5 Ways to Drive ROI from Business Process Management

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If your company is among those looking to drive greater efficiencies through business process management (BPM), you’re not alone. With nearly a quarter of organizations implementing process mining tools —and 29% considering using the technology—businesses may be looking to drive greater return on investment (ROI).

You may have noticed that the returns from your BPM are difficult to measure. Often, teams fixate on optimization before they know the ins and outs of their processes. The troubling thing is that management may find this evidence of a lack of performance, leading them to turn away from process management and focus on other efforts.

If your organization doesn’t know the true state of its processes, you might overlook the immediate benefits of learning exactly what’s being done in your processes—and what’s not. After all, you can’t “optimize” what you’re not aware of.

Let’s explore how process exploration and discovery add transparency to your BPM to deliver top-tier value.

1. Learn your processes “as is” without bias.
Successful business process management starts with a new understanding of your organization’s workflows. Process mining allows you to tap into your digital business systems to automatically reveal an unbiased log of when and what ’s happening in your processes.

You may have assumptions about how a given process opportunity buyers mailing lists works – only to discover blind spots where employees are engaging differently. To combat this, you need an honest, fact-based look at exactly what is happening and what isn’t.

Fortunately, process mining extracts the data from your existing systems to build a true history of your workflows. Many companies supplement this data with staff interviews and other information-gathering methods to build an accurate and true-to-life picture of your “as-is” processes.

ROI Opportunity: Without the blind spots of bias, your team can see the frequency of less-than-ideal outcomes – and use them as evidence-based leads to endorse solving deeper issues in your organization’s workflows.

For example, your bank’s onboarding process might spend tons of time answering basic questions. However, digging into the processes can reveal exactly how often your team is sending those redundant support emails.

You could present this data to senior management to drive the creation of a high-ROI online support knowledge portal. Prove to management that this wasted time could save costs – by reducing staffing requirements or devoting more time and attention to high-value customer files.