Business Process Management and Best Practices
The
management of business processes is more important than ever. Increasing
demands concerning the output of processes and accelerating change demand
efficient and highly flexible processes. For most companies the management
of end-to-end processes poses quite a challenge as companies are very often
organized across business functions. If only a part of a process is optimized
this rarely aims at improving the final process output but is focussed
on optimizing a specific area of responsibility. Then rigid structures
come into life that can block changes.
The
introduction of business process management is not an end in itself but is
mainly driven by specific initiatives. This can be the introduction of
a Performance Measurement, the redesign of processes, e.g. the introduction
of Supply Chain Planning or by projects like global template initiatives which
have the objective of standardizing business processes. Companies start here
with creating an overview about their processes by building a process map and
then decide how the structure of the processes shall be modelled.
When doing this, it is important to clarify which level of detail is reasonable.
Too few details do not allow a management of processes, too many details make
it very expensive. A three-stage structure following the scheme process, part
process, process step seems to be a pragmatic approach.
In
the context of business process management
the term „Best Practice" is frequently mentioned. Best Practices describe
the characteristics of a process and how it should run in order to regard the
process as excellent in general. If a company wants to introduce Best Practices
it should be clear which improvements can be achieved by them. If the benefits
of Best Practices are not clear to the stakeholders they will reject them and
you can expect high resistances against changes.
Unfortunately the term „Best Practices“ is often misunderstood. First of all, Best Practices describe a standard that gradually became mature and is perceived as an excellent standard today. But as Best Practices are applied in similar form by many companies Best Practices are strictly speaking „Common Practices“. Using this standard only will not create a competitive advantage but will be a prerequisite for being competitive. Only the continuous improvement of Best Practices by adding innovative features and combined with a well trained organisation will actually turn Best Practices into a competitive advantage.
No other topic is linked to all other topics of consulting4bit to such a great extent than business process management. Business processes are the central part of a global ERP Templates, manifest and implement the strategy and are influenced by regulations. The service "Business Process Management" includes exemplary activities that can be bundled into a package depending on your requirements.
Service
Description
"Business Process Management"