Every organization in any industry follows a flow of business activities, all of which are directed toward the completion of some business transaction. The effectiveness of these activities has a direct and significant impact on the organization’s outcome.
The BPM lifecycle consists of five stages including design, model, execute, monitor, and optimize. It lies at the heart of the business process management discipline and provides us with a strategy for systematically and continually improving company processes.
Whether you are onboarding a new employee or applying for a new credit card, there are certain repeated activities that must be completed in the same precise way.
The core of each organization is its business processes. A corporation can only be successful in the long run and retain its resolutions if its operations work properly.
To establish viability, companies must take a step back and review and analyze their processes one by one. The purpose is to identify failing areas and implement modifications or enhancements to get optimal performance.
In this post, we’ll go over what business process management (BPM) is, the stages of the BPM lifecycle, and why they’re important.
What is Business Process Management (BPM)?
As per BPM.com, Business Process Management (BPM) is a discipline involving any combination of designing, automation, execution, control, measurement, and optimization of business activity flows, in support of enterprise goals, spanning systems, employees, customers, and partners within and beyond the enterprise boundaries.
Organizations use Business Process Management (BPM) to establish, manage, and optimize business processes. It entails assessing each process independently while also considering its role throughout the enterprise.
When processes are inefficient and unoptimized, time is lost, deadlines are missed, customers are dissatisfied, and so on.
According to IDC research, inefficient processes cost businesses up to 20-30% of their yearly income.
The regular fine-tuning of processes with the goal of optimizing as much as feasible is a major component of BPM. This might be as simple as removing a step in a process or completely rewriting the process from start to end.
This is where the BPM lifecycle comes in handy.
BPM systems are used to define, monitor, and measure business processes. A number of software providers offer BPM and/or workflow solutions, both on-premises and in the cloud (SaaS)
I highly recommend reading the below article for more information about these systems
BPMS: Do You Really Need It? This Will Help You Decide! (theecmconsultant.com)
What is BPM Lifecycle?
The BPM lifecycle standardizes the process of implementing and managing business processes inside an organization as a series of cyclical stages. It consists of five phases including design, model, execute, monitor, and optimize.
BPM lifecycle is distinguished by an iterative collection of actions carried out in stages. This implies that the business process management life cycle can be repeated rather than stopped after the last step is completed.
The BPM Lifecycle Stages
Some BPM experts cite five steps, while others include six or more steps and/or call these steps by various names.
The BPM lifecycle consists of five different stages including design, model, execute, monitor, and optimize. During each stage, specific activities are carried out in order to achieve the most efficient way to conduct business operations.
Despite variations in the number and titles of the stages, the BPM lifecycle usually includes the following components:
- Design the business process as it should ideally exist and examine the process as it presently exists to determine what needs to be improved.
- Consider how the business process runs in various circumstances.
- Implement solutions for improvement, such as standardization and process automation;
- Monitor the overall performance.
- Keep optimizing the business process.
It is very important to always remember that the cycle can be repeated rather than stopping after the last step is completed.
The five stages of BPM lifecycle are:
1- Design
The first step in the lifecycle is “design,” in which we begin by analyzing and completely understanding how the process is now carried out. This may be performed by interviewing all parties, studying any documents, comprehending the business rules, and, if feasible, observing it in action.
Understanding the entire high-level picture of the process will entail the following:
- How the process is initiated?
- What is the process flow?
- What is the end result
- Identifying each task’s or actor’s responsibility
- other system integrations
- How long does it take to complete?
- What are the various types of tasks? (human, service, systems, etc.)
A mock-up form is also useful in this situation since it facilitates in the collecting and display of data. The form may be routed via the review-and-approval workflow once it has collected and shown the required data.
The salary certificate, for example, is a common process that occurs in all organizations. Employees frequently seek a salary certificate to be given to banks, schools, and colleges, among other places.
The process may begin with the employee making a request for salary certification to HR, followed by inter-departmental approvals, and finally, a certificate is prepared and returned to the employee.
2- Model
The second step in the lifecycle is “model”. The purpose of process modeling is to provide a visual representation of the process steps. To increase the process framework’s efficiency, you must first understand how things are now (as-is) and how you want them to be in the future (to-be) with changes.
The revised design should be distributed to all relevant stakeholders for assessment and approval. It is critical to obtain stakeholder buy-in at this stage and to solicit feedback in order to change or enhance.
You can be creative in this stage and make significant adjustments to how the procedure should be carried out. Returning to our salary certificate example, you may use digital signatures (if the process is automated) to save execution time, automatically archive the created certificate in the HR system, and so on.
The above process may be represented in a flowchart that incorporates design concepts such as loops, choices, notifications, parallel phases, and approval.
For in-depth coverage, check the below article
Business Process Modeling: Definition, Benefits, and Examples (theecmconsultant.com)
3- Execute
The third step of the BPM lifecycle is labeled “execute,” and it is when the new model is put to the test in order to carry out the new process and see it in action.
Even if the process can still be carried out manually when many human interventions are required, it is highly advised that you seize the chance to begin automating your business processes and reap the benefits that will help your organization run much more efficiently.
Before going live to a larger audience, it is advised that you run many cycles of the process via a smaller group to ensure that everything is working well and that any concerns have been resolved. This is critical because it will instill confidence in all stakeholders that the process is trustworthy.
4- Monitor
The fourth step of the BPM lifecycle is “monitor,” and it is at this stage that business processes are carried out and data is acquired to examine how your critical activities are moving over time.
Data collection will enable us to develop KPIs that will establish how the newly implemented process has benefitted the organization and detect bottlenecks, delays, or potential mistakes.
5- Optimize
The fifth and last step of the lifecycle is “optimize.” Based on the insights gained during the monitoring phase, you will strive to improve the process and remove bottlenecks in this phase to make your process more efficient.
You can push operations toward optimization and process improvement with a good monitoring system in place.
When you effectively optimize your processes, you decrease wasted labor, improve output quality, ensure process compliance, and shorten execution time.
Who are the Stakeholders in BPM Lifecycle?
A stakeholder is someone who has a vested interest in the process’s outcome and has direct or indirect influence over it. Stakeholders include process participants, the management team, process owners, process analysts, and system engineers.
To maximize the overall effectiveness of the business process life cycle, it is critical to identify and get the support of all stakeholders during the early stage of the lifecycle.
Conclusion
In today’s digital and highly competitive world, businesses must ensure that all of their business processes are running smoothly and that the result is delivered as quickly as feasible.
With the implementation of the BPM methodology and mastering the BPM lifecycle, organizations would be able to have efficient running processes.
As the business grows, business processes should be evaluated and reviewed to be updated or optimized further.
