BPM or business process management is defined as a field operations management that focuses on improving corporate performance by managing and optimizing a company’s business processes. BPM has become popular lately because of the cost savings it provides companies, with the added benefit of improving the efficiency of operations.
Surprisingly accounting departments, human resource departments, and many other departments, paper still plays the primary role of moving information from one employee to another. This practice – moving paper from station to station – hasn’t changed in generations, and an argument could be made it hasn’t changed much for an even much, much longer period of time.
These paper based systems work reliably, but do have limitations. Normally, there’s only a single image of the paper document, so if lost or misplaced the transaction grinds to a halt. Only one person has custody of the document at any one time, so access by others is limited. With most processes requiring multiple steps with multiple hands involved, it’s difficult for management to get a real time grasp on whether the process is moving smoothly or bottle-necked. However, one of the biggest limitations of a paper based process is speed…the process can move only as fast as the paper can move from station to station.
BPM – Improving efficiency for SMB
These challenges are have created the demand for content management software with digital document workflow design, whose implementation is steadily rising across many types of organizations. Workflow systems aren’t new – they’ve been in place for more than twenty years, primarily used by larger organizations who could justify the large investment necessary to develop custom workflow software solutions.
What’s changed? As both computer hardware and software have become more powerful and much more affordable, we’ve witnessed the same with workflow solutions. They’ve been brought to the SMB market with attractive value propositions. Workflow solutions eliminate the tedious manual process and allow employees to spend less time managing documents and more time focused in business. Workflow provides improved document security and supports compliance efforts. Errors can be reduced and work can be processed much faster and access to the work can be expanded outside the physical office, allowing for optimal efficiency.
