Business Process Modeling is becoming a higher priority for business managers and analysts as there is an increasing emphasis in organizations to document, understand and improve their business processes. Managers and business owners are realizing that operating their businesses without well documented processes is just like a pilot who is flying blind without properly functioning instruments and navigation. Well documented and streamlined processes are essential in a smooth functioning of a team as they help ensure consistency, trackability and focus towards a shared goal.
Business Process Modeling is a combination of various process related
steps such as Process Mapping, Process Discovery, Process Simulation,
Process Analysis and Process Improvement. Although a holistic business
process modeling exercise would cover all these steps in some depth,
analysts have found that even a partial modeling exercise that
involves a subset of these steps is a good start and yields
significant benefits.
Business process modeling provides important benefits to companies and
organizations such as the ones listed below.
(1) Align Operations with Business Strategy
Implementing a business strategy or a new business model requires
changes in the operations and in how people perform their work. This
can be affected only by operationalizing the business changes to the
actual business processes, business rules and decisions that are made
on a day to day basis by all the people in the organization.
Business
Process Modeling facilitates this by helping:
* Link organizational strategy to well-defined business processes
- Business process modeling is a critical tool for management and
executives to ensure that the business processes are consistent with
and enable execution towards achieving the overall strategy of the
organization.
* Align business execution and operation activity with strategy -
Process modeling ensures that the operational tasks and activities
performed by the team members actually help the organization implement
its strategy. If the processes and the strategy are not aligned it
usually leads to failure in execution because even if the operational
tasks are performed correctly, the overall organizational goals are
not achieved.
* Implement Business Process Reengineering (BPR) by understanding
the existing processes and changing them for improved performance -
Business process analysis helps in identifying bottlenecks and
ineffeciencies in the processes and thus improving them.
* Enable Process Agility, an ability to change and communicate
processes quickly to take advantage of new business opportunities or
address business challenges.
(2) Improve Process Communication
One area that distinguishes successful businesses and teams is that
they have a very clear idea of what they are supposed to do, how they
are supposed to do it and what is the exact role of every team member.
Clear communication of the operational processes is critical to
facilitate a smooth functioning of a team.
Business Process Modeling enables the documenting and communicating of
the organizations business processes:
* Process modeling offers a common unified language and
methodology for communicating processes and information about
processes and decision rules.
* It is ideal for training of new people and rapid knowledge
transfer because with a thoroughly documented process any new team
member can be very quickly trained on what they have to do in any
situation that they may face.
* Minimizes potential danger of loss of staff resulting in loss of
business process knowledge.
* It helps business managers communicate their ideas quickly and clearly.
* Jump-starts the organizational process documentation initiative.
* Turns the team's experience and "tribal knowledge" into
documented processes.
(3) Increase Control and Consistency
Organizations and companies that succeed are ones that ensure their
business processes and rules are well designed and that they are
consistently applied the same way every single time. This process
control and consistency is key for success in organizations ranging
from fast-food chains to hospitals to NASA Space Shuttle operations.
Business Process Modeling makes this possible by helping:
* Formalize existing processes which may not be well documented or
which have evolved over time into "informal knowledge".
* Execute process in consistent manner because instead of relying
on people to remember to do the right thing the documented process can
be given to the business users.
* Make better decisions because guesswork is eliminated as
business users can have the documented business rules in front of
them.
* Handle exceptions faster and in a better way.
* Complete regulatory compliance by ensuring that the documented
processes follow the company guidelines and legal regulations.
* Put business people in charge.
* Support compliance initiatives such as Six Sigma, ISO 9000, and
Sarbanes-Oxley.
(4) Improve Operational Efficiencies
In today's business environment, every business and every manager
wants to ensure that they are achieving the best possible results with
the resources available to them. There is no room for inefficiencies
and wastage.
The Process simulation and analysis steps of Business Process Modeling
are critical tools for managers and analysts to ensure that their
processes are optimized and are running like a well-oiled machine:
* Process Simulation allows analysis and understanding of the
process flows and helps managers know if there is room for further
optimization and efficiencies.
* It helps spot needed improvements and reduce process cycle time.
* It increases productivity of existing resources and staff and so
allows the team to do more with less.
* It facilitates risk free experimentation and encourages exchange
of process improvement ideas.
* Process simulation allows modeling of process designs before
actually implementing them thus minimizing disruptions.
* It encourages a mind-set of continually optimizing business
critical processes to incrementally improve operational efficiencies.
* Process analysis enables better resource utilization.
(5) Gain Competitive Advantage
All the benefits mentioned above lead to a significant competitive
advantage for an organization that has invested the time and effort to
document, simulate and improve its business processes. Studies of many
wildly successful companies has often shown that their success was not
due to better ideas or better business models but because they
invested significantly in business process modeling to constantly
refine and improve their processes. A slight improvement in one
activity here and another one there leads to an overall better process
and as that process is executed repeatedly in the day-to-day running
of the business it makes an organization much more efficient and
better than its competitors.
A business that has aligned its operations to its strategy, is agile,
that has control over its processes, is running efficiently and has
well trained staff is indeed at the top of its game.
