According to a McKinsey study, companies that embrace Business Process Management (BPM) see a 20-30% increase in efficiency Source: McKinsey.
BPM helps businesses streamline operations, cut costs, and enhance overall productivity.
But what exactly is BPM, and how can it help your organisation?
Businesses operate through dozens of processes - depending on the complexity of their products and operations, these may include product design, component assembly, quality control, testing, packaging, shipping, inventory management, marketing, sales, customer service, field service and financial management.
But are these processes as efficient as they could be? Maybe not. This is where Business Process Management steps in.
Business Process Management (BPM) is a systematic approach to improving a company's workflows. It focuses on designing, analysing, and optimising business processes to enhance efficiency and achieve strategic goals.
Let's start with the definition of a workflow. Cambridge Dictionary defines a workflow as the way that a particular type of work is organised, or the order of the stages in a particular work process. Workflows have three core elements:
1. Business Rules- the business rules trigger changes, actions, reports, tasks and information flows. An example business rule would be that if a customer books a field service appointment, then take action ABC.
2. Roles- these are the roles in the organisation that are participating in or affected by the workflow.
3. Routings- are the ways the workflow affects the organisation - e.g., booking the field service appointment triggers a webhook and an email notification.
Unlike task management, which deals with individual tasks, or project management, which focuses on one-time initiatives, BPM continuously refines processes for long-term improvements.
To understand BPM fully, let’s break it down into three essential components:
People in their roles as employees and stakeholders are integral to successfully executing business processes, serving as the backbone of any organisation's operational framework.
Their involvement involves more than just performing tasks; it also involves contributing to the strategic alignment of processes with business goals.
Comprehensive training programs that equip them with the necessary skills and knowledge to navigate complex workflows efficiently are essential for harnessing their full potential.
Additionally, it is crucial to establish clear roles and responsibilities, accompanied by well-defined job descriptions and KPIs that facilitate cross-functional alignment.
This clarity enhances individual accountability and fosters a collaborative environment where each team member understands their contribution to the larger organisational objectives.
By doing so, businesses can ensure that their processes are executed precisely and consistently, leading to improved efficiency and a more agile response to market demands.
Processes define how business results are achieved. Processes spanning functions, departments, and offices are complex and have the potential to foster misalignment, inefficiencies, and counterproductive practices.
By meticulously capturing the activities that constitute a process from beginning to end, businesses can swiftly diagnose and document the relationship between the business rules, roles, and routings, aka workflows.
This comprehensive data collection enables the automation of process initiation and conclusion, facilitating the handling of substantial data volumes for insightful analysis.
With a precise end-to-end view, organisations can extract valuable insights and ultimately refine or redesign their processes. A well-structured workflow guarantees consistency, minimises errors, and enhances operations' scalability.
Whether automation is the primary goal, documenting the process provides a strategic foundation, empowering decision-makers to rely on data-driven insights rather than intuition.
While many companies view technology as the ultimate solution, its true power is unlocked when combined with a process insights approach. This integration elevates information gathering and analysis to an entirely new level. By digitising inputs, insights are rapidly generated, establishing a robust baseline for future benchmarking.
The focus is on the entire end-to-end process, transcending functional silos, and ensuring minimal disruption to employees. More specifically, BPM software automates workflows, integrates data across systems, and provides valuable insights for optimisation.
Gaining process insights transcends adopting a single technology; instead, they involve strategically layering technologies to integrate with and enhance the existing operational framework perfectly.
It focuses on automating processes and passing information and data between software systems with minimal human intervention, such as Field Services, Warehouse Management, and Finance systems.
Designed for processes that require approval, decision-making, or collaboration, such as contract approvals where people decide the process path.
Used in workflows that revolve around important documents, like contracts, technical specifications and legal agreements, as the central element of the workflow..
Business Process Management unfolds through several pivotal stages. Initially, it focuses on defining objectives and scope, modelling processes, and executing them.
The subsequent stages emphasise ongoing optimisation and refinement. Much like other significant organisational initiatives, BPM is a continuous practice rather than a one-time project, consistently enhancing business outcomes.
