If I had a dollar for every time I heard “We're busy, as usual,” I think I would have enough money to retire. When I hear this phrase, I have to wonder why. Why are people so busy that bathroom breaks are a rare luxury? Let us explore some possibilities.
Possibility 1: Critical business systems are spread throughout various disparate data silos including Excel and Access. Business tasks and processes are mostly manual, therefore taking an enormous amount of time to complete.
Possibility 2: Most systems are state-of-the-art however none of them talk to each other. You are reliant on your IT department to pull information for you in a timely manner.
Possibility 3: The only system you have is an accounting application in a non-SQL database and an Access 97 database of your customers. Your employees work on day-to-day processes that have been around since day one, when your company was small, and new employees are hired due to growth. The company continues to grow but has not kept pace with the growth. The processes remain the same because “that’s the way we’ve always done it.”
Possibility 4: Critical business systems are legacy with one or two newer systems. Other critical data that are used to handle day-to-day processes are kept in Excel or Access. Some systems do communicate with each other but most do not. There are no true policies and procedures in place to deal with the workflow.
Possibility 5: Maybe your systems are state-of-the-art but your processes are all over the place. Sally knows this part of the process. Ed knows the other part of the process. One day Ed and Sally elope. Then what?
There are almost certainly infinite possibilities why employees are “busy as usual.” The common thread in the examples above are that processes are disjointed, systems, or lack of systems, do not communicate with each other, basic communications throughout the enterprise break down, whatever processes are in place are in employees’ heads and there is a huge reliance on IT for information.
Implementing Business Process Management (BPM) principles along with a Business Process Management Suite or System (BPMS) can help alleviate the process burden by allowing you to map and document your simple and complex business processes, integrate your business rules to these processes, handle exceptions and unstructured processes, control dates, alerts and alarms, and integrate throughout the enterprise, all with minimal interaction from IT.
By adopting and implementing BPM correctly and effectively, organizations usually see big increases in process efficiencies, which, in return, yield huge gains in cost savings and/or increased profits.
Learn more about CAASPRE Consulting at our website www.caaspreconsulting.com.
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