Starting a BPM project ? Here is a checklist.

Are you exploring to build a BPM solution for your organization? Feeling overwhelmed when looking at all the processes and their complexity? Wondering how to get started? If yes, here is a simple checklist to help you kick start your BPM project.

1. 1. List, Filter and Prioritize Processes Identify and review all processes in your organization. Based on what the process achieves, gauge how critical the process is? If the process is not producing an outcome that addresses a customer need, re-align or remove the redundant process.
   2. Prepare a Process Map Along with all concerned parties, chart a ‘Process Map’ for each process clearly detailing the working of the process.
   3. Define Start and End Enumerate each stage of the whole business process and clearly define the start and end of the process. This way participants not only understand their part of the process but know the final objective of the whole process and the role they play in bringing out the final outcome.
   4. Roles of participants and business units Identify the roles and responsibilities of the participants. Also, do not forget to check whether multiple business units are involved in the process? If yes, define business rules that govern the engagement between the business units.
   5. Information flow chart Capture the details and map the information flow happening in the process from one participant to another. Here, business rules can be defined wherever necessary.
   6. Associating business rules If you are going to use rule engine as part of the BPM solution, it is important to determine whether rules should be added into the process or kept as an independent component. This can be determined by ascertaining the relevance of the business rules that are associated with the process and how often these rules change.
   7. Reporting The reporting requirements of any given business process must align with the organization’s Key Result Areas and Key Performance Indicators. Hence, relevant fields must be embedded in the workflow as per the reporting requirement.
   8. Systems integrated with the Business Processes Identify both internal and external business systems to which the processes are integrated. The BPM solution being implemented must be able to seamlessly support all the integrated business systems.

Rightly implemented BPM solution will effectively align all business processes of the organization to work seamlessly and efficiently to not only achieve business results but also provide a great customer experience.

“When a company identifies how to integrate the processes needed to give the consumer a sense of job completion, it can blow away the competition. A product is easy to copy, but experiences are very hard to replicate.” – Clayton M. Christensen