Outline and design workflows by identifying essential inputs, outputs, and participants, effectively defining the rules, roles and routings. Set precise objectives to ensure the process is harmonious with business goals and effectively addresses organisational needs.
Utilise diagrams or advanced tools to simulate workflows, allowing you to foresee potential outcomes, pinpoint bottlenecks, and fine-tune parameters to ensure seamless process operation across diverse scenarios.
Deploy the designed process utilising tools and automation, or as a manual workflow. Guarantee precise task assignments, integrate seamlessly with technology systems, and initiate the process in real-world environments with confidence.
Consistently monitor process performance through SLAs Metrics and KPIs. Detect issues, inefficiencies, or deviations from expectations to ensure processes stay aligned with business objectives. Task reminders and follow up communications can automate reminders to keep the workflow flowing.
Leverage data and insights from monitoring to optimise workflows, eradicate inefficiencies, and enhance outcomes. Continuously adapt processes to evolving business needs, ensuring sustained improvement and growth.
Source: Ardoq
BPM and the capability to fine tune business processes is a highly valuable competency which helps businesses by:
Reducing inefficiencies and speeding up processes
Cutting costs by reducing wastage and human involvement in repetitive tasks
Enhancing customer satisfaction through alignment and self-service
Improving compliance and risk management
Increased efficiency
Reduced costs
Improved customer satisfaction and agility
Increased agility and alignment
Better compliance
Enhanced collaboration
Reduction in workforce- Employees may resist change if they feel their job is threatened.
Resistance to change – Employees may resist new processes.
Lack of capacity– BPM requires expertise and resources to design and implement improvements
Integration issues – Legacy systems may not support new workflows.
Identify, analyse and prioritise existing business processes. This is typically achieved through business process mapping.
Design, model, and test improved workflows. The objective is to speed up existing processes and eliminate non-value-adding steps, such as reconciliations, rekeying data into multiple systems, multiple approvals, and redundant quality checks.
Implement workflow automation tools. Ideally, workflows should be created, maintained, and refined using a no-code tool that allows users and managers (with the correct permissions) to make changes.
Monitor performance regularly. SLAs, KPIs, and performance statistics should be easily accessible via reports and dashboards that users can build without specialist report-building skills.
Continuously optimise processes. Each process should have ongoing assessments to refine further and improve operations.
Align BPM with business goals.
Leverage automation and AI.
Regularly review and optimise processes.
Companies can leverage a variety of software to manage business processes effectively.
Workflow Automation Tools: These tools are designed to streamline repetitive tasks, ensuring that processes adhere to a defined path. They enhance efficiency and minimise errors, though they may lack the flexibility needed for more complex processes.
Process Modelling Tools: These tools empower teams to visualize and design workflows using diagrams like BPMN. While they excel in fostering collaboration and analysis, they do not execute processes and require integration with other systems.
Business Process Management Systems (BPMS): Offering comprehensive, end-to-end solutions for designing, automating, monitoring, and optimizing processes, BPMS are highly customizable and integrate seamlessly with enterprise systems. However, they can be costly and complex to implement.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA): RPA focuses on automating repetitive, rule-based tasks by mimicking human interactions with systems. It is cost-effective and quick to deploy but may struggle with adaptability to non-standard processes.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems: ERP systems provide centralized management for business functions such as finance and HR. They enhance cross-department efficiency but often prioritize integration over optimisation.
Enterprise Architecture Platforms: Technology Platforms are increasingly utilised to manage and enhance business processes. They offer a holistic view of the organisation, linking processes, systems, and data to strategic objectives.
These platforms excel in uncovering dependencies, enabling data-driven decision-making, and facilitating cross-functional collaboration. However, they require careful configuration and ongoing maintenance to deliver maximum value. Enterprise Architecture platforms can be transformative for organisations aligning processes with broader business goals.
Popular BPM tools include:
Appian – Low-code automation.
Pega – AI-driven BPM.
