Business Process management as a real , meaningful change strategy - Essay Example

When speaking of BPM one is simply speaking about formalizing the business processes in order to direct efforts to best accommodate the needs of clients through controlling the entire organizational efforts. Broadly speaking it is the case that BPM incorporates an approach that aims to improve management activities in six specific categories. The first category covered under BPM is company vision which aims to generate what the strategic vision of the firm should be. The following process category is design, which focuses management efforts to identify the existing work processes and potential future design processes.

After this point, attention is given to the modeling process which looks to separate variables to help determine what effect larger organizational changes might have. Building on this previous point attention is given to execution which is the actual pursuing of the steps involved in the process. As a significant component of BPM is monitoring, it as at this stage where it is implemented and special consideration is given to collecting as much data as possible. As a final point of the BPM process, optimization is incorporated in which based on relevant feedback from the monitoring process changes can be made in order to ensure better work flow in the future.

As with any business process change strategy, one operates under the assumption that the main benefit of BPM is to streamline all business processes to improve the satisfaction of customer needs or increase profits. The consequence of implementing BPM would supposedly generate an improvement in overall customer satisfaction (Through faster turnaround or improvements in product quality), improved customer relations, increased profits etc. One major concern that BPM hopes to improve is the idea that different stakeholders within an organization often have very different goals.

It could be argued that marketing professionals within an organization often have different objectives than computer programmers. For example, programmers often may develop programs that are best suited for the purpose but may be technically abstract for clients yet marketing professionals look to promote products that are best suited to accommodate the customer needs yet may be technologically deficient. In this scenario BPM would look to align all work processes from first point of contact though to the delivery of the final product.

Where this differs from other management process such as Six Sigma according to Breyfogle (2004) is the example that BMP effectively enhances six sigma based initiative by providing a software based solution to measure, define, analyze as well as control business processes. By incorporating a technological aspect to the process one gains a better control on the effectiveness of protocols. The issue of whether or not BBM is merely a fad or here to stay is tricky. Over the years there have been many business improvement initiative processes that have fallen by the wayside.

However a strong argument can be made that this process is here to stay. Where this process differs from its contemporaries is that it seeks to incorporate a technological monitoring process that generates meaningful control and feedback. From an IT perspective, when incorporated effectively the process would require the development of software monitoring solutions as a means of generating meaningful feedback. As it