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BPM Life Cycle

What is BPM Life Cycle

BPM life cycle defines the systemic approach through which any business process can be implemented and improved.

The basic structure of the Business Process Management (BPM) life cycle includes - process design, process modeling, execution, monitoring, and process improvement/optimization.

The BPM lifecycle must be understood in order to understand how modern businesses function, expand, and optimize. While there is no hard and fast rule that every business must complete the BPM lifecycle stages in the same order and norms. But there are consistent patterns in business process management phases across successful businesses which are Design, model, execute, monitor, and optimize.

The advancement or development of a firm's processes through time is represented by the business process management life cycle. This cycle is intended to show the many BPM lifecycle phases that are included in the BPM lifecycle, as well as how each step moves a company closer to accomplishing its goals in the short and long term.

Design

You have fewer stakeholders and processes when you first start out. Laying down your company procedures and executing them on a daily basis will be simple. However, as your business grows, your operations start to fall into predictable patterns. Your teams can no longer manage the processes that have become disorganized and are about to crash at any moment. Concentrating labor on such large and repetitive procedures might lead to mistakes.

Breaking down a process into smaller individual jobs and assigning each task to the appropriate stakeholder is possible with business process management. BPM is an all-in-one solution for managing business processes since it can capture data at each stage and expand it across the process’s lifetime. It enables you to perform operations smoothly while adhering to business requirements.

Business process management software also smooths out any kinks that arise when you make modifications to existing processes or introduce new ones. The business procedures of a company are always evolving. New personnel is hired, new tools are purchased, the need for AI-driven process improvements grows, and some old procedures become outdated. Business process design assists you in identifying and modeling these processes so that they may smoothly integrate into your present business architecture.

Model 

Business process modeling, the second of five processes in business process management, is used to map out the existing (or "as-is") process and create the future (or "to-be") state with enhancements. In order to understand and enhance the process, the 'process champion' should demonstrate the documented steps from before. The goal is to imagine the form being routed via a succession of well-defined logical processes, each having its own task and participants. A capital expenditure request approval, for example, may go through the following steps:

Start > Initiator completes form > manager requests clarification > initiator amends form and resubmits form > management accepts request > CFO approves request > end. 

This is a linear process that may be described in a flowchart using design principles including decisions, parallel phases, loops, approvals, and notifications. Many iBPMS systems, however, allow you to simulate 'what if' or non-linear scenarios, as not every process follows a pre-defined route. That is, you may automate processes to go in whichever way you choose based on user behavior, internal data, or external situations. Early engagement with potential providers is recommended since it allows you to develop a better solution.

Execute

You must run your processes after you have mapped and visualized them for simple consumption. However, you don't yet know if your workflows are error-free. Before going live, you should test them in a testing environment or with a limited sample of people. How does a BPM tool figure out how to carry out a process? What information does it need from the CRM? For the tool to follow, you must create preset business rules. All of the rules that occur before, during, and after the process completion are executed by the tool.

Document approvals, onboarding, asset management, cost reports, and purchase orders are all typical business operations. The majority of activities in these procedures do not need human interaction, such as passing an approval job from one stakeholder to another. Regardless, your teams must do it, and if you don't have a structure in place to link activities to the overall business goal, you risk losing process compliance. In addition to giving excellent workflow automation options for additional process optimization, BPM software provides this for you.

Monitor

Processes must be monitored at all times to ensure that they remain compliant. You can avoid possible bottlenecks and find improvement opportunities by continuously monitoring and reviewing processes. The benefits of business process monitoring go beyond effective problem avoidance in the BPM lifecycle. To keep things running properly, businesses rely on a large number of procedures from several departments. It's impossible to implement a process and then forget about it. BPM monitoring guarantees that your whole process framework is aware of what's going on day to day and minute to minute and that this information is appropriately translated into end-to-end business processes. BPM systems simply scan your documents and processes to assess their efficacy against key performance indicators (KPIs). What you can't measure, you can't improve. Business process monitoring enables you to obtain concrete insights to quantitatively and qualitatively validate your processes.

Optimize

You can push operations toward optimization and process improvement with the right monitoring system in place. The use of critical metrics and measures to evaluate and optimize current processes is referred to as business process optimization. When you effectively optimize your processes, you decrease wasted labor, improve output quality, ensure process compliance, shorten execution time, and eliminate process frictions.

Siloed processes will never contribute to your organization's goals because they become caught up in a never-ending loop of day-to-day problems. With continuous improvement efforts, BPM optimization helps you increase the alignment of specific processes to your larger company objectives. A process is simply a collection of activities that are performed in a certain order to create a specific result. You can better handle ad hoc mistakes and inefficiencies by holistically improving your company activities one step at a time. Various business process automation and process management solutions are often used to optimize the process.

Managing BPM Lifecycle

In many cases, failures are often attributed to not working harder or not having the funding for a bigger team when the real cause is forgoing a well-mapped business process and its benefits. We all know the power of consistency, now to make things consistent and according to your business model, it is important to ensure the BPM life cycle is followed. BPM tools like GoodFlow help you to design, execute, monitor, and optimize your business processes. Pick one which suits your needs, stick to the process and you will see the results.