Who is a BPM candidate?

Maybe you have been learning and reading about BPM and it’s starting to sound good to you. Now you are wondering if this is something your department or organization can use. So how do you know who is a good BPM candidate and, more importantly, if you are one? 

There are number of ways to tell, but the most important questions you need to ask yourself are:

1. Do I manage 5 or more people?
2. How much ‘hand-off’ does my department/organization have?
3. Do I have visibility into my department/organization?
4. Do we have the ability to scale, to grow? 

1. Do I manage 5 or more people? 
If you are managing 5 or more people it’s possible that your organization/department is a good candidate for BPM. We have found that in groups larger than 3 people, processes begin to weaken and get confusing. When you reach 5 people it’s likely that you already have some redundancy and issues with your processes.

This is nothing alarming, every company has process issues, and none can function at 100% efficiency, 100% of the time. We are humans, we get tired, we don’t have enough time, and we make mistakes. It’s only natural that we have some issues; it’s what makes us human. 

What you do need to be concerned about is a point when those processes become a burden to you, your department or your organization. The best way to check this is to see how organized your department is and how fast they react to any given issue. Do they know what to do in any given situation or are they looking for answers elsewhere or guessing how to handle certain situations? Do you have a lot of turnover and how long is your training process? 

2. How much ‘hand-off’ does my department/organization have?
This question directly relates to the number of people you have in your department or organization and how many clients you deal with daily/weekly/monthly. If you are a small, exclusive jewelry store that has 10 high priced regular clients per year, and 3 employees, you won’t need to worry about processes.  You won’t have that much ‘hand-off’.

However, even if you have only 3 employees and you have larger number of clients, or other departments you have to deal with, and your department may be servicing, it’s likely you will have significant amount of information exchange. This information exchange becomes a perfect place where processes break down and redundancies set in.

3. Do I have visibility into my department/organization?
By our standards this is one of the most important benefits of BPM. Every department head, manager, or CEO has to know at any point in time what is happening with their department or organization. The moment you lose this control things slowly start falling apart.

“What destroyed Enron, Arthur Anderson, WorldCom and today the Bear Sterns Companies? The common denominator seems the fact that those organizations are destroyed from within; they collapse onto themselves.” Hans Norden

If you ask yourself, what is my department/organization doing right now, could you answer it? And if so, how quickly?  How accurate is that information? If you don’t have accurate information as to what is happening in your department or organization at any moment you definitely need BPM! 

4. Do we have the ability to scale/grow? 
Scalability is also a crucial aspect in any organization for both specific departments and the organization as a whole. Every company is striving for growth and many companies achieve great results. However, there are many companies that “grow too fast”, or they break even, or make a small profit. The main reason for this is that generally as companies grow they hire more people, bring in more resources, buy more applications and products to support new business.

Rarely do companies look back and try to figure out how to clean up and utilize what they already have. Can your company support new revenue without increasing overhead cost? If not, it may be time for BPM analysis.    

Maja Kazazic, CEO
Vela Business Soutions