Improve the management of your business processes with BPM software

Business process management is a vector for efficiency and quality within an organisation: and companies are increasingly aware of this. This issue is gradually becoming a new strategic priority for operational departments and senior management.

What is business process management (BPM)? How can you implement it in your company? What tools do you need? appvizer answers your questions about the challenges of BPM.

CONTENTS

See all software Business Process Management (BPM)

What is a business process?

A business process is a sequence of tasks or activities carried out successively by different stakeholders in order to achieve an objective and create added value for a company.

It highlights the interactions in the form of exchanges between the players in a company in order to gain an overall view. This concerns several types of exchanges:

• exchanges between internal and external players (sales representatives, technicians, suppliers, etc.),
• exchanges with applications or departments (email, billing management, customer management, etc.),
• exchanges of information with other business processes.

A business process can be transverse to an organisation: it involves several structures and teams, without necessarily being limited to a single person, team or department.

BPM: definition

What is business process management?

Business process management is often referred to as BPM. It is a set of tools, methods and services for creating, analysing and monitoring a company's operational processes.

This involves process modelling, in other words a graphical representation of the company's activities and how they are linked together in a given context.

It is the combination of several elements:

• the company's information system,
• governance methods
• collaboration between the players.

Automating non-value-added tasks saves over 50% of time on critical procedures.

Focus on the BPMN standard

This business process authoring standard was launched in 2011 with the aim of encouraging collaboration and harmonisation between the various departments within an organisation, by combining a process modelling standard with new symbols for business process diagrams.

This writing standard includes :

• actors and stakeholders
• process steps (activities)
• one-off events
• the sequence of activities or sequence flows represented by an arrow,
• and logic gates, used to join or separate sequence flows.

The benefits of BPM

If you're not yet convinced of the usefulness and benefits of BPM for your business, here are the three main advantages:

• organisation : streamlined processes save you time; your teams have better visibility of their role; risks are better controlled; provides a global view of the company's organisation;
• communication: exchanges are more fluid; facilitates cross-functional communication and decompartmentalises exchanges between departments; improves collaboration between players; formalises the way procedures are carried out;
• management: information is centralised; decision-making is facilitated; performance indicators are put forward; monitoring is improved and objectives achieved and delays are measured.

How can a BPM project succeed?

BPM projects are not just for large companies. SMEs and small businesses can also benefit from setting up a BPM project.

It can take from a few weeks to a maximum of six months to deploy a high-performance BPM project in your company.

For any BPM project, you need to think first and foremost in terms of the project and the company's strategy.

Frédéric Declee - Deputy Head of Engineering at CEV

Here are the three main points to bear in mind if you want your BPM project to succeed.

#1 Communication

This is the key to a successful project. Without communication, essentially between the IT department and the operational departments, the project cannot succeed. BPM software acts as a tool for formalising and structuring exchanges, and for facilitating a language that must be common to all stakeholders.

#2 A BPM approach on your own scale

Don't try to go too fast: think big, but start small. Putting the cart before the horse risks wasting time. On the contrary, it is wiser to start with a small BPM project and see significant results. You'll be laying solid foundations for the project to grow from there, thanks to cross-functional communication, better risk and error management, the introduction of indicators and the analysis of reports, for example.

#3 Build on what already exists

Before setting up your BPM project, it may be worth carrying out an audit of your current operations. How is information transmitted? What areas need to be improved? What tools are already in place? All this gives you a basis on which to launch your project, starting by optimising existing processes.

Rethink your company's processes in the digital age

Companies are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of precise, structured processes to optimise their operations. They want to put in place continuous process improvement initiatives, or have already started to roll out a BPM project.

The digital transformation of businesses is providing decision-makers with new ways of reinventing the way organisations work internally. Over and above the tools, projects are becoming agile and increasingly collaborative; collective intelligence is taking precedence over individuality; design thinking is making it possible to introduce innovation into the company while retaining the collaborative aspect, etc. All these factors are accelerating the structuring of organisations.

