How to use BPM for creating business value

What is BPM

The work of business process management (BPM), despite a lot of process improvement projects undergone by companies during the Covid-19 pandemic, is never over. As companies start or progress in their transformation journey, the need to keep monitoring processes remains.

PEX Network defines BPM as a process excellence methodology that incorporates various disciplines to discover, model, analyze, measure and optimize business processes. Although not its primary aim, it can often uncover use cases for automation. There is an opportunity for companies to leverage BPM for low-code initiatives that allow for the democratization of automation and more agility. Combined with process mining, BPM can show end-to-end views of processes and set the foundation for further data-based improvement work.

Also read: The PEX guide to BPM

This PEX Network report outlines how BPM can be leveraged by companies to create business value and achieve strategic objectives. Featuring insights from experts at Bank of Ireland, Coca-Cola Beverages Florida, Unilever Food Solutions and United Airlines, it provides an understanding of the role of BPM in setting a strong foundation for transformation projects.

“Process improvement will naturally derive from [operational resilience as result of addressing a number of regulatory concerns and obligations] because it is very difficult to have resilient processes if they are not optimized.”

Keith Bohanna

Head of group BPM standards at Bank of Ireland

Going back to process basics with BPM

Businesses have been put in a position where overhauling processes is not only possible but now warranted since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. The need to go back to process basics was highlighted in the Trends and predictions in process excellence 2022 report, with two process excellence practitioners from the LEGO Group and Twitter recommending focusing first on processes and layer technology on top. Garret Etgen, senior director at Eli Lilly & Co. added: “One of the worst things to do is to put some sexy technology on top of a bad process.”

At PEX Network’s advisory board call that took place in March, it was highlighted that the focus for BPM remains operational efficiency and can help companies navigate industry-specific regulatory requirements. Keith Bohanna, head of group BPM standards at Bank of Ireland, agrees and notes the bank is strongly focused on operational resilience.

“[Operational resilience] is a separate area of process reliability and is much broader in the sense that it addresses a number of regulatory concerns and obligations that banks have in place,” he says. “Process improvement will naturally derive from that because it is very difficult to have resilient processes if they are not optimized.”

Also read: Change management & process governance to drive continuous improvement

Bank of Ireland is currently undergoing a group risk-related BPM initiative, which started its execution phase in June 2020, to primarily comply to regulatory requirements. The bank has a number of software applications that it uses for different strategic purposes with different sets of data relating to processes.

It is establishing its repository which Bohanna explains is “our gold source of processes within the enterprise” which will help ensure the long-term future use of process maps across the bank’s 12 divisions. After degrees in inconsistencies around how components of process mapping were identified across the organization, Bohanna decided to go back on existing process maps to ensure they are consistent, laying the foundation for building deeper end-to-end process views.

Bank of Ireland also made the move to the cloud in November 2021 as part of its BPM initiative.

“We were missing that capability for a number of years, we were hosted on premises and moving to the cloud is a step toward flexibility, capabilities and the availability of the application programming interface,” he says. “It makes such a fundamental difference to how we position our use of process capabilities over the next couple of years.”

BPM can also be leveraged following a merger or acquisition. Coca-Cola Beverages Florida LLC acquired the territory it operates in three phases, which resulted in processes that were not fully integrated.

The company had more than 600 processes housed in a legacy process repository in PDF documents, videos, pictures and spreadsheets, which was expensive to maintain and provided difficult access to process information.

Coca-Cola Beverages Florida implemented Nintex Forms and Nintex Promapp to set up a repository which provides visibility and control over key processes to help encourage collaboration and increased accountability.

The implementation was noted by ISO-certification auditors according to Robert Johnson, senior manager, enterprise transformation at the beverage company: “It made their lives tremendously easier by eliminating the shelves full of binders they would otherwise have to go through. They could see process changes over time, who had changed what and how it compared to previous processes.”

