Why Your Company Needs A Business Process Management System

By Author: Miranda Von Stockhausen
Total Articles: 4762
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In business, as in many human activities, it is not the core concepts or principles that have changed over the years, but the tools used to put them to work. Having an electric typewriter or a word processor on a desktop computer wouldn't have resulted in Shakespeare writing better, just faster (and with spell check). It is the same with the various kinds of systems, processes, procedures, paradigms, management theories and crackpot notions that have been alternately useful and useless tools in the business world since about the time of the Industrial Revolution.

Big, wealthy, Fortune 500 (or even 1000) firms always have the latest and greatest of these tools, even some that work against each other. Many of these companies spend far too much time and energy trying to customize the operations of these various management systems to their business models. Now that the latest wave of management theories are making inroads with small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), it's probably time that you gave some thought to why your company needs a Business Process Management (BPM) system.

Give yourself a little quiz
Helping ...
... SMB owners and managers understand how BPM software can help improve their businesses will answer that question. If your firm has 50 to 100 employees, or more, and a good number of them are using computers, then a BPM system is likely already up and running. For the purpose of this short, introductory article, we will focus on SMBs with fewer than 30 employees.

If you are such a company, or a management consultant with client firms of this size, a short little "thought experiment" should get your thinking on track. As long as you are honest, you should discover whether or not you really need some kind of BPM system, solution and/or software. Remember, this is somewhat of a free-form exercise, not a clinical experiment, and it won't result in a specific purchase recommendation. The questions will crystallize your thinking on the matter, however, and take you to the next step in your investigation of BPM solutions.

Candor is required
For each question in the list, give a simple "yes" or "no" answer. If you answer "yes," fewer than five times, you probably don't need BPM software. If you answer in the affirmative more than five times, that suggests that you may need it, and that you should continue your investigations. (If you have nine or 10 "yes" responses, should go straight from this article to some BPM buying advice. A couple of final reminders: This mini-quiz is for SMBs with fewer than 30 employees, and will only work if you are candid.

1. Is your business a service-based one? (The fact is, if you are a product-based company with fewer than 25 employees you are unlikely to need BPM software, as you probably already have Enterprise Resource Planning, or ERP, software to handle common manufacturing and accounting procedures.)
2. Do you have annual revenues over $4 million?
3. Do you foresee growing your business beyond the "SMB" definition, perhaps becoming a Fortune 500 success story?
4. Do you subcontract a portion of your services to two or more third party firms?
5. Does your company have five or more forms that require structured data (names, addresses, numbers, etc.) to be input by one of your employees, customers or vendors?
6. Do companies you work with (as clients, vendors or what-have-you) require structured data from you as a condition of providing their service to your company?
7. Have any of these firms with which you interact suggested that you could use their service(s) via a Web API?
8. Do you currently use a document management system, CMS (Content Management System), wiki or "collaborative portal" arrangement?
9. Are you routinely producing two or more contracts, invoices, letters or other documents (hard copy and/or digital) for a typical business transaction?
10. Would you benefit from regular reports that show how long your core processes are taking and where there may be bottlenecks?

Adding it up, breaking it down
Granted, these are just a handful of the potential questions that you should consider when weighing the possibility of installing a BPM system. Perhaps some points should have greater weight in your formula than they would for a different kind of business. If so, adjust your score up or down proportionally. This is not a precise exercise by any means, but you should certainly be able to spot a trend with your responses. Continue to study, read, ask questions and discuss the issue with trusted advisors, while taking all the "expert advice" from bloggers, business pundits and "tech heads" with a large dose (not grain) of salt.

One common, and common sense, observation, however, is that the majority of small companies that have been in business for years, and remain small, probably don't need BPM systems. On the other hand, SMBs that are on a growth path, whose corporate cultures are maturing and whose prospects are bright, will likely need BPM systems once they move from the "entrepreneurial" to the "corporate" stage of development. If this describes your company then somewhere along the way a BPM system is going to be indicated, and it won't hurt a bit to get a jump on it.
About Author:
As the business process management (BPM) trailblazer, Savvion.com moves enterprises beyond ordinary BPM with groundbreaking business-critical software, solutions, and services that make them more competitive, agile and cost-efficient in today’s tough economic times. Visit online today.