The most tangible benefit of good business process management is Cost Efficiency that can mean decreased costs and increased revenue. While the rest of benefits BPM delivers is intangible in the short term, they add crucial value in the long run, and help both small and huge companies with gearing up for worldwide competition. BPM technology makes any company better equipped to switch gears, respond to its changing business environment faster than competitors, and succeed!

Learn more how BPM software can help you achieve your business goals while it simplifies your business processes management cycle, handle change processes and drive projects to success.

Here are the Top 10 Benefits of good business process management:

1. Cost efficiency

Simply slashing budgets is no longer a viable option in organizations that have become leaner in response to global economic conditions during recent years. There simply is not much left to cut. However, in order to thrive, organizations still need to maximize the efficiency of the costs they do incur and profit they generate. And good BPM is a driving strategy towards maximizing cost efficiency by streamlining business operations and collaboration, automating repetitive tasks, improving product quality and reducing corporate risks.

CMW Platform combines process management and workflow management with task management and built-in real-time reporting and analysis, so teams collaborate more effectively within both routine workflows and profit-generating projects and bring their projects to fruition within budget, with reported cost savings of 30% to 50%.

2. Business agility

A trend in BPM is toward more nimble processes that respond to organizational learning in the marketplace. Nowadays flexibility is frequently taken as one of business process management goals in addition to cost efficiency. This has led to a greater demand for ultra-flexible business process management tools that are easy to design, change and deploy. Generally, agility incorporates the following elements, all of which are included to CMW Platform:

• Process management: With CMW Platform, process management comes in the form of visual workflows that you can change on-the-fly. You can re-use workflows wherever you need to and customize them as you go.
• Rule management: As work management moves into an unstructured, collaborative age, rules management will be the way to stay properly governed, visible, and compliant, while keeping processes on track. CMW Platform features on-the-fly rule configuration for each department, function or project (whether structured or unstructured), as needed. This provides unique flexibility not seen in other work management tools.
• Integration and automation: CMW Platform offers comprehensive solutions that support task and case management as well as Project Management. The fact that this all sits on one organization-wide database means that the company has full control, visibility and real-time analysis capability.
• Continual optimization and scaling. CMW Platform enables quick-win implementation and non-code addition and modification of running processes. It allows for starting with simple automated workflows and growing incrementally with comprehensive business process management.

3. Compliance ease and visibility

Changes to legislation and other factors have meant that companies without a flexible system for handling end-to-end compliance can incur great, unforeseen costs, both in reporting and penalties. Within BPM systems, companies can build compliance into their business practices if department-specific applications are integrated with the organization as a whole. CMW Platform allows for full integration with function-specific, 3rd party applications via Open API that are also tied to an organization-wide database. This makes it possible to produce automated reports that demonstrate compliance in a cost-efficient way.

4. Customer focus

Savvy customers are demanding thorough proof-of-concept (POC) processes that document how their needs will be heard through self-service Web 3.0 capabilities. Business process management helps organizations to combine people with technology to acquire and retain satisfied customers and CMW Platform lets organizations include any desired user (read: customer) with easy-to-program security roles. This paves the way for ongoing, real-time collaboration with customers in a way that proves responsiveness, personalization, customization and access to information.

5. Staff satisfaction

6. Efficiency and productivity

Consequently, BPM plays an essential role in assisting companies in achieving their productivity and efficiency goals. In order to establish baselines and then enhance them, BPM projects give priority on measuring and monitoring processes, establishing process excellence. Process efficiency rises when operations run smoothly and at full capacity. Moreover, the same tasks can be done within shorter terms, making the team more productive and being able to concentrate on business-critical tasks. Process analysis is continually done. The ability to quickly identify and remove tasks that bring little value boosts productivity overall.

7. Reduced micromanagement

Micromanagement might be effective as it anyway leads to getting the task done. However, it is always detrimental to a company in the long run. Sticking to a set of procedures in order to minimize errors is one of the main reasons that leaders prefer to micromanage their workers.

