BPM: tool or concept?

Business Process Management - BPM for short - is in principle nothing other than process management. The tasks of this were often described as tools in ERP-systems integrated. To the frustration of the users. After all, Business Process Management is more a concept than a tool for monitoring business processes.

As digitisation grows, so does the expectation for the automation of Business processes. Especially when a BMP tool has already been implemented in the ERP system, users also rely on the functionality that Business Process Management initially promises as an application.

However, with only small results. Because the transparency that companies hope for through the use of BMP tools hardly occurs. What is overlooked is that there is nevertheless something in BMP that users can take advantage of: the concept.

Actually, the BMP is not supposed to answer any other question than 'who does what, when, how and with what'. If you know the answer to this question, you have the advantage that you can recognise the business processes and thus constantly design and improve them. In addition, this makes it possible to accurately document all processes, which is, after all, partly required by law. An applied BMP also makes it possible to specifically align the cost calculation with the business processes. And that is what matters in the end. To optimise processes in such a way that they optimally correspond to economic efficiency and competition.

Far more advantageous here than an integrated BMP tool is an ERP software that is agile and whose processes remain adaptable. Only in this way can a company react flexibly to the dynamics in the market. A process that is still based - indeed must be based - on a concept. A system can meanwhile display the important key figures in such a way that business processes are presented in such a way that the focus question "Who does what, when and with what?" can be answered well. However, the consequence for the business processes remains with the user.