Organizations are always looking for fresh ways to boost efficiency and productivity. You’ve likely come across two key terms in your research: business process management (BPM) and business process automation (BPA). Are you wondering how these two important process approaches differ? The difference is a familiar maxim used in business: strategy vs. tactics. Business process management is a broad, strategic discipline, while business process automation is one of the tactical technologies tools in the more extensive process toolbox. While they both strive to make the contributions of systems and people more valuable to the organization, there are a few key differences between the two. Let’s explore how BPM and BPA can work together to improve and optimize your business processes.
What is business process management?
Business process management is the holistic practice of studying all the tasks and workflows that move through your organization. The purpose? To continuously flatten speed bumps and eliminate bottlenecks and obstacles so your business can run as smoothly as possible. Gartner defines BPM as the coordination of “people, systems, information, and things to produce business outcomes in support of a business strategy.” The practice does not specify any particular methodology to do so. Instead, those with a BPM mindset constantly assess all aspects of your business to discover new ways to streamline and improve internal workflows. In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith found that an optimized coordination of assembly steps could increase productivity in a pin factory by a whopping 24,000%. Working as lone wolves, ten employees could wrangle between one and 20 pins per day. By closely studying the steps involved in cutting and bending pins and then optimizing those responsibilities, workers could churn out a whopping 48,000 pins per day. A central tenet of BPM is a comprehensive awareness of every aspect of your organization. BPM practitioners strive to unsilo activities and better understand how processes are connected and how departments work together. Armed with this insight, they to make sure all efforts are finely tuned to an organization’s key objectives.