Micromanagement is no longer necessary due to BPM. Leaders and staff members who are aware of their responsibilities clearly document all SOPs. When a certain step is called for, workers complete it clearly without constant coaching or direction.

8. Single digital environment

The appropriate BPM tool can serve as a unified environment for data fetching and pushing to vital software platforms like ERP and CRM. Department-specific software is typically created for distinct use cases, but data access and use for other purposes can be challenging.

The benefits of integrating core applications with an enterprise-wide BPM platform are numerous. Some procedures require human input, while others do not. With the process automation software enterprise can decrease cycle time and manual entry errors, while granting access to the company’s fundamental operations to all the employees or dividing the access levels for security purposes.

9. Measurable results

You can evaluate the results of new processes using BPM. You may estimate how much time has been saved, decide if enhanced processes actually save money, and keep an eye on these findings in real time. With CMW Platform you may automate the process of monitoring and reporting outcomes, and once you have these findings, you can use them to further direct your internal processes.

10. Improved responsibility

Implementing BPM and citizen development in your organization also becomes the driver for employees to take ownership of their work. As soon as the dependency on IT-department minimizes, the processes can be built and completed faster by non-technical users. It means that the power now is in the hands of any employee who sees the bottleneck and wants to bring value.

At conclusion

Could your organization benefit from improvements in the following areas?

• Increased customer satisfaction and shorter time-to-market for products and services
• Greater efficiency (and cost savings) with existing applications and processes
• Greater team satisfaction as collaboration and best practices are improved
• Full transparency of all activities across the team and organization

…work management is a set of software products and services that apply workflow structure to information and workers so that processes are streamlined and performance is improved…

Some companies already have BPM systems. But, after the BPM initiative is in place for a year or two, professionals in these enterprises are usually frustrated by how difficult it is to change processes, and are surprised by the degree to which colleagues use “work-arounds” for unstructured projects that arise. When formal business processes cannot be changed easily, or when the team isn’t using the formal processes for all work, then visibility, agility, organizational learning and market response times all suffer. CMW Lab low-code BPM software enables non-technical users (Top-managers) to change business processes easily, making sure that company staff don’t need “work-arounds” for projects that occasionally arise and stay effective!

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Why implement a business process automation solution

Business process automation benefits the organization by setting a clear step-by-step workflow solution and speeding up otherwise vague business processes. These processes could range from something as simple as filing an expense report to something as multifaceted as drafting contracts and sending out invoices to clients.

The key goal of a business process automation solution is for the company to save costs. Whether it is done by simplifying operational processes, bringing down labor costs or client response times, the ultimate goal is always the same – to end up with the most cost-effective bottom line. Since the automation of business processes already hopes to accomplish this, a further solution is to integrate technology into these processes to further bring down labor costs.

Even though cost saving is still the key reason why businesses dive into business process automation, now CEOs frequently change focus to real business results rather than cost savings. It is reasonable to keep this trend in mind and check if your BPM intentions are incorporated into business strategy and ensure that they add high-level business value in addition to cost saving.

Below are some business process automation benefits:

• Saves staff time and effort
• Reduces work cycle times
• Increases response rate
• Minimizes human error
• Decreases workload
• Gives management the ability to track work cycles more effectively
• Gives management the ability to document results more effectively
• Makes process auditing more transparent and efficient
• Increases service quality and consistency
• Reduces turnaround times for both staff and customers
• Increases customer loyalty

If your company is interested in enjoying the benefits listed above, the first step is learning more about common business process techniques and choose the best fit.

Business Process Techniques

1. Extension of an existing IT system
2. Purchasing a process-specific business process automation software
3. Purchasing an adaptive business process automation solution

The first technique entails the extension of an already existing model, developed from the IT system. Since IT processes are already usually automated, companies find it beneficial and cost-effective to attach BPA solutions to these IT functionalities. The problem with this approach lies in the process, and additional cost and time investment in finding the appropriate talent to develop these, as well as the training it would take for employees to integrate the new program into their daily tasks.

