The evolution of modern process management – and what it means for your business

In simple terms, BPM (or business process management) helps define how the business should run, is running – and how to improve it. BPM does this by mapping out current ‘as-is’ processes, designing ideal process models, and governing adherence to these ‘to-be’ states.

BPM has been traditionally used to help maintain optimum process performance, and support with business pivots or the introduction of new strategies. At its core, it’s about helping people, processes and technology work in sync with these objectives. But recent years have exposed the limits of traditional BPM.

With business models outdated in the blink of an eye courtesy of accelerating, widespread change, organizations have found themselves constantly rebuilding the plane mid-air. It’s little wonder then that recent research finds 74% of businesses say their interest in BPM has increased. But the truth is conventional BPM isn’t agile enough to enable business strategies when complexity and volatility are now the norm. As a result, businesses are struggling to keep pace with a speed of change that’s accelerating faster than ever before.

It’s time to step into the modern process management era. Let’s set the scene.

Previously in business process management...

Cast your mind back to a time when market conditions were more stable, customer demand more predictable, technology more static. It’s here where we find BPM’s origin story.

Businesses could use BPM methods such as process mapping and orchestration to steer the organization on course toward greater efficiency. Business models needed to shift much less frequently, and operations needed realigning with strategies much less often. Businesses were therefore able to slip into a ‘set it and forget it’ approach to process management, with long periods before processes needed adjusting.

And then it all changed.

Plot twist: Traditional BPM can’t combat today’s commercial climate

BPM might have been sufficient in those halcyon days. But it’s met its kryptonite in today’s business environment. Disruption is fast and furious – whether it be from technology, geopolitics, climate change, compliance, or changing consumer demand. This leaves businesses trying to continue delivering value while recalibrating strategies all the time.

It’s simply too much for traditional BPM to manage. And as a result, businesses’ ability to keep pace wanes. Meanwhile, without central, standardized process knowledge to guide them, employees can fall into departmental siloes, isolated from other teams and the organization’s goals. Uniting people and processes often takes second place to the heady excitement of focusing on technological innovation.

The upshot is that actively managing processes is more important than ever in this environment – but the methods that have served businesses before are no longer up to the task. It calls for a new operational posture of sensing and responding to change.

A new hope: CPM empowers businesses with the agility they need

So that’s the story so far. But what does modern process management look like? There are three new capabilities businesses need to adopt:

1. Enhanced organizational awareness – Understanding and refining end-to-end processes objectively, without relying on subjective impressions of how the business operates. This requires a complete picture of the organization, which you can only achieve with a robust and reliable data foundation.
2. Absorb and execute – Rapidly modeling and deploying process optimizations to keep pace with market change. This requires continuous, real-time process monitoring, so the businesses can compare actual performance and react accordingly.
3. Manage change at scale – Enabling teams with central process knowledge, so they’re aligned and compliant with organizational goals. This requires shared process information, real-time performance data and contextualized insights.

Celonis Process Management (CPM) brings it all together. Powered by Process Intelligence, CPM uses process mining to fuel modeling, monitoring and analysis with real-time data. Bespoke solutions democratize process knowledge, help users navigate the business’s process repository, drive adherence to ideal processes, and create a full enterprise map of the organization.

Businesses can use the visibility of the CPM suite to tackle bottlenecks undermining day-to-day efficiency, as well as pinchpoints leaving the business more vulnerable to sudden volatility. They can also surface process misalignment and blindspots that are limiting the impact of business transformations or ROI on technological investment.

Combining these capabilities into one platform creates the engine to drive enterprise resilience and adaptability, helping businesses continue realizing value no matter how much flux they have to face.