Expanding role for Business Process Management

Scott Russell is a country manager of global business services, IBM Thailand

Therefore, chief information officers are increasingly combining two business approaches to get their processes and people working together better.

The first, business process management, or BPM, is a way of streamlining processes to respond to customers, to increase the speed with which new products are delivered to markets and to enhance customer services. BPM can also help meet compliance requirements by replacing multiple systems with a single, business-wide process specifically designed to incorporate the business rules required to meet compliance regulations.

The second approach is called Service Oriented Architecture, or SOA, a business-centric IT architecture. When business processes are built using a flexible SOA infrastructure, changes are easy to make. The entire application does not need to be rewritten. SOA enables business processes to be made into components, so services can be used again and again, instead of recreating everything from scratch.

An SOA approach involves breaking down business processes into their component parts, called services, because a service is the smallest level at which you can interrogate the system and get an answer.

For example, a firm may create a service that conducts a credit check. Each service is a piece of code that can be used and re-used by any part of the organisation using existing code. Through this approach, software code is not constantly being rewritten, saving development time and costs.

In the retail industry, BPM has been critical in helping retailers manage supply chains and monitor inventory. The business benefits have been significant. However, it is no longer just a large-industry phenomenon. BPM holds benefits for medium-sized companies as well.

BPM can empower business users, provide actionable insights, improve business agility and help meet demanding compliance requirements. It will also reduce costs, enhance collaboration, achieve end-to-end process capability and boost employee productivity. Importantly, it will also improve customer service.

BPM projects do well when there is vested cross-company interest in their success. Organisations that formulate a comprehensive approach to streamlining routine tasks generally have the best results. As well, early tangible benefits serve as a demonstration for future projects. In the end, everyone using this approach gleans valuable information from the experience of others.