This article is part of our Process 101 guide.

In its most basic form, BPM is about getting your house in order, formalising the way you work to identify better ways of getting things done. Often in a business, you start to feel pain when things aren’t working, for example, you can’t recruit the right people, it’s difficult keeping track of expenses, there’s never enough milk in the fridge…etc. You might not realise it, but the key to overcoming all this pain is simple BPM.

According to Gartner, “business process management (BPM) is a discipline that uses various methods to discover, model, analyse, measure, improve, and optimise business processes.”

We think of it in much simpler terms, it’s just the way you do things in your business.

There are numerous challenges that could be causing your business pain, but we tend to find the three main causes are:

1) You’re growing

When you started your company, things were simple. There was only you and perhaps a handful of staff, and between you, you figured out how to get things done. But as you scale, that’s no longer possible – you’re not Superman, you can’t do everything. Now you need to start thinking about putting an organisational structure in place and procedures to guide your team in the way your company operates.

2) Process erosion

According to research from Harvard Business Review, 86% of business owners reported that their business processes and decision-making had become so complex that it was stunting growth. One of the biggest causes of business complexity is process erosion, i.e. the way you initially wanted things to be done has been changed or forgotten over time as staff move on or find other ways to perform tasks.

3) Business as usual

It’s easy to get comfortable and stuck in a cycle of business as usual. But it’s just not feasible to blindly continue doing what you’ve always done, you have to ‘move with the times’. In the corporate world, change and continuous improvement is necessary to survive today’s ever increasing competitive landscape and keep you one step ahead of the competition.

If you’re reading this article, now!

Everyday we all complete hundreds of processes. Some of these are done consciously by recording everything on paper or spreadsheets (or if you’re really organised, in dedicated systems), and others are unconscious, existing only in our heads – like getting dressed, driving the car or starting your working day.

BPM is simple

BPM shouldn’t be scary. And it definitely shouldn’t have to be treated as a project, or require a business change exercise. BPM is just about identifying and recording your processes, and then monitoring these over time so they can be continuously improved.

BPM is all about creating the system to allow your business to become more efficient. This can all seem overwhelming as you start to approach it, which is why we created this eight step process to getting started:

Need some help?
To help you set started, we’ve created beSlick, simple process management software that’s as easy as 1, 2, 3…

1. It empowers your team and frees them to focus on what matters.
2. It reassures you that things are being done how you want them to be done.
3. It enables continuous process improvement.