What kinds of activities should be included into business process management?
Implementation of process management should be provided for all activities of a company. In order to classify processes, there is a following structure of process groups:
- Production processes. The basic kind of business processes of a company which leads the whole business to fulfilling of its basic objectives. Development, sales and supporting processes belong to this group. It is quite difficult to provide a business process optimization of them; however, this can lead to efficiency improvement significantly.
- Management processes. Management does not take part in production cycle. It is aimed at planning and controlling of the rest kinds of business processes. The quality of management of activities, risks, safety and profitability depends on the degree of business process development and also can be a subject to business process optimization.
- Back up processes. This type of processes is aimed at providing of all necessary sources for all business processes of a company. Human resource management processes, procurement processes and processes of exploitation of infrastructure facilities of a company belong to this type.
Techniques of process management
- This is a process of grouping of certain kinds of activities leading to one certain result to a business process. This group of activities has the same standards of management and control.
- Continuous improvement. This is one of the best methods of enlarging the level of effectiveness of business. Procedures of continual improvement are included into the model of management of each business process. Continuous improvement can’t exist without the stage of business process optimization at some levels of business process development.
- It is based on using of specialized information systems of BPM class. Usually such systems include tools of visual modeling of business processes, simulation modeling tools, workflow management and effectiveness control.
Business process management cycle
Implementation of business process management gives the opportunity to implement the cycle of a continual improvement and optimization of business processes. These improvements consist of obligatory stages of management of each business process included into the structure of business process management of a company:
- The stage of defining of company business processes, describing of their boundaries of cooperation and modeling. Depending on objectives of this stage, processes can be already existing and described As Is, or planned to be implemented and described To Be
- According to information from the previous stage, control points are selected, key indexes in these points are defined and the plan of gathering of data on the process is made.
- The Measure stage gives the material for analysis.
- Business process optimization is provided and new approaches to business processes are used.
- In order to provide continual improvement of the system, business process management supposes the control of business process implementation effectiveness.