The second technique is to purchase specially-tailored business process automation tools. By purchasing ready-made tools, companies eliminate the need for hiring more IT talent to develop the business process automation tools in-house. However, despite the variety with which these tools are produced, not all industries can make use of all the built-in features. Other industries may need some functionalities that are missing in the ready-made product, or worse, they are paying for functionalities they don’t really need.

The last automation technique is a better integration of both techniques. By purchasing a ready-made business process automation software that is highly customizable, companies can make do with an already available infrastructure and then build whatever other functionality their specific industry needs from that main architecture.

Choosing the right business process automation software

• This web-based software is easy to learn and implement.
• Its user-friendly interface and easy deployment process eliminates the need for hiring more employees to install, troubleshoot, maintain and develop further process functionalities.
• Comindware Tracker is easy to operate, with a visual drag-and-drop interface.
• The software is flexible, allowing industries to customize functionalities and adapt them to their business processes, not the other way around.
• Designing, developing and updating the software does not require redeployment or high-level technical skills.

Conclusion

Businesses are constantly facing pressure to be more fiscally prudent. This pressure is more apparent in these volatile economic times, when taking business processes and operating costs down is one of the responsibilities managers must handle. By modeling and streamlining business processes, organizations are able to decrease response times, thus leaving more time to accomplish other tasks. This added efficiency helps to eliminate wastage of time and other resources spent mulling over procedures that could have been completed more effectively.

In the world of business, time is money, and the more time businesses can save, the more opportunities there are to make money. The best way to think about this is business process automation benefits not only the employees (decreasing workload), but the organization as well (increasing the bottom line).

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Is there any alternative to Microsoft Excel when it comes to managing project activities? Many users come to our support team with the same questions: how to avoid using Excel for managing project activities. Because they have only trouble with it. With time, such Excel file grows big and becomes unmanageable.

The thing is that Excel is a great tool for calculating, for tables. Yet it’s not intended for managing project activities. So – what can we use instead?

“…it’s easier to cope with too much workload if you have a great workflow tool.”

THE PROBLEM: Stand-alone files with project activities track are unmanageable.

Let’s take an example of a training center School which tracks training requests in an Excel file. When a new training request arrives, it gets listed in the Excel file by whoever receives it first. He inputs the training title, location, deadline and the responsible person. This file is stored on the local computer of the manager and is updated manually: when somebody needs this file, she asks to send it to her. As the result, it causes more email communication and the process visibility is low.

When School’s team got tired of it, they shared the file. We don’t know what they exactly used: it was maybe Dropbox or Google Docs, whatever. Anyways, now they can work on this file simultaneously and it’s easier to update it. When one opens the file and makes changes in it, he may not see that the other is working on it too, making changes to it as well. So later, when he hits ‘save’, he can have an unpleasant surprise. The least of them is having input the same training twice.

Finally, their file grew as big as 1000 trainings and it keeps growing. Since then it has become even more unmanageable. They tried to ask somebody to take care of managing this file, but all the team is already busy with organizing trainings: they just don’t have time for additional work of managing their file.

The worst is that you cannot put too much information on a single file. This would make the file even heavier and less useful. Updates are not always brought to the file timely. So with an Excel file containing information on the project you can’t be in the context, right here and right now.

The question remains: how to work on the project activities efficiently and avoid the mess with a stand-alone table?

THE SOLUTION: live-time updates by users with workflow coordination.

Workflow coordination with Comindware Tracker is the solution to this problem. It has logic of business processes integrated into it. This is drastically different from a file + comments. Here’s how the School’s team life changed with this workflow tool.

School’s list of training requests in Comindware Tracker still looks like a list. There’s the name of the training in the list, deadline, priority, location, responsible. Yet now it’s nothing like a list of activities. What looks like a list works now like a hypertext with a workflow coordination engine inside.

