BPM impact to humanity
One of the most common wrong assumptions I get from managers and directors is that BPM is a discipline used only by analyst for internal quality purposes... Actually, you should realize that those corporations that have been practicing BPM strongly over the last 10 years are leading the world today. Sometimes we do not need to go very far to see its results, I can actually explain it with a couple of things I did today:
1.-Before I went to my first visit, I checked the address in google maps, I calculated the route and even checked the traffic, potential roadwords or jams and the weather conditions all without leaving the application.
2.-I attended an online webinar about a software tool, from one of the leading software brands worldwide. It was completely free, and not only I have learned further insights to a tool I must use every day, I also did some networking.
3.-I paid 1 year of webpage hosting for only 50 Euros, which is insignificant compared to the amount it costs me to visit prospects I am not even certain they will ever become clients.
And you must be wondering... how is BPM related to all of this? Basically because it has enabled the automation of business and consumer processes. That is why cloud computing services are so cheap, why learning and networking can scale online without limits and information is amazingly easy to access. Because somebody analized a process and designed a software that would automate it.
Nathaniel Palmer, rated as the Most Influential Thought Leader in Business Process Management (BPM) by independent research, in his article predicting 2015 trends last January, already insisted on the importance of practicing BPM with highly complex processes with massive data as we have today:
«The data-driven transformation now well underway parallels a volume of data generated that is already nearly incomprehensible, but merely a fraction of what it will be. Consider all data produced from the beginning of history to the year 2002 – that entire volume is now produced every 10 minutes. Yet within 5 years, the same volume will take less than a second.
“Big Data” has never been so large, nor presented such a critical role within enterprises and the processes that drive them. In the era of the Internet of Things where “smart” homes, appliances, cars, phones, virtually imaginable device are all connected, BPM must and will be everywhere. With estimates of 30 billion or more connected devices, there will be far too many and interactions far too complex to keep pace with traditional software techniques. (…) Of course, cool devices and machines by themselves do not equate to digital transformation any more than smart phones alone changed how we work. It is BPM that is the real leverage point. Starting today, we need to measure and evaluate BPM not by what it looks like, but how
When as a consultant I am required to leverage a CRM and align processes with software, it is indispensable to practice BPM, especially the analytic and modelling part, because it allows me to visualize and redesign a business process that was previously blocked and make it flow again to obtain the desired business objective, while identifying what specific configuration, reports, dashboards will a director need for decision-making to a commercial level.
From software infrastructure perspective, its virtualisation allows to easily identify issues with DDBB, servers, applications, etc. It also makes it more easier to monitor and solve incidences in any terminal, and in addition provides a spectacular way for IT guys to deploy any new application and work in collaboration with analyst to model the business process affected and implement changes within the organization, never forgetting to coach users/employees.
On the more commercial side of BPM, it generates multi-channel interfaces for commercial processes and marketing automation, all seamlessly inter-connected with all social media. Implementing BPM life-cycle into commercial departments to automate all possible procecesses will involve invebitably to analyze and model and monitor and execute and optimize...forever!
And finally we have digitalization... We live in an era when business must be digitalized; we must do digital marketing because we have digital customers... It all involves automation of processes and therefore BPM. Thus we can say, BPM is everywhere and is the basic key for business transformation into the future.
