Business Process Management doesn't necessarily come naturally. Sometimes you need to read a blog with some key thoughts and tips about the role.
'Decision then task' processes and the ability to handle them is what gives a successful business manager the upper hand. The ability to foresee the results of a decision and choose the appropriate course of action is priceless. However, few of us are that gifted (otherwise we would all be brilliant managers) and even the best entrepreneurs make poor choices.
Managing a multitude of processes within an organisation can be overwhelming with numerous stakeholders, each with varying levels of involvement and complexity. Additional challenges arise when there is little structure, a large part of the requirement is to be flexible and nimble, smarter decision-making is consistently demanded, and on-the-fly tasks surround these decisions.
So here's the high road statement:
"Poor choices mean you'll make a better choice next time—if you learnt from your mistakes."
For every big decision you have to make, there has been tens or even hundreds of little decisions you’ve made along the way to get to where the cross road is now. Knowing the best path to take and making sure you and others like you take that path again and again is what adults call “best practice”. Bazinga! Another platitude! (A term that means nothing because every path is never the same.) However, it’s the end result that’s consistent.
The ultimate goal is:
- Articulating the end result.
- How to get there.
- Knowing that you've reached 'there'. In some instances that goal post is constantly moving, and so it should be; it's called evolution.
The gap in all of this is tracking, measuring, monitoring, and reporting. How do you log the decisions you make, measure the outcome, disseminate the gains of those choices, and then make them “business as usual” for next time? Like having a GPS chip embedded into your running shoes, in business, you can also track your organisation’s processes. It’s called BPM (Business Process Management).
To add more buzz words into the mix, other terms include: “Workflows”, Intelligent Business Operations (iBOS), and Business Process Improvement (BPI).
To achieve a goal like this you need technology. You need a scalable solution that can apply to a small team to handle cases, or to a large organisation that facilitates collaboration.
