Business Process Management is a different perspective of managing the business operations of a company. Focus of business process management is on the effectiveness of end-to-end processes in order to achieve the desired outcomes. Desired outcomes mean the results as desired or seen or perceived by the customers.
Business Process management can be described as a structured approach to continuous improvement through creating increasing value for customer by deriving measures which truly reflect management and customer expectations. A Business process is an organized group of related activities that work together to create a result for customers. The two most important words here are organized and together.
Process centric view
Process centric view of conducting business brings in clarity of requirements to be delivered to the next stage. This view eliminates delays and frustration, involved in our conventional ways of working, by eliminating interface issues (handoffs and rework).
Organizations at macro level can be visualized by a few important end-to-end business processes (generally five to ten) – these being the real value creating highest level processes of the company. These processes typically cross the departmental boundaries. High level processes can further be seen as a logical group of related sub-processes, each of which may in turn comprise of series of work processes and activities, where the real job gets done.
Processes are a means of deploying an organization's strategy by tight cause and effect linkage between process measures and organizational goals. In order to achieve the process outcomes at macro level (which are related directly to organizational goals), it is extremely essential that all sub-processes and activities are designed in such a way that outcome of a sub-process or activity is seamlessly integrated with the input requirement of subsequent sub-process or activity as the case may be.
Traditional way of managing work
How is this different from traditional way of working? Even in the traditional functionally oriented set up, all the activities required for delivering the output are performed. But the process view is generally lost in favour of peice meal approach where the work is divided and owned by different departments. The work gets identified by the function, department, section or the group that does the job. Since the work is handled by functions, and focus is on efficiency and effectiveness of each function, as perceived by the superiors heading the function, and the performance measures are accordingly designed. There is no one individual who is responsible to ensure quality of the whole process. This result is sub-optimization at the cost of overall efficiency and effectiveness of the end-to-end process, as the requirements and expectations of the customer are forgotten and interests of functional divisions gain prominence.
Process orietation versus functional orientation
The following table brings out differences between management having process orientation and that having traditional functional orientation:
| Process Centric versus Functional oriented organizations | ||
| Key Aspect | Process Orientation | Functional Orientation |
| Work group | Cross functional teams | Department |
| Focus | Customer | Superior |
| Performance measures | Aligned with final outcome of the end-to-end process | Aligned with narrow focus of departments’ capabilities and constraints |
| Culture | Collaborative & learning orientated | Conflict & blame oriented |
| Job description | Broadly specified (people empowered to use the knowledge about customers to improve and standardize the process) | Limited (strict adherence to work instructions) |
| Liability of participants | Accountability | Limited to responsibility |
| Compensation | Results based | Activity based |
| Key responsibility | End-to-end process ownership | Functional managers |
| Managers’ role | Coaching people to find smarter ways of conducting the work | Supervising the work and workers |
The objective of business process management is therefore to clarify responsibility for the process, clearly define process boundaries, establish process measurements so that processes can be managed effectively & improved on a continuous basis.
Against the established notion that business process management is about IT tools, it is rather basically about organizational structure, philosophy and culture.
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