The Business Process Management Perspective highlights the unique characteristics of business analysis when practiced in the context of developing or improving business processes.
Business Process Management (BPM) is a management discipline and a set of enabling technologies that:
- focuses on how the organization performs work to deliver value across multiple functional areas to customers and stakeholders,
- aims for a view of value delivery that spans the entire organization, and
- views the organization through a process-centric lens.
A BPM initiative delivers value by implementing improvements to the way work is performed in an organization.
BPM determines how manual and automated processes are created, modified, cancelled, and governed. Organizations that hold a process-centric view treat BPM as an ongoing effort and an integral part of the ongoing management and operation of the organization.
11.5.1 Change Scope
Business analysts working within the BPM discipline may address a single process with limited scope or they may address all of the processes in the organization.
Business analysts frequently focus on how the processes of an organization can be changed in order to improve and meet the objectives of the organization.
BPM life cycles generally include the following activities:
- Designing: the identification of processes and definition of their current state (as-is) and determining how we get to the future state (to-be). The gap between these states may be used to specify stakeholders’ expectations of how the business should be run.
- Modelling: the graphical representation of the process that documents the process as well as comparing current state (as-is) and future state (to-be). This phase of the BPM life cycle provides input to requirements and solution design specification, as well as analyzing their potential value. Simulation
may use quantitative data so that the potential value of variations on the process can be analyzed and compared. - Execution and Monitoring: provides the same type of input as modelling but in terms of the actual execution of processes. The data collected as a result of the actual business process flow is very reliable and objective which makes it a very strong asset in analyzing value and recommending alternatives for design improvement.
- Optimizing: the act of ongoing repetition or iteration of the previous phases. The results of business process execution and monitoring are utilized to modify models and designs so that all inefficiencies are removed and more value is added. Optimization may be a source of requirements and solution design definitions that comes directly from stakeholders and the user community. Optimization of processes is also a good way to demonstrate the value of a suggested solution modification, and justify process and product improvement initiatives.
.1 Breadth of Change
The goal of BPM is to ensure that value delivery is optimized across end-to-end processes. A comprehensive BPM initiative can span the entire enterprise. A single BPM initiative can make an organization become more process-centric by providing insights into its processes. An organization’s processes define what the organization does and how it does it. Possessing a thorough understanding of its processes allows stakeholders to adjust these processes to meet the evolving needs of both the organization and its customers.
Individual initiatives may improve specific processes and sub-processes. Breaking down larger, more complex processes into smaller chunks (sub-processes) allows business analysts to better understand what each process is doing and how to optimize them.
.2 Depth of Change
Business analysts use BPM frameworks to facilitate the analysis and deep understanding of the organization’s processes. BPM frameworks are sets or descriptions of processes for a generic organization, specific industry, professional area, or type of value stream. BPM frameworks define particular levels of processes throughout the organization’s process architecture.
As an example, business analysts perform supply chain analysis as a means of evaluating specific processes in an organization. Analysis of the supply chain is frequently conducted by decomposing group-level processes into individual subcomponents and then decomposing these down to individuals performing specific tasks.
Business analysts involved with business process management are frequently engaged in continuous improvement activities as they are often the ones most familiar with BPM.
.3 Value and Solutions Delivered
The goal of BPM is to improve operational performance (effectiveness, efficiency, adaptability, and quality) and to reduce costs and risks. Business analysts frequently consider transparency into processes and operations as a common core value of BPM initiatives. Transparency into processes and operations provides decision makers a clear view of the operational consequences of previous process related decisions. Business analysis efforts frequently begin with the identification of the business need of the customers. Needs are generally referred to as BPM drivers. BPM drivers include:
- cost reduction initiatives,
- increase in quality,
- increase in productivity,
- emerging competition,
- risk management,
- compliance initiatives,
- next generation process automation,
- core system implementation,
- innovation and growth,
- post merger and acquisition rationalization,
- standardization initiatives,
- major transformation programs,
- establishment of a BPM Centre of Excellence,
- increased agility, and
- speed or faster processes.
.4 Delivery Approach
The delivery approach for BPM initiatives across organizations ranges from a set of tactical methods focused on improving individual processes to a management discipline that touches all the processes in an organization. The main purpose of process transformation is to help organizations identify, prioritize, and optimize their business processes to deliver value to stakeholders.
Organizations conduct periodic assessments of key processes and engage in ongoing continuous improvement to achieve and sustain process excellence. The success of BPM can be measured by how well the BPM initiative aligns to the objectives set for BPM in the organization.
There are several mechanisms that can be used to implement BPM:
- Business process re-engineering: methods that aim for major process redesign across the enterprise.
- Evolutionary forms of change: methods that have overall objectives set for the process and then individual changes aimed at bringing subprocesses in line with those goals are implemented.
- Substantial discovery: methods are used when organizational processes are undefined or if the documented version of the process is substantially different from the actual process in use. Substantial discovery is about revealing actual processes and is a method for organizational analysis.
- Process benchmarking: compares an organization’s business processes and performance metrics to industry best practices. Dimensions typically measured are quality, time, and cost.
- Specialized BPMS applications: are designed to support BPM initiatives and execute the process models directly. These applications are tools that automate BPM activities. Often the organization’s processes are required to be changed to match the automated approach.
Process improvement approaches can be categorized in terms of their point of origin and whether their solutions are primarily organizational (people-based) or technological (IT-based). Organizations can better understand the process improvement methodology, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, to apply based on the following organizing principles:
- Top-down: initiatives are typically orchestrated from a central point of control by senior management and have organization spanning implications, targeted at end-to-end processes or major parts of the business.
- Bottom-up: initiatives are typically tactical approaches to improving individual processes and departmental workflows, or sub-processes in smaller parts of the organization.
- People-centric: initiatives where the principal change is to the activities and workflows in an organization.
- IT-centric: initiatives frequently focused on process automation.
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.5 Major Assumptions
The following is a list of major assumptions from the BPM discipline:
- Processes are generally supported by information technology systems, but the development of those systems is not covered by most BPM methods. Business analysts may suggest additional business requirements based on existing IT systems.
- BPM initiatives have senior management support. The business analyst may be involved in suggesting additional business requirements based on organizational strategies.
- BPM systems require a tight integration with organizational strategy but most methods do not tackle the development of strategy which is outside the scope of this perspective.
- BPM initiatives are cross-functional and end-to-end in the organization