When you hit on a training item name on the list, you go to this item and see all of the information upon this training, all in one place:

With workflow coordination feature, the School’s team has set a process for a training request. And the training request, with all of the information in it, goes through the workflow:

The one who’s working on the work item now sets statuses, updates and priorities – and it’s immediately visible to everyone, because it’s online. No emails needed anymore. It’s possible to discuss each work item in a special comment tread integrated into the training request form. Users have an option to receive notifications when the work item has been changed.

With workflow management software by Comindware you can stretch beyond Excel’s built-in capabilities and easier perform repeating tasks that would best be served in automated workflow. These features are specially developed to help managing work, and they are not supported in Excel. Because Excel is good for other purposes. By the way, School’s team can now use Excel for its purposes – calculations and tables, and attach them to their training requests items in Comindware Tracker.

Nobody needs to keep it in the head: who’s the next. After I finish my part of work on this work item, whom am I to notify that it’s ready? The workflow decides whom the work item will go to next. No more need to check Excel file for status updates and details on every step of a workflow.

You can try Comindware Tracker for work management too – it’s completely free for 30 days.

Where else will this workflow tool be of use?

This functionality reveals to be efficient in specific activity. This is why we have crafted solutions for support helpdesk, finance & administration, software development and HR automation. Some clients replace their Excel customer tracker by a solution based on Comindware Tracker and enjoy it.

If you’re doing something else, yet you’d like to use Comindware Tracker to track issues – good choice! Comindware Tracker is fully customizable and we’re ready to help you set up your first process.

The post Tired of Tracking Stuff in Excel? Try the Workflow Tool That Works! appeared first on CMW Lab Blog.

“Think about a conveyor belt as used by Henry Ford in the auto industry when you consider workflow management.”

Workflow management means to oversee a process from beginning to end. This involves individual tasks that move from one step to the next until the task is complete. Instead of tackling workflow management definition think about a conveyor belt as used by Henry Ford in the auto industry when you consider workflow management.

An item is placed on the moving conveyor. At points along the path, different people or machines pick up the item and maybe add to it, tweak it, or identify flaws and send it back for a fix. By the time it winds its way to the end of the conveyor, many people will have added their particular expertise to creating a valuable finished product.

The management aspect is to be able to identify the people who need to be involved and to ensure you have a flow that allows for input from all required parties. The great thing is that you don’t have to understand much of anything about how a conveyor belt functions. You initiate the workflow process and if you need a conveyor belt expert, the assignment is added as part of the workflow.

There are two stumbling blocks that a workflow manager needs to understand to feel confident in establishing a workflow:

• Who needs to be involved in a particular task? This does include what the expected input/output of a particular task needs to be. But the decision points can be built as a team and don’t require the manager to be all knowing and all seeing.
• How to keep the movement progressing on the task? With workflow automation, you can use the system to alert you when something is hindering the progress.

Understanding these two concepts will make a productive workflow whether you are managing a simpler task such as scheduling employee hours or a complex task such as product creation.

A workflow can simply be a piece of paper where you jot down who is responsible for tasks and how the tasks are accomplished. For example, to close out your store at the end of the night, you have an employee count the money and run a register record. That employee places the money in the safe and puts the register tape in a designated place for it to be processed. However, if you use workflow software to create a simple workflow, you can add responsibilities to the process and even with thirty employees, or a rotating staff, you can expect similar results on how the process is completed. This reduces errors and provides consistent results.

When you tackle more complex workflows, you may want to create the skeleton of the steps and then each person along the line can add singular inputs and outputs as needed. For example, if you manage a website, you may be receiving blog entries or product pages from several people. Your marketing person may prefer looking at these prior to release. If you have an automated workflow, the marketing person can insert a step into the system and is then notified when a new entry arrives and can at that point give approval or send it back for rewrites.

As a workflow manager, you can easily make changes when you get a new writer or need to insert another approval step or whatever your business needs are.

As the workflow manager, you can observe if any tasks are not functioning smoothly and make adjustments along the way until you have a fluid system of project assignment, writing, reviewing, editing and publishing. As a manager, you can easily make changes when you get a new writer or need to insert another approval workflow step or whatever your business needs are.

