What Is a Business Process Management System?

Business process management (process management) is a systematic method that focuses on standardizing the construction of end-to-end excellent business processes and continuously improves the business performance of the organization.

Business process management

* Business executives want the company's processes to keep pace with changing

BPC is the abbreviation of Business Process Community, and the full name is Business Process Community

The management of business processes should be divided into three levels according to the degree of change: the establishment and specification of business processes, business process optimization, and business process reorganization. These three different levels of change are applicable to companies at different stages and management foundations.

The first level is the establishment and specification of business processes.

In the early stages of the establishment of an enterprise, especially SMEs, due to the pressure of business survival, managers generally paid attention to the market and sales, and paid little attention to processes and systems. The operation basically relies on the experience of employees and some simple systems. The personal capabilities of business owners and occasional opportunities, such as having the specific resources needed for the industry to succeed. Enterprises at this level, when solving the problem of survival and starting to scale, are facing a transition from the rule of man to the rule of law. At this time, the problem was solved from scratch. Like many companies, the implementation of the ISO9001 system or other basic systems is to solve this problem. Most of the domestic small and medium-sized enterprises and enterprises in some industries with low marketization belong to this level.

The biggest problems faced by enterprises at the first level are disorder. Usually, the organization structure is not sound, the organization is set up by people, the powers and responsibilities are unclear, and there are no institutional processes. These enterprises usually do not have a formed organization. Whoever is familiar with which one is responsible for the business. Functions often overlap. The operation of the enterprise basically depends on human experience and inertia. Leapover command events often occur. At the same time, Shows the characteristics of a high degree of centralization.

From the perspective of process management, what companies urgently need in this period is to establish basic processes and specifications, such as business operation processes, operational guidelines, job descriptions, and human resource management systems. Enterprises in this period cannot force the fineness of business processes. The key is to clarify rights and responsibilities, identify and describe processes, and make routine work.

The second level is business process optimization.

Due to the expansion of the size of the enterprise, the organization will gradually become larger, the divisions will become more and more detailed, and the degree of corporate bureaucracy will also increase. The biggest problem at this time is inefficiency, that is, inefficiency. Usually such enterprises Will show the following characteristics:

The organizational structure is complete, even large and complete, and there are written responsibilities and institutional procedures, but there will be poor cooperation between departments, low efficiency of inter-departmental processes, long decision-making time, and institutional processes, although they have not reached a level of refinement. Problems such as inadequate execution of processes. A considerable number of enterprises have also passed ISO9001 certification or have a complete system flow system. Enterprises with this characteristic are generally some private enterprises and some state-owned enterprises that have grown in size after rapid expansion. Its business model is relatively stable, and companies generally develop faster.

The problems that enterprises need to solve at this stage are how to improve their efficiency and response speed. The commonly used method is to first evaluate the performance of the existing process, identify the missing key links and the links that need to be improved, and analyze the following four perspectives for each link of the process:

Activity: Whether it is too complicated and there is a possibility of streamlining

Activity implementation form: whether the activity can be implemented with more efficient tools

Logical relationship of activities: Can the sequence relationship of each link be adjusted to achieve improvement goals?

The owner of the activity: Can the process be made more efficient by changing the owner of the activity

Then improve the efficiency of the process by simplifying, integrating, adding, and adjusting existing processes. You can also monitor the overall performance of the process by clarifying the process owner to avoid the problem of inter-departmental referrals.

Generally, when optimizing the process, the focus is on the efficiency and cost of the relatively low-level process. Some methods and tools can be used to improve the existing process. At the same time, the effective implementation of the process is emphasized. Generally, large-scale processes are not involved.

Strategy is the leading and overall strategy and countermeasure of an enterprise, and it is the development goal and direction of an enterprise. Known as the "father of competitive strategy", Michael Porter once stated that strategy is to create a unique positioning of value. Strategy determines product planning, strategy guides resource allocation, and strategy guides the focus of organizational work. However, to ensure the realization of the strategy, it is more important that the strategy must be implemented first, that is, a practical strategy execution guarantee system must be established, and the business process is The core hub for the implementation of strategic execution plays an integral role in the entire strategic execution system. The strategic goals of an enterprise can only become executable if they are implemented in the process. That is, by establishing process goals that are consistent with the strategic goals of the enterprise, the business process is rounded. They are interlocked, and at the same time, the process goals are effectively linked to the performance system, thereby forming a corporate strategy execution system.

Promote business process management and achieve strategic landing mainly from the following aspects.

