Using business process management to transform your business

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Businesses are in constant flux. Volatile trading conditions and galloping technological advances are forcing organizations to evolve, challenging them to keep up (or perish). According to Accenture’s Pulse of Change 2024 Index, for example, C-suite leaders faced an all-time-high rate of change in 2023, which 88% anticipated would accelerate in 2024.

One of the biggest problems organizations face in their bid to thrive in this permachange environment is self-awareness. Their strategies are disconnected from operational reality – there’s a yawning gap between their ideal modeled processes and their actual processes. And where such a gap exists, you’ve got a whole world of hurt: reduced productivity, compliance issues, higher operational costs, delayed timelines, poor customer experience, miscommunication, and a lack of agility.

Business process management (BPM) helps bridge this gap. BPM enables organizations to visualize, analyze, and optimize their processes and workflows. Using tools such as business process mapping / modeling, simulation, monitoring and continuous improvement techniques, BPM aims to design and implement the ideal organization-wide processes to deliver business strategy effectively.

And here’s the thing: technological advances cut both ways. While they may challenge and disrupt the business environment, they also offer solutions. Celonis Process Management (CPM) is rewriting the rulebook on how far and how effectively BPM software can optimize even the most complex processes. Let’s take a look in more detail how CPM takes it to the next level.

What is Celonis Process Management?

Before we can dive into the transformative benefits of BPM, it’s important to take a whistle-stop tour of how Celonis Process Management differs in scope and approach. In simplest terms, rather than a separate business process management suite, CPM is designed to unite BPM technology with process mining insights via Celonis’ Process Intelligence platform.

In this way, users have an integrated vision of how processes actually work, connected to (and compared with) the organizational context of strategy, ideal operating models, process hierarchies, and enterprise architecture. CPM is about integrating BPM and process mining at the data level in order to identify where and how processes can be enhanced to deliver the optimal operating model for achieving business goals. Systems data from process mining can track optimized process performance against targets, and suggest potential updates to modeled processes.

How business process management can transform your business

Every business process management deployment has the potential to generate significant value and drive business change.

Aligning processes to strategy

The purpose and direction of any BPM initiative is shepherding strategy through to execution by way of dynamically optimized processes. This is one of the most transformative aspects of business process management – ensuring processes are set up to serve business goals… and stay that way. The BPM methodology not only designs an ideal business process model to pursue – it also maps deviations from this ideal and, vitally, builds a wider framework for the organization, delivery, and ongoing optimization of processes.

This framework translates into strategy, specific initiatives, OKRs, projects, resources, funding, responsibilities – and cascades right through the organization. A single framework to guide the ship – delivering against strategic targets, from productivity and operational efficiency, to compliance and cost reduction.

Business agility and managing change

At the center of this framework for managing business processes is a BPM repository detailing:

Documentation of your actual processes and model processes.
Roles and responsibilities for specific processes.
Details of linked systems, APIs, and integrations.
Process hierarchies and enterprise architecture.
Identified process risks.
Business rules, priorities, and KPIs.

This repository provides a firm foundation for process governance and performance monitoring. But it’s also the key to becoming more agile as an organization, to be able to quickly assess and address any kind of change that impacts the business – establishing data-informed guardrails to manage that change with minimal impact on performance.

AI acceleration and accuracy

Business process management software can be harnessed to optimize artificial intelligence performance. It provides the necessary business rules, contexts and KPIs that act as a strategic North Star for AI deployments across the business – amplifying their impact. Celonis Process Management takes this a step further, combining BPM context with detailed process mining data to generate a personal genetic fingerprint for the organization, which:

Provides the perfect source data for training AI systems and orchestrating process automation.
Negates the risk of generative hallucinations.
Enables hyper-accurate AI reporting and predictive analytics.

In real terms, this means people can use an AI prompt to generate personalized process improvement recommendations based on execution data (how the organization runs). The AI also provides organizational knowledge (how processes should run in alignment with strategy) and – particularly since Celonis’ recent partnership with Ardoq – considerations of how enterprise architecture is impacted and optimized.

Defining process interaction and interdependence

BPM software often includes visualization capabilities to show how different processes interact and impact each other. This provides a clear understanding of workflow interdependence, leading to standardized processes, reduced errors, and improved communication across teams. The digital twin produced by the Celonis platform allows users to accurately simulate the impact of process improvement initiatives, testing the efficacy of modeled processes before committing any resources – saving time, money and wasted effort.

Orchestrating business process automation

A key business process management deliverable is its capacity to automate processes, driving both operational excellence and efficiency. Deep understanding of process flow and best practices enables BPM to identify those manual processes most suitable for replacement with robotic process automation or similar. The advanced AI that underpins the Celonis system – fueled with process knowledge, business context and real-time process data – can design and activate process automations, enabling users to automatically target process anomalies undermining KPIs.

Transparency, shared understanding and access

Another of business process management’s most transformative benefits is that it provides total transparency about the way an organization agrees it should work together, and its optimized processes. The BPM repository defines and frames it. Where Celonis Process Management takes this a step further is in providing a user-friendly means of disseminating that information to teams across the organization. Very often BPM software is geared towards technical personnel, but CPM allows the average end user to access, analyze, and interrogate the process data.

The five fundamentals of BPM implementation success

There’s not one cookie-cutter approach to BPM implementation – there are too many process, software, and data variables. However, here are some key best practices to help shape a successful implementation.

Get an executive sponsor: Lack of senior sponsorship (C-suite, or C-minus one at least) is a red flag. You can start locally with a BPM implementation, but you will never scale to an enterprise level if you don't have an executive sponsor. Firstly, having the boss’s backing means business-wide stakeholders tend to listen. Sponsors also help validate the redesign and back the delivery of processes previously siloed in business unit structures. CPM has a unique advantage here, using Process Intelligence to generate executive support by demonstrating tangible business benefits of process management projects. Celonis process mining can be used to grab some quick wins, giving the project some early ROI. This is then reinforced by the platform’s capability to model a business value to completion of the longer-burn process management work – helping to sustain sponsor support in the longer term.
Set precise goals: As with any form of project management, you need to set out your goals for implementing BPM in the first place. To benefit most from business process management, you must have a clear understanding of the key functions or processes in your company that will see the greatest improvements from a process-centric approach. Without this clarity, you shouldn't start with BPM. Again, with CPM you can ensure you achieve the high levels of organizational self-awareness you need to set effective targets – by deploying process mining to accurately define your workflows.
Establish clear process governance: It’s vital to have a clear ownership structure – who owns what process and who owns what functional domain in the organization. This structure must be maintained centrally in the process repository and available to all stakeholders. It’s equally crucial to put procedures in place to keep the process repository and governance up to date. Too many organizations spend a tremendous amount of time on documenting models and processes, then never look at them again.
Demonstrate early value: Business process management delivers significant value over time. To maintain energy and buy-in for the BPM implementation, it’s a good idea to run a process mining pilot to get quick value, and then embed those results into your fundamental process hierarchy and process structures.
Communicate progress: BPM projects have a tendency to go quiet after the launch fanfare. If you lock yourself away for months to do the business process modeling, don’t be surprised if the rest of the organization has forgotten the project entirely when you’re ready to implement. You’ve got to maintain visibility and interest in the project through regular communication – this will smooth the way for business-wide adoption of process optimization.

For more information on how you can enjoy the benefits of Celonis Process Management, talk to an expert now. Also look out for key speakers and thought leadership discussions on CPM at our Celosphere ‘24 event.

This article was co-written by John Santic, Director of Product Marketing at Celonis, and Caspar Jans, Director of Celonis Process Management at Celonis.