Business Process Development and Automation

Lets look at some process development that can benefit your company. First, like many other companies, you might be stuck in a loop or rut. Often, one of several things happen in large companies and organizations. Your projects are funded without a business case or business need and go ahead because someone with enough power thinks it should happen. Or you have an established investment in large scale, enterprise solutions and there is no connection between what the business actually needs and what you have the capability to offer, or the technology is readily available to provide the solution and is not realized. Another problem that I see is that there is no seizing of opportunities because there is nothing in place to define and action it. In another words, you have a competitive advantage unfold in the market and you lack the business processes to address the problem that will allow you to implement the technological improvements to succeed in the new opportunities.

There are some key parts to the process development life cycle. The are process design, process modeling, process execution, monitoring and optimization. In reality, this may not be followed in the same order or even do every part. It is often up to the company or business to decide what steps it needs and this is usually constrained by either budget or time.

The process design phase is simple and I have talked about it previously. It is simply the phase where you define where you want to be. You will also need to document or already have documented your current state and current procedures and process flows. A good design will improve the longevity of the plan and reduce the number of re-writes that happen often in a time-constrained, rushed, design. The next phase, modeling, takes in to account the variables that can affect your processes. This phase usually involves scenario handling and cost cutting exercises, more like a "what-if" this or that happens and how the process will be able to handle the changes.

One of the biggest steps in a process development program is the execution. This is where the automation comes in. How can you make it run on it's own without manual intervention. This automation will self-trigger events that can initiate other processes to start or complete. This almost always involves some sort of BPM software or tool to do the job well. Yes, you can probably write your own code and system to handle the automation part, but in reality, it will not be able to handle changes and adapt. I often see custom made automation software, scripts and tools get developed in house, only to end being replaced by a quality BPM suite later down the road. So, don't waste your time and money, just invest in the proper software or Business Process Management suite now. Without it , automation is just plain difficult.

The monitoring phase is rather simple, compared to the process execution implementation. The implementation phase is traditionally the hardest and where many companies spend most of their money and time. The monitoring and an existing process is again handled the best by the BPM software. Management always wants to see statistics and progress. These can easily be seen from the right software. There should be a quick way to see the status of all activities in a process and all process as whole. It should be easily identifiable is something is not working so that it may be corrected immediately. The business usually defines the level of monitoring needed. Business activity monitoring can be real-time, ad-hoc or timed reports. Either way, it is usually a business driven phase.

The last part of the business process development is the optimization phase. This phase is in my opinion one of the most important phases. I usually see most organizations develop new process with an attitude of, "this should work great" , but in reality, this is not often the case and adjustments need to be made. The optimizing of processes is an on-going phase and ties in well with monitoring. With a good monitoring process , you can quickly identify bottle necks and use that information to improve and modify the processes on the fly to improve efficiency. This usually leads to higher profit margins, and we all know that management, owners and the share holders love to hear that.