Business Process Management (BPM) is
a business management discipline (including methods, tools and
technologies) focused on pursuing the continuous improvement of the operational
processes of an organization, promoting effective, efficient, transparent and
agile performance. Considering an operational or business process as a sequence
of activities with an order of realization over time, which converts inputs
given into output (a result, a product ...) using specific execution methods
and with the support of adequate resources, adding value to the organization.
The processes must support business strategy, allowing the analysis of
operational excellence by facilitating the establishment of performance
measures (KPIs) as a tool for continuous improvement. Processes are the means
by which organizations locate people's talent to produce results. By management we mean to do the planned
activities properly to achieve objective results, being necessary the final
verification of the achievement of these objectives.
The implementation
of a continuous improvement in the organizations by means of the optimization
of the business processes under the discipline BPM, will be carried out by
means of a continuous cycle of life of several phases, to what is denominated Life Cycle BPM, concept that it was created in 2003 by Howard Smith and Peter Fingar.
They defined the cycle with three main phases: strategy (process
discovery), process execution (including the design, implementation, execution,
monitoring and control phases of the process) and results (analysis of
monitored indicators for optimization of process).
Different BPM
experts, we have developed variations to the BPM life cycle. I consider it is
essential to keep in mind that this search for continuous improvement can be
considered in the short, medium or long term, which implies emphasizing
different areas of improvement, which leads to different life cycles BPM:
- The BPM lifecycle that seeks continuous improvement in the short term focuses on seeking the evolutionary improvement of current processes by trying to save costs, increase the execution times of critical parts of the process and / or improve the quality of the product or resulting response. What is being done is a Process Management since it focuses on the outcome of each independent process and the actions to be performed (improvement, reengineering, transformation, innovation ...) always looking for optimization.
- BPM lifecycle that seeks continuous improvement in the short, medium or long term focuses on making a strategic improvement or a more far-reaching improvement (which may involve completely redefine the process) by looking for global optimizations according to the business strategy. What is being done is a Process Oriented Management that perceives the company as an interrelated and ordered system according to the transversal processes (a Process Oriented Organization).
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