Processes, opportunities and risks

Process orientation also always has to do with the direction of thinking. Externally with a view to customers and stakeholders, internally with a view to the interaction of strategy, structure and organizational culture. As in all topics for which there are no universally shared meanings, it first comes down to a shared understanding. In the context of organizational change, the question is how to bring about effective change in a specific case. Processes become alive and effective with the target image of an economic customer focus when the responsibilities for carrying out activities and controlling the processes are defined and lived by all those involved.

The practical implementation can vary in breadth (across many processes) or depth (related to the effective implementation of all requirements). The more the company's process model is developed and the better the processes, including the management processes, are lived, the more potential for process orientation can be tapped. With increasing maturity, the "process management" management process in particular develops the potential to actually manage and control processes in the company. And the more process orientation is developed, the more demanding the challenges of information networking and digitization can be mastered. The potential of the organization can be tapped in four typical stages and the "operating system" for strategy implementation, digitized organizational and process management, and process-oriented digitization can be built on the platform of a BPM suite.

Establish processes

How can a common process management and understanding be generated? Capturing the organizational structures and modeling processes is not enough. A good BPM solution must support employees in thinking and working together. This makes everyone successful and motivated in their daily work. Because every service for the customer is always provided via processes, technologies and people, the processes must be thought out, implemented and controlled with clear responsibilities across departmental, hierarchical and often even company boundaries all the way to the customer.

First, a company-specific target picture is developed with the respective management and project team. The next step is to develop a procedure including the necessary BPM governance. This is an important starting point for effective prioritization and implementation of the processes. Then, process by process is modeled with clear goals, agreed upon, released, introduced, and thus knowledge is shared. At this stage, employee involvement achieves aligned tasks and responsibilities in processes, creating the key prerequisite for effective process management and any compliance with standards. Involving employees also enables the "transformation" of tacit knowledge into information that is explicitly available to all.

Optimize and live processes

The processes should be lived out in practice on a daily basis in the way they were defined. This means that all executive roles work together productively, experience the benefits of coordinated documentation for induction or substitution, and contribute to further improvement. This also applies to the leading roles, who perform their defined tasks: Introduce processes, support process execution, analyze and improve process performance, and manage processes. The daily interaction and communication between the managers in the roles of "process owner" and "line manager" is an important success factor for the lively optimization and harmonization of processes.

None of this can succeed without the support of good BPM software. A state-of-the-art BPM suite offers target group-specific views and evaluations, dynamic visualizations of complex interrelationships, control via key performance indicators (KPI), process analyses, and comprehensive variant management and idea management for continuous evaluation and implementation of improvements. The result is a digital enterprise process model in which, based on the process map, all essential processes, including the tasks with the respective responsibilities, documents, etc., can be controlled. This "digital mirror image" can also be used to automate relevant processes directly from the BPMN diagram. In this way, those responsible gain time for the essentials. After all, routine work in particular can be massively simplified with coordinated processes and IT support derived directly from them. The customer sees how an automation component and process engine integrated into the BPM suite can bring the processes to life without the need for IT specialists.

Even more: With lived processes, transparency and personalized information around the processes, motivation and fun is created for all employees through clear responsibilities, sense of one's own activities and relief.

Processes, opportunities and risks

Whether it is a process-oriented integrated management system for ISO 9001 (quality management) and other standards or governance, risk and compliance management (GRC), the issues are identical. At the end of the day, it's about effectively implementing appropriate internal requirements and external regulations, while taking advantage of opportunities and dealing with risks appropriately. At the highest level, it is about organizational culpability and personal liability. This means, however, that it must be clear to those responsible and also to all those carrying out the work what must be observed and concretely done in the current work context. Coordinated, implementable and trained processes are a fundamental basis for this.

Additionally linked checklists, workflows, law/standard texts, etc. and active change information as well as training are further guarantees for success. If the linking of all objects via the process can be implemented simply and at the same time in a targeted manner with the BPM suite, sets of rules and integrated manuals can become transparent and enable the simple recognition of all interrelationships. However, the essential point is: only with a process-oriented implementation will this be understood by the employees and can be lived properly. Everything relevant is integrated seamlessly and precisely into the workflows of the employees concerned: Who must observe what, why and how in processes so that the company is compliant in all directions? With meaning, acknowledgements and digital signatures, work in the BPM suite is demonstrably compliant. A uniform company-wide risk management can be built on this:

All rule checks can be flanked by audit management for internal and external audits with their own or predefined questionnaires and measures. A central measure management supports transparent status tracking and processing for all types of measures - such as deviations, errors, ideas, improvements.

Predefined and self-defined wizard workflows can be used to digitize regular processes. Assigned employees automatically ensure clear responsibilities and transparency. Then the BPM suite can become the operating system for digitized organizational and process management. With controllable risks and detachment. Processes, opportunities and risks are now managed in an integrated manner.

Strategy via processes and IT

Strategy becomes reality by consistently managing through processes. With their strategic goals and measures, companies pick up on technological and future trends and anticipate customer expectations and market developments that have to be realized in terms of processes at different levels. This requires networked thinking and action across departmental boundaries. At the operational level, individualized services are to be provided in the shortest possible time at attractive costs, ideally via digitized and automated processes. The share of IT in value creation is increasing, processes are often radically changed, and the resulting data offer opportunities for expanding the business model. Hierarchical structures can hardly withstand these rapid developments. Discourse, dialog and decisions must be made as quickly as possible and along the end-to-end process chains.

At the level of these process chains, entire ecosystems of digital processes are connected in order to offer holistic and data-driven services. As a consequence, a large number of new and fully digitized and networked processes must be developed and implemented. Without professional and digitized process management, this goal is hardly achievable. At the top level, the further development of a digital, future-proof business model is even more consistently about the monetization of data and a very high IT share of value creation. In these cases, too, a massively changed process map and a multitude of new processes almost always emerge. New tasks, competencies and responsibilities must be implemented.

A BPM suite can also support the implementation of the strategy process. But what about corporate strategy or higher-level strategic corporate goals, and who has what responsibility? The goal is for such changes to be initiated by strategic process managers and to be the responsibility of operational process managers all the way through to implementation. In this way, losses can be avoided through functional strategies and classic projects, whose implementation is not infrequently watered down between functions.

Manage enterprise architectures

A comprehensive BPM suite also offers solutions for other deployment scenarios that are important at this stage: How can processes be harmonized across the company prior to digitization to such an extent that implementation efforts do not explode? Variant management also ensures at this stage that necessary variants (for example, due to different legal country requirements) are derived in a targeted manner and improvements to the parent object are consciously adopted. These are innovative solutions for mapping the enterprise architecture of processes, roles, organization and IT in order to implement digitized, process role-based and workflow-supported authorization management (IAM). An important prerequisite for controllable processes that are compliant and implemented with significantly less effort.