Cinergi Systems

Business Context

Most organisations face the challenge that costs are too high and productivity too low. Boards, executives and senior management face increasing pressure to improve business performance, by implementing new business strategies, operating models and generally improving existing operations.

These challenges need to be faced in an increasingly complex environment, characterised by:

• High risks related to competition, governance, risk, compliance, sustainability and security
• Workforce instability, with high turnover/loss of management and staff
• Rapidly changing technology innovation that is driving complex enterprise architecture and investment decisions, followed by disruptive technology implementation

Simply cutting costs to improve the bottom line is a short term option, but without sustainable productivity improvements as well, this approach will inevitably lead to a down-grade in business performance.

BPM is a technology-enabled management discipline which addresses this dilemma, making organisations strong, agile and resilient to change.

Business Process Management (BPM)

From a business performance perspective, important characteristics of BPM are:

• Integration of business processes and technology, leveraging existing technology and application systems to improve individual and group productivity and business performance
• An environment where management and staff can collaborate more productively, with improved process visibility, compliance, performance analysis and flexible resource utilisation
• A capability to implement formalised process management selectively and incrementally, addressing key processes where the greatest productivity gains can be achieved
• An ability to rapidly implement and adapt business processes to match business strategies

BPM is business-driven, not constrained by onerous technology investment. Key stakeholders and business managers should set priorities for tackling the challenge of business performance improvement. There is no need for major ‘up front’ capital investment, long delivery lead times or reliance on IT departments. BPM Pilot Projects are simple to establish and execute if participating business areas are engaged and motivated.

Given the ready access to low-cost BPM cloud technology and mobile apps, investment in BPM becomes a viable business proposition for all corporations, government agencies, SMEs and NFPs.

Value Proposition for BPM

Major benefits are achieved through integration of formalised business processes and technology. Technology investment alone will not realise business benefits. Benefits are realised through improved business process performance – critical success factors addressed by BPM map to tangible benefits:

Visibility of formal/informal processes and patterns of process compliance Ability to assess process compliance and performance, followed by process optimisation Flexible workforce capability, enabling process load balancing across teams Faster, more effective embedding of process and technology changes for management/staff

Collaboration within self-managed teams during process execution Optimum staff development, resource utilisation and contribution of business value Encapsulation of process knowledge, to deal with staff turnover and succession planning Providing business context for defining, delivering or upgrading Application Systems

The major costs associated with implementing BPM solutions are:

• Management & staff participation in process discovery, modelling and implementation
• BPM process facilitators and designers
• BPM technology, typically low-cost cloud technology which allows an organisation to start small and grow their BPM solutions to meet business needs – can be provisioned as Opex or Capex

In summary, investment in BPM solutions can be made in stages, tackling specific processes to ‘cherry pick’ business performance improvement and ROI. There is no need for major ‘up front’ capital investment, long delivery lead times or reliance on IT. Momentum can be built rapidly by conducting BPM pilot projects.