BPM's four governance focus areas. A process can be reviewed from its current governance as well as its evolution stage. How well is it under control? How complicated is it? The descriptions below will assist you in easily classifying each process based on these criteria and assigning it to one of the four Business Process governance quadrants. This rule complements the Evolution Stages concept and can be used to double-check decisions based on the process evolution stage. Low Complexity – Low Control. This quadrant's processes are the least appealing candidates for your BPM pilot. Because they are either very infrequent or do not require intensive human effort, their low complexity means they have little business impact. Improving them yields few benefits. At the same time, their lack of control necessitates significant investment in process analysis and KPI definition, making it unlikely that they will pass the ROI business case. In this quadrant, you will typically find either: Emerging "Young & Developing" processes, their impact on the business is not yet significant, and it is unclear whether they will be permanently incorporated into your business model or abandoned after a few experiments; or "Ill and Painful" processes that are so inconvenient that people simply learn to live with them. In either case, simply skip this quadrant and continue. High Complexity – High Control. This could be your best hunting ground for the initial process. High complexity implies a high impact with numerous potential benefits. Control means that half of the design is already finished. But keep in mind that not everything that glitters is gold. If the process is too complex (more than 20 activities, as a rule of thumb), the effort required to implement it may be very high, so avoid processes that are "too far right" in the quadrant. There is little to improve if the process is "too far up" in the quadrant. Any BPM initiative should aim to move your processes up the chart. Processes from any of the three BPM evolution stages can be found in this quadrant. They can be "Powerful & Stable" because they are complex but well documented, work well, and everyone is happy. It's probably a good process to work on, but not during the pilot project, where the benefits are minor. More mature "Teenagers" processes are good candidates for your pilot because they have already been well defined but have not yet been automated or rolled out. Low Complexity – High Control. This focus area contains processes with a low impact, making it difficult to achieve highly visible results. They will also exhibit high maturity, leaving very little room for incremental improvement. The processes you'll find here are usually some of the most fundamental and routine "Powerful & Stable" ones. As a result, this quadrant is not generally suitable for a BPM pilot. However, there are a couple of exceptions to this rule: If your company lacks a top-down corporate plan for a BPM initiative but wants to attract potential sponsors, this could be your BPM staging point. Low complexity and high control equate to low investment, allowing a small department to manage the pilot entirely on their own. Employee mobility, on the other hand, could be your sweet spot. A simple and routine process (for example, an approval process with a simple linear flow) will not necessitate a large investment in process analysis or redesign, so simply combine it with a BPM suite that integrates easily with mobile devices and launch your pilot. Furthermore, if this process touches many your organization's employees (such as HR or purchasing), you can guarantee a rapidly growing population of BPM fans who will advocate for your next BPM project. High Complexity – Low Control. This is a high-risk, high-reward opportunity. There is an equal amount of "Young & Developing" and "Ill & Painful" processes here. The potential for spectacular results must be balanced against the risk of becoming stuck re-designing low-maturity processes. Lifting processes from this quadrant will yield the greatest benefits, and they will be a major contributor to the success of your BPM programme. Such heroic actions, however, necessitate very strong leadership and a knowledgeable and happy BPM project team. An external team may bring the right skills to your organisation, but internal stakeholders may not be BPM mature enough to handle such a large challenge. Processes from this quadrant should be avoided unless you have a pressing business need for them and a very strong leader to manage them. Is there such a thing as a perfect project? Yes, this is known as the "Wolf in sheep's clothing." It is, in effect, an "Ill & Painful" process disguised as a "Powerful & Stable" one. It usually happens in large, complex corporations where the process is so well documented (high control) that all the actors know what to do and don't complain. Because such processes have many participants (high complexity), most stakeholders focus solely on their part of the process. So, while the overall end-to-end process is inefficient, no one in the organisation has the full visibility required to identify its flaws. If you can identify such a process and find a strong leader to demonstrate to all audiences that it is indeed "Ill & Painful," it will become an excellent candidate for your BPM pilot with significant quick wins. Ready, Steady, Go! You already have a big intellect! You recognise the significance of your internal audiences. You've identified your BPM sponsors and know how to demonstrate tangible results to them. You instilled enthusiasm in many of your future BPM evangelists. You evaluated candidates for the first process based on maturity, complexity, and control and chose one that can be delivered quickly. You've already started a quick, measurable, and contagious process. You're ready to Start Small! Just keep in mind that you want to Scale Fast. While working on your first small process, your abilities to handle larger processes are just beginning to develop. You can, and should, demand faster results even at this early stage. Simply put, don't reinvent the wheel. Many others have done it before you, so why not capitalise on their successes? Contact partners who can assist you in defining your process and benchmarking your KPIs. Look for a BPM tool that does not necessitate extensive "techie" knowledge, but rather