Is BPM Really for Everyone?
So what comes to mind when you think about BPM? Process models? Automation? Systems
integration? Even Service Oriented Architecture? How you relate to BPM is likely
to be influenced by what kind of work you do and the responsibilities that you
have. So what BPM currently means to you may differ significantly from the next
person.
But I will tell you that BPM is really about people and content. In fact, content
is the very heart of BPM while people are its soul. I will even go so far as
to say that if people and content are not in a given process then it is not
a business process. Business processes are nothing more or less than the interactions
that occur between people and between people and content. People-to-people and
people-to-content.
Now, if we accept this definition of BPM then it becomes obvious that BPM can
apply to everyone. Every business has people and every business has content.
But just because a business has people and content doesn't mean that BPM should
apply to everyone. There has to be something more, there has to be a value to
be gained.
The Anatomy of a Business Process
If we think about the content in our organizations, we can see that it is the
living record of what we do. That content may be in the form of documents, forms,
data, faxes, emails, spreadsheets, reports, images and so on, with each of us
interacting with some of that content every day. Most of us interact with other
people every day as well.
Those interactions are each part of a process, and they should be part of achieving
something -- something of value. The idea of a process, or at least what we
should be thinking of with process, is some set of interactions by people that
includes content that does something. Otherwise, what is the point of doing
it at all?
In manufacturing terms, we would often call that something that a process "does"
an output -- like the production of a finished product or a completed part that
will go into a product. However, if we aren't producing a physical part or product,
or we desire to increase the value of our processes then we can make the leap
to say that every process exists to produce an outcome.
An outcome could be the efficient processing of loan requests that accurately
grant loans to qualified applicants. It could be the efficient processing of
claims for returned or damaged goods. It could be a fast and accurate response
to a request for a quote. Manufacturing processes can have outcomes as well,
such as building the right product at the right time in the right way to meet
customer expectations.
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