Managing a workflow has many benefits to the overall business. Consider how you are managing processes to reduce errors and costs, and create the most efficient expense model possible, all by creating and managing a workflow while empowering the stakeholders to be part of the creation and task owners engaging within the process.

Keep in mind that you won’t understand the importance of managing workflows until you put your intentions into practice. If you think you are ready to try a workflow management software tool to achieve benefits mentioned already, take a look at Comindware Tracker. Creating workflow skeletons, automating designed processes, making sure tasks are assigned to the right people – this list is just a part of the possibilities available with this software.

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The infographics is designed to provide a snapshot of the strategic priorities that you need to focus on when it comes to BPMS implementation. It gives an overview of the key things to think of before and while implementing BPMS that we hope will help you to avoid pain points and speed up the implementation.

The post How to successfully implement BPMS in your company? appeared first on CMW Lab Blog.

Strategic management divides the manager’s activities in two groups: value-added activities and peripheral activities. Most resources that are spent on activities on the whole should be spent on value-added activities that make the product more valuable. On the contrary, peripheral activities should be optimized as much as possible in order to demand fewer resources on them, or they should be delegated. That is how the assistant manager profession was born.

For some reason, delegating doesn’t always work or isn’t always possible while the amount of routine work is pretty much stable and tends to grow. As a solution to this situation, team work management systems started to emerge on the market: the niche has been empty for quite a while.

Now we can see that more advanced systems are becoming available year-on-year. We have already spoken about these systems in our recent post and mentioned that IT software developers and support departments were the first to use these solutions, also known as issue tracking systems which nowadays more often function online.

The systems are claimed to solve the manager’s biggest problem: to know who’s been doing what and then use this information both for distributing more tasks, and taking the project progress under control. Also – make ‘doable’ work, project plans and control task completeness.

The main principal of work for these systems is that the solution demands the worker to give them some data when they complete each part of their work. Then the system gathers the data and can reveal it in the form of live reports and dashboards.

If the system has built-in automated workflows, as is the case with issue tracking systems – most of them are based on executable workflows – then the solution can play a specific scenario (workflow) of further team work execution. This way, one task after another is completed, both continuously and under control. This helps avoid chaos or losing bits of data, or leaving some parts of work uncompleted.

This way, the system helps the manager with routine work. Yet it doesn’t replace them: it only helps them control work progress and task completeness, and distribute more work. Workflow automation logic also comes from the manager: even in the case where they take a pre-configured template for work processes, they can configure it to reflect the order of work they want their team to use.

Obviously, if the system only assists, it can’t be a substitute. Does this mean that the era of the manager is in decline? It’s like asking whether painters would disappear with computer graphics gaining popularity, or whether the music industry would no longer exist since software for sound processing has started to gain popularity.

Comindware Tracker is work management software and it helps reduce the time spent on routine control work, so the manager can put more effort into strategic and tactical work – the creative work he is exactly dedicated to perform.

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Project management cloud solutions – garbage in, garbage out

Cloud-based project management – essential considerations

1. Analyze your processes. If they’re not producing the desired results, expend the time and energy to improve them before migration. Project management in the cloud, or any cloud migration endeavor, for that matter, isn’t going to magically elicit better results.
2. Communicate with end users, not just before the project management cloud solutions migration but during and after. Top-to-bottom organizational buy-in is a critical aspect of process improvement success.
3. Formulate success benchmarks to gauge if cloud-based project management is a route worth taking. Generic reasons for cloud migration include cost savings, faster time-to-market and mobility, but a detailed assessment is necessary to come up with a specific checklist of cloud migration objectives. Remember, your organization is unique, and there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution.
4. Do a data cleanup before the big project management cloud solutions move, the same way you would want to start with a clean slate when moving to a new place. Organizations, big or small, can fall prey to data quality and integrity issues, particularly as people start to rely on factors such as personal knowledge and historical practices to resolve issues.
5. Perform tests on dummy or inconsequential data so operations remain business as usual if anything untoward happens during the test phase.
6. Start small. Move processes little by little, not all at once. Don’t get carried away by all the excitement surrounding project management cloud solutions. Besides, complicated projects need to be subdivided into manageable bits, and problems are easier to fix in small batches than when they’re coming at you like an avalanche.
7. There has to be a legitimate reason why project management in the cloud interests you, and not because everyone else is doing it.

