An introduction to a not so unknown world of "Business Process Management" what is also an acronym for BPM. A brief wiki article can be had at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_management. Let me dissect the term Business Process Management for you. First let me take management out of it and thankfully I don't have to go into the details of discussing what Management is. Let's now briefly talk about the term "Process". The word process has it's origin from Manufacturing as far as the field of business management goes.
"Process is a naturally occurring or designed sequence of changes of properties or attributes of an object or system."
"Process is a naturally occurring or designed sequence of changes of properties or attributes of an object or system."
Source: Wiki
Of late there has been an urgency or should I say evolved need to see Business Process as a resource just like human resource and other resources applicable in an organization. And because of this evolution to see Business Process as a resource there is a continuous need to manage it just like any other resource.
With changing influence of technology into business there were concepts like ERP which started gaining popularity. However, initially these efforts did not enjoy the success because they focused on department or functional areas of business. The myopia they struggled with was that they failed to understand that such efforts will provide multitude of success if the pattern to implement them was process oriented. However, on a larger perspective it also gave an insight that business should be looked from the criticality of process driven rather than function driven. The problem with a function driven approach is that it looks at the business from an in-house perspective. But as we all know that the success of any business today is driven by customers and hence the approach that the business should take today should be process driven. The process that focuses on customer satisfaction.
As a result of this advancement in the way the Business is starting to take advantages of process driven approach we see many companies (esp service-oriented) to boast about being 100% process oriented. Airtel, makes such a claim. I carefully used es service oriented. This is not to take anything away from manufacturing intensive firms' claim of being process intensive. However, there can be an eternal debate about how many of manufacturing firms have functions which are product oriented rather than service oriented.
We are now starting to see that companies are becoming more and more process oriented, but not many of them have reached a stage where they can brag about being process centric.
I think this should be it before I completely talk about my learnings of 4 hours today.
With changing influence of technology into business there were concepts like ERP which started gaining popularity. However, initially these efforts did not enjoy the success because they focused on department or functional areas of business. The myopia they struggled with was that they failed to understand that such efforts will provide multitude of success if the pattern to implement them was process oriented. However, on a larger perspective it also gave an insight that business should be looked from the criticality of process driven rather than function driven. The problem with a function driven approach is that it looks at the business from an in-house perspective. But as we all know that the success of any business today is driven by customers and hence the approach that the business should take today should be process driven. The process that focuses on customer satisfaction.
As a result of this advancement in the way the Business is starting to take advantages of process driven approach we see many companies (esp service-oriented) to boast about being 100% process oriented. Airtel, makes such a claim. I carefully used es service oriented. This is not to take anything away from manufacturing intensive firms' claim of being process intensive. However, there can be an eternal debate about how many of manufacturing firms have functions which are product oriented rather than service oriented.
We are now starting to see that companies are becoming more and more process oriented, but not many of them have reached a stage where they can brag about being process centric.
Let me briefly give theoretical elements involved in Business Process.
I think this should be it before I completely talk about my learnings of 4 hours today.
2 comments:
Great analysis, but I think what we are witnessing is a mere evolution of business processes, and what I am more intrigued by, is how computing systems and IT have catalysed this evolution while evolving themselves. Its multiple recursive evolution.
Agreed! I think I'll write a post to bring in more clarity on roles of IT as a catalyst or should I say as one of the catalyst. I think most of the people who are into IT including me suffers from the ignorance of the fact that IT drives the world and business but there is more to the business process than just IT. However, I'd truly agree that IT is a critical factor.
In my next post I'll try to capture other elements that are key ingredients of BPM and also get into the details that you correctly pointed out that the evolution has just begun.
Post a Comment