Improve your business process management with BPM software

Business process management is a vector for efficiency and quality within an organization: companies are increasingly aware of this fact. This issue is gradually becoming a new strategic priority for both operational and general management.

What is Business Process Management (BPM)? How can you implement it in your company? With what tools? appvizer answers your questions about the challenges of BPM.

SUMMARY

See all software Business Process Management (BPM)

What is a business process?

A business process is a sequence of tasks or activities carried out successively by different stakeholders in order to achieve an objective and create added value for a company.

It highlights interactions in the form of exchanges between a company's players, in order to gain an overall view. This concerns several types of exchanges:

• exchanges between internal and external players (salesperson, technician, supplier, etc.),
• exchanges with applications or departments (email, billing management, customer management, etc.),
• information exchanges with other business processes.

A business process can be transverse to an organization: it relies on several structures and teams, without necessarily being limited to a single person, team or department.

BPM: definition

What is business process management?

Business process management is often referred to as BPM. It's a set of tools, methods and services for creating, analyzing and monitoring a company's operational processes.

This is achieved through process modeling, i.e. a graphical representation of the company's activities and their sequences in a given context.

It is the combination of several elements:

• the company's information system,
• governance methods,
• collaboration between players.

Automating non-value-added tasks saves over 50% of time on critical procedures.

Focus on the BPMN standard

This business process authoring standard was launched in 2011, with the aim of fostering collaboration and harmonization between the various departments of an organization, in particular through the combination of a process modeling standard and new symbols for business process diagrams.

This writing standard includes :

• actors and stakeholders
• process steps (activities)
• one-off events,
• the sequence of activities or sequence flows represented by an arrow,
• and logic gates, used to join or separate sequence flows.

The benefits of BPM

If you're not yet convinced of the usefulness and benefits of BPM for your company, here are the three main advantages:

• organization : streamlined processes save you time; your teams have better visibility of their roles; risks are better controlled; provides a global vision of the company's organization;
• communication: exchanges are more fluid; facilitates cross-functional communication and decompartmentalizes exchanges between departments; improves collaboration between players; formalizes procedures;
• management: information is centralized; decision-making is facilitated; performance indicators are put forward; monitoring is improved and objectives achieved and delays are measured.

How can a BPM project succeed?

BPM projects are not just for large companies. SMEs and small businesses can also benefit from a BPM project.

It can take from a few weeks to a maximum of six months to deploy a high-performance BPM project in your company.

For any BPM project, it is essential to think in terms of the project and the company's strategy.

Frédéric Declee - Deputy Manager of CEV's Engineering Department

Here are the three main points to bear in mind for a successful BPM project.

#1 Communication

This is the key to a successful project. Without communication, mainly between IT and operational departments, the project cannot succeed. BPM software acts as a tool to formalize and structure exchanges, and to streamline a language that must be common to all stakeholders.

#2 A BPM approach on your own scale

Don't try to go too fast: think big, but start small. Putting the cart before the horse risks wasting time. On the contrary, it's wiser to start with a small BPM project and see significant results. You'll be laying a solid foundation for the project to grow from there, through cross-functional communication, better risk and error management, the implementation of indicators and the analysis of reports, for example.

#3 Build on what already exists

Before implementing your BPM project, it may be worthwhile to carry out an audit of your current operations. How is information transmitted? What areas need improvement? What tools are already in place? All this gives you a basis on which to start your project, starting by optimizing existing processes.

Rethink your company's processes in the digital age

Companies are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of precise, structured processes to optimize their operations. They want to implement continuous process improvement initiatives, or have already begun to roll out a BPM project.

The digital transformation of companies is providing decision-makers with new tools for reinventing the way organizations work internally. Beyond the tools, projects are becoming agile and increasingly collaborative; collective intelligence is taking precedence over individuality; design thinking is introducing innovation into the company while retaining the collaborative aspect, and so on.

