Setting New Year's resolutions is not uncommon for individuals. In many ways, it is also fairly common among organizations. At the end of the year, many companies begin to hold strategic meetings to discuss their goals and ideas for the coming year. One topic that often emerges during this time is what processes can be improved.
Forming effective process discussions
Talking about processes is often the first step to improving them. Effective discussions about improving business processes can be more difficult than it initially seems. The important thing in these discussions is balance. It can be tempting to gather executives, look at statistics, identify areas for improvement and talk about processes that would make that possible. At the same time, it often seems easy to simply give workers a short survey about their day-to-day operations and use that information to guide process improvement.
Having effective discussions often centers around balancing these two extremes. Just using executives and statistics could leave employees feeling like process improvements are only top-down initiatives. At the same time, plans that focus almost exclusively on employee feedback can lack the statistical analysis needed to provide a holistic view of operations. Process discussions often deliver the best results when members of all departments collaborate to identify the best way to improve processes.
Putting new process strategies into action
Once the process strategies have been developed, business process management software can help organizations implement the new solutions. This can help companies set themselves apart from the average person who sets New Year's resolutions only to see them fall by the wayside after just a few weeks. Putting new processes, or process adjustments, into place can be difficult and complex. BPM software provides the underlying capabilities needed to ease this transition into new ways of getting things done.
BPM solutions accomplish this by introducing product automation into the back-office infrastructure and integrating cloud, mobile and social systems. They can also provide employees with an advanced user interface that provides context for the data and applications they use, allowing them to use information as effectively as possible. Through these types of innovative systems, organizations can establish a working foundation that allows them to turn their core process goals into operational realities.
Ben Farrell
Director of Corporate Communications