blurs the line between IT and the business. Rather than starting from scratch, look for ready-made process templates that you can customise. By using data virtualization, you can reduce the risks of system integration. Use reusable widgets to go mobile. Start small, scale quickly, but never stop thinking big. Make sure that business value is present throughout your BPM pilot project, not just when you make the initial investment or after the project is completed and you go back to business as usual. You now have the necessary evaluation criteria and key recommendations for selecting your first BPM process. Simply define your goals, understand what you can do now, and map out your path to success. Start Small. Think Big. Scale Fast. Checklist: How to select the right first process. Look for processes that give a compelling reason to start: They will easily gain sponsorship if they are linked to corporate objectives. Cause immediate pain in the business, and you'll be able to show a strong need to move quickly. They are heavily manual and will allow for rapid improvement in productivity as well as tracking, forecasting, and control. Use paper documents, email, phone, and spreadsheets extensively because they allow for quick savings and are a clear indicator of manual work. Inconsistent work quality, inaccurate forecasting, or difficulty providing status as they allow for rapid improvement of end-to-end control. By facilitating hand-offs and embedding instructions within work items, multiple decision steps can help to speed up work and reduce errors. Allow you to scale fast: A single Process Owner (or a small central team) can make decisions on scope, budget, and delivery quickly. Ad hoc processes that are simple to modify and improve. Non-standard and outside of core systems (e.g., ERP, CRM) because they require less integration with existing systems and thus allow for faster delivery. Have a mobile component because users will love and easily adopt them. Internal audiences only as external stakeholders can slow down the decision-making progress. Avoid processes that cannot demonstrate results: There are no clear KPI's because if the BPM pilot cannot be measured, the need for a BPM programme cannot be justified. Too many conflicting parties can be a roadblock if they are politically charged or widely distributed. Too simple, because the impact of improving them will not generate enough momentum for the subsequent stages. Already rigidly defined as hard to improve, low potential benefits. Stakeholders will be reluctant to be touched by an unfamiliar methodology and disrupting them can be the first nail in the coffin of your BPM project. Because core systems (e.g., ERP, CRM) are already in place and may be quite efficient, incremental improvements' cost-benefit ratio will be unfavourable. Slow your project down: There is no designated decision-maker, and the lack of quick and clear decisions from a single source will stymie your BPM pilot in endless multi-stakeholder debates. Unknown process because you only have twelve weeks to deliver full results, not an analysis report. Because the proof-of-concept stage is not the time for heroics, look for processes with 10-20 activities. Data intensive because multiple integration points with existing corporate systems may necessitate additional effort, and timings are constrained by strict "change windows." Our clients rely on us to help them deliver a better customer experience, automate operations, and use technology to reduce costs. You should too.

As in organisations without a centralised BPM strategy, most business processes evolve naturally over time. When introduced for the first time, all processes have a common starting point. However, as time passes, each evolves along its own path, which can lead to diametrically opposed outcomes. Regardless of the numerous factors that influence such evolution, such as organisational restructures, working discipline, and underlying technologies, all business processes can be assigned to one of three major stages of evolution: Young & Developing. Powerful & Stable. ill & Painful. A well-executed BPM initiative can benefit processes from any of these three categories. However, when starting your first BPM project, not all these groups are equally good candidates for a pilot, and the right group will also depend on the long-term objectives of your overall BPM programme. Young & Developing - Are good but potentially risky candidates for the first process because they can provide high impact, rapidity, and visibility. These are the newly implemented procedures. Every single process in a start-up falls into this category. Even large, well-established corporations, on the other hand, typically have around 10% of their processes in this space. New processes emerge whenever you launch a new product line, enter a new market, or alter your business model. Young & Developing processes have the following factors in common: Frequent fluctuation and change - each instance of the process is unique as business users experiment with alternative approaches and tackle previously unexplored case variations. Manually or with non-standard IT solutions, such as custom-made applications or major enhancements to core corporate systems. Strong links to business objectives related to innovation and the creation of USP's (Unique Selling Points) lead to the term "Differentiation Processes." Examples of such processes include: Launch of a new service or product line. Opening of a new subsidiary, region, or sales channel. Correspondence of prices across multiple customers/channels. Post-merger interim operations. Integration of hybrid supply chains. The following list weighs up the benefits and pitfalls of selecting a Young & Developing process for a pilot. Advantages: Touch areas that have new investment budgets are more likely to receive senior sponsorship. Are generally ad-hoc, simple and easy to modify. Grow in areas of innovation where a visionary leader is easy to find. Involve complex decision-making, allowing BPM to demonstrate its worth by providing accurate contextual information. Because they are not yet too tightly integrated with other corporate systems, they are not slowed down by time-consuming core system modifications or restrictive change release policies. Disadvantages: Because they may be very new and undefined, properly designing