All these elements accelerate the structuring of internal company processes and their modeling needs. They can also give your company a competitive edge, making you stand out from the crowd.

Only ⅓ of French companies and organizations use BPM software for business process management, even though they are convinced of the need to improve their processes.

Source : CXP

Comparison of 4 BPM software packages to streamline your business processes

Process management software comparison chart

Agilium

Agilium is 100% French BPM software that lets you automate your business processes quickly and easily, thanks to its low-code approach . Use the dozens of templates available in the tool and adapt them to your needs, or create your own business applications - the choice is yours, both options are possible.

Among other things, the tool lets you :

• connect your applications,
• create automations and workflows,
• monitor all your current processes, thanks to a process supervision tool (BAM),
• collaborate effectively remotely, with web access to documents, information and indicators.

Agilium offers an approach based on process management that is particularly effective in the industry, enabling you to create tailor-made processes and integrate your own business rules.

Examples of needs addressed: Business follow-up, incoming goods management, production progress, production planning, electronic document management and non-conformity management.

Agilium is an excellent complement to ERP for managing company-wide processes and centralizing data in a web-based collaborative platform.

Bonus: training included in your package, with or withoutcommitment!

A simple business application on the low-code Agilium platform costs around 2,000 euros. There's also a SaaS subscription to use the platform, including maintenance, support and hosting, starting at 150 euros per month for 5 users.

Iterop

Iterop is an online software package that manages your company's processes throughout their lifecycle, and adapts to their evolution. It enables you to :

• model processes in just a few clicks,
• define tasks,
• assign them to your employees or external service providers,
• set special conditions, alerts, email messages, etc.

For each task, you can define the person or group of people who can carry it out. It's the ideal solution for formalizing your company's internal workflows and connecting the applications you use to each other.

The direct integration of exchanged information has a number of advantages: fewer ways of distributing information, hence centralized data, and less loss of information.

All those involved in a process are notified as soon as an employee triggers the process. Iterop also serves as a monitoring tool to track employee activity.

The solution can be accessed from any computer, tablet or smartphone. It requires no technical knowledge, thanks to an intuitive drawing tool. Business teams simply need to fill in dynamic forms, so that processes can be tailored to individual needs.

Iterop has obtained ISO 9001 certification.

Heflo

Over 70,000 users rely on Heflo. The software is aimed at SMEs in all sectors. Its users are diverse:

• consultants and business managers
• process analysts,
• HR, sales, marketing and IT departments.

The solution offers an intuitive modeling tool: a simple drag-and-drop of elements is all that's needed to build your processes. This guarantees immediate familiarity with the tool. The following video gives you an overview of the interface through a short demonstration:

This collaborative tool complies with the BPMN 2.0 standard.

Heflo offers a free package for companies with no budget. However, with this offer, support is only available for 30 days, and some features are not accessible, such as personal branding, or per-process change authorization.

Process Studio

Edited by Avanteam, Process Studio enables companies to model and automate business processes, while gaining in agility and traceability.

This collaborative, customizable and context-sensitive portal is compatible with the BPMN standard. It presents itself as a generator of process-oriented applications: in just one click, generate the target application.

Process Studio features include

• management of actors, roles and access rights,
• a graphic design workshop for forms and workflows,
• history and full traceability of participants and changes.

The tool integrates with Avanteam's application suite, which automates document management, workflow management, electronic forms, digitization and more. It also integrates easily with your existing tools (ERP, directories, messaging systems).

Dashboards enable you to monitor the progress of your processes using indicators you have defined.

See all software Business Process Management (BPM)

Integrate BPM into your strategy

It's a fact: management awareness of the importance of Business Process Management (BPM) is growing. However, two-thirds of companies have not yet taken the plunge and are not equipped with BPM software. Yet this is an essential step for those wishing to achieve a faster ROI on their BPM project, while at the same time gaining a competitive edge.

To start with, why not appoint a process manager for each area of your business? Only 16% of French companies have already done so (source: Solutions numériques).