Johnson also noted how documenting processes reduces the effort to prepare for audits and reduces risk “by leaving less to interpretation”.

The next section of this report will look into how BPM can be leveraged with other technologies to boost optimization and automation efforts.

The central role of BPM in transformation projects

Although it is not its primary goal, automation is often a product of BPM and can help ensure operational efficiency when implemented on optimized processes.

At United Airlines, its senior manager of business architecture and process reengineering Todd Gernady, noted at PEX Live: OPEX 2021 that a team is focused on automating processes that is different from the process improvement team. During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, a lot of teams across the company wanted to automate process that were, according to him, “lousy”.

“[In these cases] the automation team asked us to optimize a process first and then hand it over to them,” he says.

If automation on optimized processes is implemented, it needs to be aligned to a company’s objectives which for Coca-Cola Beverages Florida was the safety of employees while maintaining business continuity for its customers.

“While there was a number of emerging technologies for managing the safety and wellness of associates, we looked for a solution that provided a high degree of agility,” he says. “The pandemic and the uncertainty of it required rapid automation.”

Also read: How BPM builds business resilience

Coca-Cola Beverages Florida implemented Nintex RPA, Nintex DocGen and Nintex Workflow to allow employees to complete quick and easy health assessments including temperature checks. The entire end-to-end health tracking process leveraged guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization and the state Public Health Department. This allowed the beverage company to implement a self-service solution using public health officials’ screening questions to assess the level of risk related to the pandemic.

While it has traditionally been implemented by IT or automation teams, automation has been increasingly democratized by the low-code and no-code movement, with the market expected to reach US$65bn in 2027, from US$13bn in 2020, according to Brandessence Market Research.

Last year’s PEX Network low-code report, The importance of leveraging low-code to democratize process automation, noted how large organizations may be reluctant to using low-code due to their complex legacy systems.

These legacy systems may hold complex applications and processes that require support from IT. Modelling The central role of BPM in transformation projects applications at the process level allows business users to collaborate with IT and BPM can be used as a bridge between the two sides.

This will also help all stakeholders understand processes, which is, according to Edwin Jongsma, vice-president of Americas at Mavim, critical before defining a solution for any transformation or enterprise resource planning (ERP) project.

“Even though large organizations built the ERP system, over time it has grown into something bigger, and they do not always know the processes as they are followed as-is,” he says. “Whenever processes are complex, it is very important to spend enough time in the diagnostic phase in the beginning deciding what you really want to do.”

Tony Benedict, president, director, board of directors at the Association of Business Process Management Professionals (ABPMP), noted at PEX Live: BPM 2021 that “there is still a 70 percent failure rate in ERP projects because organizations are not taking BPM into its holistic approach at the enterprise level”.

This includes what the enterprise process architecture is, what is the process performance measurement system and how to align strategic priorities with operational priorities with technology to integrate the whole enterprise.

Combining process mining technology with BPM can help in the diagnose phase of a program, as it maps out as-is processes in real time and can help organizations define a road map with an industry partner on their preferred-to-be. Jongsma notes: “It would help to have a software to help them understand the as is process mining is very important these days to support them with this.”

Once the diagnostic phase is completed, organizations can migrate the documentation that supports their processes onto a low-code platform such as the Microsoft Power Platform for business users to be able to develop applications quickly. While process mining can provide a thorough understanding of how the low-code platform is used, BPM can provide governance capabilities, help with the testing and automation of DevOps and support the process related to user adoption of the platform.

“It is really important to have a BPM software platform that connects people, processes and technology that include the world of the power apps,” Jongsma says. “Advanced business process software is necessary, and it should have mining software built in to mine, design and improve, while also allowing for continuous improvement as processes are ever evolving.”

“There is still a 70 percent failure rate in ERP projects because organizations are not taking BPM into its holistic approach at the enterprise level.”

Tony Benedict

President, director, board of directors at the Association of Business Process Management Professionals