Business Process management (BPM)

Business Process Management (BPM) allows organisations to design, execute, manage and analyse critical tasks within the business, identifying opportunities to streamline processes and create greater efficiencies and savings while at the same time ensuring consistency and accountability.

Financial Services organisations are required to follow strict compliance guidelines, legislation including Know Your Customer (KYC), Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Treat Customers Fairly (TCF) are just some of the regulations that must be adhered to. The common theme is that they all require strict adherence to a predefined business process and fulfilment within specified timeframes.

BPM provides the ability to execute and control these critical business processes. It provides visibility and transparency into the effort and activities required to complete each customer request. The data gathered from the execution of the business process is then used to identify bottlenecks, monitor staff productivity and identify ways to improve performance and productivity within the business while maintaining the required standards and meeting the regulatory requirements.

BPM technology provides the tools and infrastructure to define, simulate, execute and analyse business processes. It enables users to monitor the execution of individual processes, to analyse behaviour and identify opportunities for process optimisation.

There are three key components to a BPM solution:

• Process Management - Defines exactly how business is conducted in terms of the tasks to be completed, the timescales and the interactions between people and applications within the organisation.
• Enterprise Content Management – Captures and leverages the content within an organisation including documents, faxes, emails and other sources. The resulting electronic images removes any restrictions associated with physical files and the location of staff allowing the process to be designed in the most efficient way.
• Enterprise Application Integration (EAI)– Provides the technology-focused middleware layer to exchange data and transactions between applications and where possible, automate elements of the process. This approach will maximise the investment in technology and provides the greatest return on investment.

Each of these components is important as they combine the human element of the business process with the technology element to enable process execution and automation. The scope of a business process can span from departmental level to inter-enterprise collaborations so it is critical that the solution is commensurately robust and scalable.

BPM delivers capabilities over and above traditional workflow applications in that it provides:

• Business Process Modeling – An intelligent process-mapping tool to be used by business users. In addition, the ability to control process execution and to map the organisational roles and responsibilities to control work distribution is vital.
• Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) –. The ability to integrate to existing business systems and utilise Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) opens up new business opportunities. SOAs will allow organisations to maximise the investment in existing systems, enhancing the functionality available and creating a layer of process control that would not be otherwise feasible.
• Process Simulation and Analysis –The ability to simulate the dynamics of a business environment so as to ensure that ongoing operational changes are catered for as part of the process. The information provided from the process analysis is invaluable for management, to understand how the business is performing and to take advantage of any new opportunities for productivity gain.

The benefits of BPM include those derived from a traditional workflow solution but are greatly enhanced by the flexibility provided by BPM and the realisation of benefits across the entire enterprise as opposed to a single department. These benefits include the ability to:

• Respond to change whenever and wherever it occurs
• Provide business users with a process-centric approach to operations that overrides the restrictions imposed by traditional systems
• Utilise business rules to implement process automation thereby speeding up the process and eliminating the need to use experienced staff on simple tasks
• Provide consistency and transparency in all business dealings
• Vastly improve Management Information by providing real time views of pipeline, productivity, service levels and volumes. The use of OLAP provides drill-down functionality to give complete visibility into the business process.
• Reduce training, maintenance and development costs
• Improve productivity and operational cost ratios.

Phoenix has extensive experience in implementing BPM projects using third party technology from world leading organisations like Global 360, FileNet and Microsoft. Our partnerships with these organisations ensure that we are at the forefront of new developments and advances in BPM technology. Our industry focus allows us to translate the technology into solutions that deliver maximum benefits to our customers.