Bizagi – Cloud-based BPM suite.
HubSpot plays a significant role in Business Process Management (BPM), especially in Customer Service Operations, Sales, Marketing and Operations Automation. It provides teams with easy-to-use tools to streamline processes, automate workflows, and improve efficiency across different departments.
While HubSpot isn’t a traditional BPM software like Appian or Pega, it integrates process management within its CRM and automation tools. It helps businesses optimise workflows without needing standalone BPM platforms.
HubSpot provides no-code workflow automation, enabling teams to set up business processes such as:
Product and service catalogue management automation with CPQ.
Sales pipeline management (e.g., automatically assigning leads to sales reps).
Customer service ticketing workflows (e.g., routing support requests to the right agent).
✅ Example: A company using HubSpot can have a Customer Support ticket automatically created from a team email and confirm progress to the customer.
Since BPM is about optimising processes, HubSpot’s CRM (Customer Relationship Management) ensures that all customer interactions are structured, automated, and data-driven.
Ticket tracking and management (ensuring smooth transitions between Customer Support and Sales).
Customer segmentation (automating personalised communication based on behaviours).
Sales automation (automatically logging calls, emails, and deals).
HubSpot’s Operations Hub enhances BPM by integrating and automating cross-functional workflows.
Data sync across tools (ensuring smooth data flow between platforms like Salesforce, Slack, and Asana).
Custom-coded workflows for complex automation.
Data quality management to remove duplicates and standardize data.
For B2B organisations, HubSpot provides an efficient way to automate and optimise processes, making the alignment of Sales to Customer Service Operations a natural outcome from being on one platform.
✅ Example: A B2B premium device manufacturer can use HubSpot’s BPM capabilities to track Customer orders from Quote to Cash, ensuring seamless handoffs between sales and customer success teams including field services and warehousing.
Customer Service Operations - workflows and automation
1. AI-powered BPM – Automating Complex Decisions
AI enhances BPM platforms by continuously analysing data to deliver more accurate estimations and superior forecasting indicators. These insights empower decision-makers to elevate corporate performance. Furthermore, this data-driven approach fosters proactive strategies, grounded in a deeper understanding of industries, products, and competitors.
2. Smart Contracts - Leveraging Workflow Automation
Smart Contracts are emerging as a pivotal trend in BPM. By automating workflow conditions, these contracts expedite process execution, eliminating the need for human intervention. Consequently, they significantly reduce the workload on employees, allowing businesses to operate more efficiently and focus on strategic initiatives.
3. Low-code BPM Solutions – Allowing faster implementation
Companies have started building their own applications. Even if the platform that they have chosen has extreme functionality, decision-makers tend to select platforms that allow them to build applications with fewer efforts. Additionally, there are companies that do not employ developers in their departments, thus it is very hard for them to use a BPM platform that is functional but needs lots of effort in coding.
4. Process Mining – Identifying inefficiencies using data
As businesses increasingly harness the power of data, process mining is becoming a pivotal strategy in Business Process Management. By utilising event logs and real-time data from enterprise systems, process mining offers a clear, data-driven perspective on how processes truly operate - often uncovering hidden inefficiencies, bottlenecks and deviations from intended workflows.
Unlike traditional process analysis methods, which depend on subjective evaluations, process mining employs AI and advanced analytics to identify inefficiencies that may not be immediately apparent.
As organisations pursue continuous improvement, process mining will be instrumental in optimising workflows, reducing costs, and significantly enhancing overall operational efficiency in the years ahead.
As Business Process Management becomes increasingly essential for businesses of all sizes, we can confidently anticipate more widespread adoption of BPM in the future. It's the smart choice for companies eager to set themselves apart by delivering exceptional customer experiences and enhancing their internal operations.
Research show us that companies that implement BPM typically experience greater efficiency, improved compliance, and reduced costs. By leveraging BPM tools and following best practices, businesses can streamline operations and stay ahead of the competition.
Get in touch to find out how our team can help with streamlining your operations with automation, workflows and AI.
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