them may slow down the pilot project. Frequently touch many areas of your business, making decision-making authority difficult to identify; reaching consensus with multiple stakeholders can derail the project. Have an unknown level of integration with other systems, making the effort involved easy to underestimate. There may be no historical data, making bench marking, KPI's and success difficult to quantify. The absence of money related historical KPI's should not be a deal breaker. Soft measures that are new can also demonstrate the outcome of a new process. May represent a highly experimental area of your business, making its scope difficult to define. In Summary: Young and Developing processes are an excellent mid-term option for organisations seeking to gain a competitive advantage through agility and innovation. Just make sure to first define the process and its corresponding KPI's. Other precautions include selecting a BPM suite that includes data virtualization to address the integration issue and finding a strong decision maker to manage expectations. Powerful & Stable - are not suitable for the first process. While they provide significant room for improvement, maximising these advantages may require significant time, effort, and technique, making them best suited to an advanced BPM programme. You'll recognise these processes because they've been around for a while, they affect many people daily, and they tick like a Swiss watch. They typically got to where they are because they have a low number of steps and variations, making them easy to control, or because they have already been subjected to a corporate initiative such as Six Sigma, Lean, or ERP implementation. Advantages: Rigidly adhere to standard corporate guidelines and are rarely modified. Count on a core corporate system (e.g., ERP, CRM) with an embedded workflow solution and a small number of integration points with other systems. Support core business activities and are mission critical (if your mission critical processes are not yet in this category, you urgently need a strategic BPM programme!). Link to business objectives related to the generation of consistent revenue streams (hence the term "Commodity Processes"). Examples of such processes include: Manufacturing of standard products. Provisioning of standard services. Purchasing of standard materials. Disadvantages: Because the system is generally quite efficient, any incremental improvement will necessitate relatively high efforts and advanced BPM techniques. Rigidly defined, meaning changes accompany the difficult task of changing numerous corporate policies. Because your core systems are embedded, any process changes result in intense enhancement of those systems and high integration efforts. Most likely to cover mission-critical activities where a conservative stakeholder attitude could stymie rapid progress. Because the initiative could be perceived as low-risk, stakeholders immediately dismiss it as change for the sake of change. In Summary: This is an area that can always be improved. We mentioned before that BPM is about instilling a culture of continuous improvement in an organisation. However, this is best left for your later BPM programme. By then, the low hanging fruit has been harvested, management and staff have developed a strong belief in BPM, and the organisation has amassed sufficient BPM expertise to employ advanced BPM techniques. Then comes the "Powerful & Stable" processes, which will allow the BPM benefits to shine through. ill & Painful - are excellent candidates for the first process. Small changes can improve overall control, reduce chaos, and boost speed. However, be wary of political baggage from staff members; these may be politically charged. These processes, like "Powerful & Stable," have been around for a long time, but they are cumbersome and disliked. They represent the true business pain points. Approximately 20% of processes in any organisation fall into this category, whether due to poor design, rigid and outdated ways of working, or, finally, a legacy of corporate restructures, mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures. So, other than the fact that everyone complains about them, how can you identify an "ill & Painful" process? All “ill & Painful” processes: Use a lot of paper and engage in multiple manual activities. Failure to adhere to standard guidelines and a wide range of variations Produce massive amounts of emails, phone calls, and manually updated spreadsheets. Interact with multiple systems but are not tightly integrated and necessitate a lot of manual data re-keying (also known as "swivel-chair integration"; imagine an employee sitting on a swivel chair between two data terminals, turning around to re-key data from one terminal to the other. Non-critical, enabling processes that are necessary for a company's operation but do not always have a clearly linked specific business goal. Examples of such processes include: Employee on/off-boarding, leave requests Contract management, supplier on-boarding Accounts Payable and purchase orders Accounts Receivable and Invoicing Client inquiries and complaints Returns and claims Service management Advantages: Reduce massive manual efforts, freeing up your staff to work on higher-value tasks. Reduce the cost of printouts, database storage, CPU power (emails/spreadsheets), and phone bills. Allow for easy definition of measurable KPI's that affect your bottom line with clear mapping. Reduce the day-to-day hassle for many stakeholders, who will then become evangelists for the next stages of your BPM programme. Disadvantages: Carry a long history of political blame games with no clear decision makers. Some stakeholders may even purposefully obstruct problem resolution because the chaos conceals their own inefficiency or obscures business practices. Choose a process where a very small group of stakeholders (such as a single senior manager or a small central department) can make quick decisions and define the future state of the process. In Summary: If your overall BPM initiative's mid-term goal is to save time and money; if you want to increase productivity and execution; then the "ill & Painful" processes are a great place to start. Our clients rely on us to help them deliver a better customer experience, automate operations, and use technology to reduce costs. You should too.