All these elements accelerate the structuring of companies' internal processes and their modelling needs. They can also give your company a competitive edge and help you stand out from the crowd.

Only ⅓ of French companies and organisations use BPM software for business process management, even though they are convinced of the need to improve their processes.

Source : CXP

Comparison of 4 BPM software packages to streamline your business processes

Process management software comparison table

Agilium

Agilium is 100% French BPM software that lets you automate your business processes quickly and easily thanks to its low-code approach . Use the dozens of templates available in the tool and adapt them to your needs, or create your own business applications - the choice is yours, both options are possible.

Among other things, the tool allows you to:

• connect your applications,
• create automations and workflows,
• monitor all your current processes using a process monitoring tool (BAM),
• collaborate effectively remotely by accessing your documents, information and indicators from the web.

Agilium offers an approach based on process management that is particularly effective in industry, enabling you to create customised processes and integrate your own business rules.

Examples of needs addressed: Business monitoring, acceptance management, production progress, production planning, electronic document management and non-conformity management.

Agilium is an excellent complement to an ERP for managing company-wide processes and centralising data in a collaborative platform accessible via the web.

Bonus: training included in your package, with or withoutcommitment!

A simple business application on the Agilium low-code platform costs around €2,000. There's also a SaaS subscription to use the platform, which includes maintenance, support and hosting, starting at 150 euros a month for 5 users.

Iterop

Iterop is online software that manages your company's processes throughout their lifecycle, adapting to changes as they occur. It enables you to :

• model processes in just a few clicks,
• define tasks
• assign them to your employees or external service providers,
• set up special conditions, alerts, email messages, etc.

For each task, you can define the person or group of people who can carry it out. It's an ideal solution for formalising your company's internal workflows and connecting the applications you use to each other.

The direct integration of exchanged information has several advantages: fewer ways of distributing information, and therefore centralisation of data, and less loss of information.

All the people involved in a process are notified as soon as an employee triggers the process. Iterop also serves as a monitoring tool for tracking employee activity.

The solution can be accessed from anywhere using a computer, tablet or smartphone. It requires no technical knowledge, thanks to an intuitive drawing tool. Business teams simply need to fill in dynamic forms to ensure that the processes meet everyone's needs.

Iterop has obtained ISO 9001 certification.

Heflo

More than 70,000 users put their trust in Heflo. The software is aimed at SMEs in all sectors of activity. Its users are diverse:

• consultants and business managers
• process analysts
• HR, sales, marketing and IT departments.

The solution offers an intuitive modelling tool: you simply drag and drop elements to build your processes. This means you can get to grips with the tool straight away. The following video gives you an overview of the interface through a short demonstration:

This collaborative tool complies with the BPMN 2.0 standard.

Heflo offers a free package for companies with no budget. However, with this offer, support is only available for 30 days and some features are not accessible, such as personalising your brand or authorising changes by process.

Process Studio

Published by Avanteam, Process Studio enables companies to model and automate business processes, while improving agility and traceability.

This collaborative, customisable and context-sensitive portal is compatible with the BPMN standard. It is presented as a process-oriented application generator: in just one click, generate the target application.

Process Studio features include

• management of actors, roles and access rights,
• a graphic design workshop for forms and workflows,
• history and full traceability of participants and changes.

The tool integrates with the Avanteam application suite, which automates document management, workflow management, electronic forms, scanning, etc. It also integrates easily with your existing tools (ERP, directories, messaging systems).

Dashboards allow you to monitor the progress of your processes using indicators that you have defined.

See all software Business Process Management (BPM)

Integrate BPM into your strategy

It's a fact: management awareness of the importance of business process management has increased. However, two thirds of companies have not yet taken the plunge and are not equipped with BPM software. Yet this is an essential step for those who want to achieve a faster ROI from their BPM project, while at the same time gaining a competitive advantage.

To start with, why not appoint a process manager for each area of your business? Only 16% of French companies have already done so (source: Solutions numériques).