Conclusion

The post Project Management in the Cloud: Essential Considerations When Migrating appeared first on CMW Lab Blog.

To get started in the right direction, here are four questions to ask when choosing the right project management software:

1. What project management software features does your company need?
2. How adaptive should the software be?
3. Are there existing software platforms to consider?
4. Should the project management software be on-premise or via the cloud?

What project management software features does your company need?

Not all projects are created equal. Project complexities vary from industry to industry, and even within the same industries, project requirements differ from company to company. For example, a company engaged in marketing won’t have the same project requirements as a software development company. A software development company specializing in gaming apps may employ an internal project management strategy that’s at odds with that of one that develops enterprise software.

Full-blown project management software vs. simple project collaboration tools

Gantt charts, graphical workflow builder, resource allocation – these are software features that project managers involved in big and complex projects find handy. On the flipside, companies that carry out simple projects involving a smaller pool of resources may not need a full-blown project management software system to steer a project to completion. Simple cloud project collaboration tools, even the free ones with limited features, may sometimes suffice.

Long story short, feature-rich doesn’t automatically mean better. The key is to know the goals your company is trying to accomplish, including the specific problems you’re trying to solve. More than what you need is fluff and a waste of space.

How adaptive should the software be?

Work environments may sometimes need a complete overhaul, like in the case of a project management approach that is more a liability than an asset. But in a lot of cases, a project management solution is deployed to enhance an existing system. Either way, integrating a project management tool into a company’s ongoing processes affects a lot of stakeholders, particularly the software’s end users.

Your software of choice, therefore, should adapt to the work environment people are already used to, significantly reducing, if not totally eliminating, the learning curve. We all know what happens when end users have to contend with software intricacies more than their usual day-to-day tasks – human errors, reworks, project delays, among others.

Agile vs. waterfall

As in software development, project management solutions use two popular methodologies – agile and waterfall. Agile has been created to augment the weaknesses of the waterfall methodology, but it’s not necessarily always the right solution.

As a rough guideline, agile is best used for consumer-driven projects where changes are a common fare, and where actual results can be radically different from those expected. Waterfall, on the other hand, is compatible with projects with defined tasks and sequences, and the final deliverable being exactly as is expected.

Are there existing software platforms to consider?

Is your company dependent on MS Outlook or SharePoint? Does your company use very specific reporting formats or require unique data import/export options? When considering a project management software, keep in mind all the software tools your company is already using. The best choice should allow you to keep your existing systems, so that the integration process doesn’t hurt your company in terms of training time, data input and lost opportunities.

Should the project management software be on-premise or via the cloud?

“To cloud or not to cloud?” is a question we hear a lot. The fact that more and more businesses are moving their data to the cloud is evidence that cloud-based project management software have their advantages.

Aside from being available anywhere in the world and on any device, a cloud-based project management application doesn’t require you to install anything and is most likely compatible with any operating platform – Windows, Mac OS, Linux, etc. The downside is that without a working Internet connection, or in the event of a server anomaly, which is definitely not your fault, you won’t be able to use the software and access your data.

The foremost redeeming quality of on-premise software, on the other hand, is data safety and security, particularly if you own sensitive data that you’d rather keep in-house. Remember though that unlike web-based software applications, your data is restricted within the company’s premises, and highly skilled IT guys may need to be onboarded to keep your servers in pristine working condition.

Conclusion

While trial-and-error plays a part in determining your ultimate pick, keep in mind that in project management, acknowledging the shortcomings of your previous endeavors, if any, knowing what you already have and what you plan to accomplish are essential to narrow down your software choices from the hundreds to a considerable few.

The post 4 Questions to Ask When Choosing the Right Project Management Software appeared first on CMW Lab Blog.