The life or death of a new BPM project depends on the success of the pilot project, which in turn depends on choosing the right first process Because BPM projects involve profound cultural change, pilot projects should deliver the following results: Quick – to gain management approval for wider roll-out. Measurable – to justify further investments. Communicable – to trigger widespread user adoption. Workable - to enable the benefits to be felt across teams, departments, and processes. Start small and start in the right place. Productivity, control, competitiveness, and all of these can be achieved with BPM with relatively low investment and short adoption times. However, even BPM projects that follow this motto will succeed or fail depending on the starting point they choose, the first process. Your BPM pilot project is the initial proof point for the entire BPM program. If you choose the wrong process for your first project, you'll let yourself down. The following key points will help you identify the first process (or set of processes) and build consensus, reducing the risk of failure. The Big Misunderstanding About BPM. All pilot projects have a mountain to climb in terms of demonstrating the potential of the "bigger picture." BPM pilots, on the other hand, face some particularly difficult conceptual challenges. Despite numerous BPM success stories in the three decades since the term "Business Process Management" was coined, the discipline remains clouded by confusion and doubt. So, where do these misunderstandings come from? One reason for this is that BPM is still viewed as a technology tool. BPM is concerned with culture. It is about changing people's perspectives on their work. It is about instilling in an organisation a culture that values continuous improvement and monitoring, that makes people more efficient than they are, that encourages them to make things simpler, faster, and better. It is about fundamentally altering an organization's working methods. The first BPM project's critical short-term goal is to establish a BPM culture position. As a result, it must be designed to overcome the three common barriers that can stymie downstream projects: Short attention span of sceptical stakeholders. Lack of further sponsorship beyond the pilot. Insufficient user adoption of the first process. The first step in overcoming those barriers is to understand your audience: the judges, the people who will give your BPM pilot a thumbs up or down after it is completed. The Two Key Audiences of BPM. An enterprise-wide BPM initiative's success is about more than just impressing its sponsors. It is also critical to persuade two equally important audiences: senior management and employees. The significance of obtaining approval from the upper echelons of management is obvious; as with any other project, they will either fund future stages of the program or kill it. As a result, a highly visible pilot process with a good set of clearly defined KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) has a better chance of success than a process that is off the radar of top management or that cannot be easily measured and quantified. From this vantage point, an ideal candidate could be a process that, on the surface, appears to promise significant operational cost savings. For example, a process where ROI (Return on Investment) can be easily demonstrated. However, don't be fooled by processes that only focus on direct cost savings; they may necessitate time-consuming organisational changes. Because newbie BPM sponsors have a short attention span, your pilot project may miss the opportunity window. As a result, in addition to hard cash savings, you should consider other KPIs when selecting your first process. Consider those that improve cash flow (e.g., through faster payable's collection or a reduction in capital frozen in stocks) or soft measures (e.g., complaint resolution time or customer satisfaction), which will translate into increased revenues or lower costs indirectly. Employee buy-in is not always obvious and is frequently overlooked. However, BPM is not something that senior management can simply "implement." BPM represents a cultural shift: it must be adopted rather than imposed. Did anyone roll out iPhone's or Facebook? Improving a business process must provide so many benefits to all its actors, so quickly and so easily, that it catches on and becomes something people want to be a part of. A BPM solution with no users is worthless, which is why the first business process should ensure strong user adoption. And what is the best way to achieve this lofty goal? By tackling a process that many employees find difficult. Find processes that address their well-known pain points or make them faster or more productive, and they will fall back in love with BPM. The satisfaction and enthusiasm of these early adopters will convert them into supporters of future projects, launching the larger BPM initiative. Aside from the two primary audiences mentioned above, your first process may be visible to third-party parties such as customers or providers. Their involvement in a BPM project can significantly increase the project's impact and benefits, but it may come at a cost: more decision-makers, more users to educate, and potentially more contractual obligations all add complexity to the project. Such additional burden contradicts the pilot's core purpose of demonstrating rapid results, which is why we recommend that you avoid external audiences in your first BPM project and instead focus on an internal process. Isn't this a squandered opportunity? Is customer and provider acceptance and satisfaction unimportant? Yes, but not at this stage. Continuous management support and increased staff adoption are what keep BPM program moving. This will provide the spark you need to kick-start your BPM project and light the fire for your BPM program's long-term success. Senior management (e.g., through increased sales or reduced procurement costs) and employees are just two of the areas that will benefit later (e.g., via reduced pain with customer complaints or supplier litigation). Summary of the key audiences’ needs. The BPM pilot process should be: Quick to implement. Measurable via clear KPIs. Highly visible to management and staff. Solving your employees’ pain points. Focused on the internal audiences. With a good understanding of the BPM pilot audiences, the next step is to categorise the process areas and focus on those with the best chances of success. Our clients rely on us to help them deliver a better customer experience, automate operations, and use technology to reduce costs. You should too.

