© process2go 2003 – All Rights Reserved
Top 10 Benefits of BPM
There are many reasons as to why organisations embark on a journey of process
transformation. This document gives you the highlights of top-line growth
potential and bottom-line savings. The list is based on the collective experience
of BPM consultants and solution providers working in a variety of industries and
governmental organisations. This list only contains benefits that can be
expressed as financially motivated improvements, in line with our process2go
philosophy.
1. Increased value and profitability of operations, a renewed focus on the
processes that matter: customer service provisioning, order fulfilment,
quality of service and time-to-market for new product launch (weeks rather
than months).
2. Reduced process or transaction cycle-times. Product development
lead-times can be dramatically reduced by applying concepts of process
re-use, elimination of administrative bottlenecks. Just-in-time availability of
resource, technology and production facilities reduces the overall process
costs dramatically. Reduced inventory costs alone can drive your costs of
operations down with as much as 20-30% due to process transformation.
3. Get the most out of your existing system platforms and databases.
BPM is not the next wave of complex systems integration projects to hit
organisations. Because of its end-to-end architecture and connectivity to
legacy environments and their inherent data structures, you will maximise
the performance of your existing system components and re-use available
data in an orchestrated manner.
4. Measurement of operational performance against best practice. BPM
allows for the aggregation of process data (sales targets, resource costs,
throughput, etc.) that can be measured historically or against industry
benchmarks. Process performance can be improved by applying
techniques like activity-based costing (ABC), or balanced scorecards.
5. Increased process accuracy, zero defects and zero-latency. Much can
be learned from the Six Sigma (lean manufacturing) initiatives in
manufacturing. GE manages to save £8.5 billion over five years. The
principles of Six Sigma equally apply to service providers and
governmental organisations. Six Sigma is an early recognition of the
power of process.
6. Reduced resource deployment and re-deployment costs. Clear
processes mean shorter introduction times so new starters can make a
fast, positive impact on the business. BPM will help recognise where and
how to re-deploy staff quickly and effectively to other parts of the
organisation. Planning becomes easier and more predictable. This makes
multi-processing and multi-tasking more likely (more with less).
7. Improved business continuity. In order to avoid process discontinuity or
bottlenecks, managers can ‘repair’ end-to-end processes before they
© process2go 2003 – All Rights Reserved
disrupt daily operations. Lack of process continuity means exposure and
likelihood of deterioration of service or inability to respond to rapidly
changing market conditions.
8. Reduced training and development costs, abundance of training
manuals, policies and procedures can be directly associated with the
process definition available on the operator’s desktop. This enhances
training logic, references and central maintenance of real-time
repositories.
9. Increased control over outsourced processes (BPO), clear service
level agreements (SLA’s) with outsourced service providers that can be
monitored with bonuses and penalties to achieve satisfactory process
outcomes. It may even lead to renewed in-sourcing where strategic
process performance is at stake.
10.Freed up management time, reduced reduce time spent managing
issues and correcting mistakes. Effective process management enables
better decision-making based on a clear understanding of an and-to-end
process and early identification of issues and risks. Reducing time spent
‘fire fighting’ will increase productivity, effectiveness and morale.
All of the benefits highlighted above can be achieved by adopting a processbased
management approach. If a business can be described as the
orchestration of business drivers, people, technology and processes, then you
will find that the first three factors are already under close scrutiny. It becomes
therefore inevitable to put processes in the spotlight and realise operational
effectiveness by transforming them to meet your demanding customer and
shareholder needs.
Process2go articulates these benefits so that they relate to your specific
environment, using real life examples of successful BPM approaches in your or
similar industries.