always up-to-date lists, flexibility, flow modifications...

Serving the organisation

Two-way connectivity, integration into the extended enterprise

Making the most of information

Data output in the desired formats (Excel, PDF, Word, etc.)

Supervision tools

Real-time alerts, probes on critical procedures, KPIs, simulation of scenarios when dealing with an alert

… and beyond with the Phoenix platform

Within our Phoenix platform, Process Governance integrates natively with two complementary modules, Data Foundation (ESB) and Data Governance (MDM), to handle the entire data lifecycle and data flows.

These modules ensure the interoperability of data and processes, and the ability of business units to access all relevant data in real time. As BPM users and the main recipients of data, business departments are freed from technical constraints, allowing them to concentrate on their core activities.