First of all, the strategic goals are reasonably and effectively decomposed and closely linked to the business activities of each department is the key first step. To achieve this, the first is that the strategic goals should be decomposed into various functions and levels of the company layer by layer, and effectively linked to the production and operation activities of the company's various departments, in order to ensure that the division of responsibilities within the team is clear and the direction is consistent. The second is to identify the key success factors that affect the achievement of goals and form a strategic map. To this end, all functional departments should be organized to conduct a comprehensive review, and analyze the current situation gap against the company's strategic goals for the decomposed goals at various levels, identify various internal and external factors that may affect the achievement of the goals at various levels, and determine the key success factors through comprehensive evaluation and analysis. Form a strategic development map. The strategic map is also a key link in the formation of a strategic goal system. The strategic map helps companies to point out the implementation path of strategies, and articulate the development priorities clearly, so that employees can understand and communicate more easily. In this way, strategy becomes an understandable language, which enables enterprises to focus on integrating resources. Key success factors, and then develop and implement actions around the key success factors to effectively implement the strategy.

Secondly, to achieve strategic landing, we must give play to the core hub of business process management. In order to effectively implement the action measures formulated around the key success factors for achieving the strategic goals, each action measure must be implemented into the specific business work of each department, ensuring that the responsibilities of each action measure are clear, and the business implementation process is clear. Its effective implementation. If an enterprise wants to reach the critical success factor of "improving equipment operation support capability", its action measures must be closely combined with specific business work such as equipment system planning and scientific maintenance to be feasible. Through business process management, the business efficiency can be effectively improved, and the standards for who, how, and how to do all the affairs of the enterprise are clear and clear at a glance. Eliminating the barriers will greatly improve the overall operating efficiency and effectiveness of the enterprise, and will also greatly enhance the core competitiveness of the enterprise.

But how should business process management go forward? In practice, according to the specific status of each enterprise, the hierarchical management of processes will be different. Generally, it can be divided into three levels (as shown in the figure). The first level process (or main process) provides managers with the main business function architecture. The main purpose is Clarify the division of labor, interfaces, and sequences between departments and business modules, such as material management processes, which will involve material technology standards, procurement, production, logistics, warehousing and other management modules. This process will describe in detail the definition of the Relationships, interfaces, and management requirements; secondary processes (or sub-processes) are mainly detailed descriptions of some core business modules or key business processes in the primary process, clarifying process inputs and outputs, various activities and methods, Process interfaces and their interactions, identifying required resource and information requirements or monitoring measurement, analysis, and improvement measures required. For example, the production plan management process, from planning planning, execution, change, and evaluation to improvement and optimization, should clarify the control requirements of all aspects of the process; the three-level process (also known as the operation process) is mainly for the important or key positions to clarify their post business processes The key is to decompose the specific work process of each post in detail. Each step of work needs to fully identify and describe the core control requirements such as quality, safety, cost, equipment, and environment, and related requirements in its numerous company documents. Effective linking ensures that the main points of the job requirements are clear and clear, which improves the efficiency and standardization of the job.

Third, business processes must be strictly implemented, dynamically managed, and continuously optimized. This needs to be achieved: first, business process management should be supported by leaders, full participation in the effective and strict implementation of business process specifications, combined with actual work to find deficiencies, continuous optimization; second, business processes should be effectively associated with the performance monitoring system, through performance Follow-up analysis, evaluation and timely detection of deviations from process objectives and requirements, and timely improvement and improvement; Third, the establishment of a comprehensive strategic review and evaluation mechanism. Business process management is a systematic approach to continuously improve the business performance of the organization. It is a platform for achieving the strategy faster and better. As the internal and external environment changes, the strategy will be adjusted in a timely manner, and as a business to achieve strategic implementation. The process platform also needs to be constantly adjusted and optimized to adapt to the company's strategic development.

Process management is to eliminate the chronic problems of people floating around, embarrassment, unclear responsibilities, and poor implementation, so as to achieve the purpose of orderly operation and improve efficiency of the enterprise. Business operations must let the process speak. When managers think about problems, they must use the process to think, not "wait for leaders to speak" or "wait for leaders to clap", let alone "brain their heads." Only by grasping the various nodes in the process can the work be smoother and the efficiency of personnel can be improved rapidly.

Promote process management is strategically oriented and business processes are the hub. The system effectively integrates various management requirements such as quality management, environmental management, occupational health and safety management, internal control, and social responsibility, and effectively links the performance monitoring system to form strategic execution guarantee System, to achieve the company's refined management to simple and efficient management, to the ultimate management excellence, to achieve strategic landing.