While BPM has been around for decades, a revolution in this space is currently in the works. Previously thought to be a technology only for large corporations with large budgets, cloud computing is quickly becoming a necessity for businesses of all sizes. BPM is experiencing some distinct trends because of digital transformation and the emerging wave of low-code, no-code software. Here are five major trends that will dominate and shape the future of BPM: Analytics Centre Stage. For the longest time, the primary goal associated with BPM technology has been process mapping and documentation. However, in recent years, the ability to analyse processes and use the resulting data to improve them has become a trend that is catching up. With data, powerful Business Process Analytics helps organizations target their improvement and transformation efforts. Insights such as process efficiency, time, cost, and value are useful in assisting business leaders in making sound decisions. Indeed, it expands the potential of BPM by allowing insights to be used to identify process bottlenecks and non-value-added tasks like rework, unnecessary approvals, and double entries. Eliminating these and making the necessary adjustments allows for effortless process streamlining. Because the benefits of process insights are difficult to ignore, the analytics trend will continue to rise. Democratisation of BPM. BPM has traditionally been driven by BPM experts and professionals, with business remaining on the side lines. Furthermore, given the IT complexity, high costs of BPM solutions, and resource requirements for ongoing implementation management, BPM projects have traditionally been of interest to large organizations. However, significant changes are taking place. BPM tools that focus on empowering business users and process participants to actively participate in BPM projects are now available. The emphasis is on making BPM more accessible by providing access to automated process insights, simplified mapping functionalities, and collaborative features. The trend will gain traction as the revolution continues to strengthen where corporate data is created and used by everyone in the organization. Intelligent Process Modelling. Process maps are no longer just boxes and lines, thanks to advances in BPM technology and sophisticated tools. Today's powerful BPM tools assist organizations in gaining a 360-degree understanding of their processes by allowing them to record business rules, KPIs, text descriptions, roles, and documents. With organizations looking to improve process efficiency, compliance, customer satisfaction, and profitability, intelligent process modelling capabilities are increasingly in demand to power the improvement efforts. Increased Automation Using Low-Code Platforms. Automation is at the top of the list for organizations seeking a competitive advantage in the post-COVID world. In organizations across industries, manual, repetitive processes are increasingly being automated to increase efficiency and reduce the occurrence of errors. This is driving an increase in demand for low-code systems, which allow organizations to automate in weeks rather than months. These tools have pre-designed templates and user-friendly drag-and-drop functionality to assist organizations in automating processes without relying on the IT team to write code. The demand for low-code platforms will grow even more and Gartner predicts that by 2024, 75% of major corporations will be using at least four low-code development tools rather than just one. Greater Collaboration. With remote and hybrid work on the rise post-pandemic, demand for greater collaboration has emerged. This holds true for functionalities in BPM solutions too. Features like process-related alerts; the ability to collaboratively define improvements; secure, user-restricted document sharing; and a centralised repository with access control are functionalities high in demand in BPM tools. These collaboration functionalities reduce the number of emails and communication and ensure that all employees have updated processes at hand even when they are working remotely. With remote work here to stay, collaborative features will see a further spike.  Does your BPM tool integrate these advancements and trends? Power your business process transformation and gain a competitive advantage with a single tool that helps you map, analyse, improve, and automate your business processes. Our clients rely on us to help them deliver a better customer experience, automate operations, and use technology to reduce costs. You should too.

BPM is defined broadly as a framework for developing, deploying, monitoring, and optimizing various types of process automation applications, including processes that involve both systems and people. Furthermore, business process management (BPM) entails the study, identification, modification, and monitoring of business processes to ensure that organizations run smoothly and improve over time.

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