What is BPMS

Today, a new type of business process management software, namely BPMS systems, is gaining popularity in domestic business. And, of course, their appearance caused a lot of questions. What are they needed for? How do they work? What is their fundamental difference from other business automation options?

When I first encountered BPMS, I also had all of the above questions. I did not immediately understand why a new tool is needed, why it is impossible to implement all the necessary business processes for successful operation in existing accounting systems or CRM, and what is the fundamental difference between BPMS and other options for automating business processes.

In this article I want to talk about what BPMS-systems are, why they are needed and how the process approach differs from traditional work methods. I will not talk about the technical aspects of BPMS (about modeling and developing business processes), the next article will be devoted to this. Now I will try to reveal the essence and meaning of BPMS in the most simple and understandable language:

What is BPMS?

BPMS is another abbreviation of ERP, CRM, which is not clearly defined. Although there are quite a few definitions: both foreign and Russian. In addition, companies that produce their own BPM-systems, also give their own, special definitions, which introduces additional confusion. In addition, BPMS is often combined with other systems (for example, BPMS + CRM, BPMS + ERP) and then the developers define the BPM system based on this context.
')
But in order to figure out what BPMS really is, and what their features are, you first need to figure out what BPM is.

BPM (Business Process Management, Business Process Management) is a concept for the process management of an organization that treats business processes as special resources of an enterprise, continuously adapted to constant changes, and relies on principles such as clarity and visibility of business processes in an organization. by modeling business processes using formal notations, using modeling software, simulating, monitoring and analyzing business processes, the ability to dynamically rebuild models th business processes by the participants and by means of software systems.

Wikipedia.

BPMS (Business Process Management System) is primarily software that supports the concept of BPM in a company. BPMS systems are needed to implement the concept of BPM in a software environment.

BPMS considers the company's work as a set of processes, and not as a set of functions. The object of a BPM system is not the work of a sales or purchasing department, but the sales process, the customer support process, the supply management process, etc. And already on the basis of this understanding, work on the reengineering of business processes in BPMS is under construction.
BPM-system is aimed mainly at improving the work of the company, to more profitable activities of the enterprise through the optimization and control of business processes.

User work in BPMS and other systems

For a better understanding of the essence of BPMS, you need to understand how ordinary systems (ERP-systems, CRM) approach the work of users. For example, the user needs to make a sales order. What are his actions?

The user can fill in the document arbitrarily if the sequence of his work is not programmed:

• It may first open the order form, pick up the goods, specify the prices, then determine the customer.
• May first create a customer, then his order.

In a word, there is variation in the user's actions, i.e. the employee, based on the situation, can choose their own options for action.

The BPM system considers the user to be another brick in the system. A person should clearly know in which process he works and what he should do.

Employees in a BPM system are considered not in terms of the outcome of a process, but in terms of performing an action. The variability of user action is excluded here. The employee does only what is programmed in the system, no more, no less.

Ways to implement business processes

BPMS is one of the ways to implement a business process. Consider what methods are presented in the realities of Russian business to understand why we need a BPM system.

We distinguish three approaches:

1. “Paper” approach;
2. Automated approach (using other systems);
3. BPMS process approach.

For example, take the business process of negotiating an invoice for payment, as it is fairly simple and intuitive.
In my practice there was such a case: the client paid me the full bill, although at that time they had to pay only a part of the payment in the amount of 50%. Why did this happen?

Because they had no procedure for reconciling an account in the company. We learned with the director of the company about this completely by accident. I learned that in their company at the stage of reconciling the account, periodic failures occur, and the director was surprised to find that he did not pay 50% of the bill, as planned, but immediately 100%.

Why did it happen so? It's simple. The so-called “damaged phone” worked. The specialist brought from the accounting office an invoice for payment with the phrase “You must pay 50% of the amount”. The accountant asked the manager whether to pay this bill or not. The head, being sure that it is about 50% of the amount, confirmed the payment. And the accountant, in turn, forgot about what was said out loud about half the amount, and understood the manager so that she had to pay the entire bill. What was done.

On the example of this company and this business process, we consider all three approaches.

Paper (non-automated) approach

How did you reconcile an account with this company before?

• The employee receives the invoice, transfers it to the accounting department;
• The accounting department enters the account in the payroll, coordinates it with the head;
• If the manager approves and signs the request, the accounting department pays the bill.

What's wrong with this approach? Here blurred the boundaries of transition areas of responsibility between the stages. In the event of a misunderstanding and not timely payment or non-payment of the bill, the employees shift the blame on each other, and it is impossible in the end to find those responsible.

Automated approach

As a rule, companies try to control a particular business process in the accounting system in which they already operate. But it is also wrong. Consider what the disadvantages are in this version.

Since the additional funds for the implementation of business processes in the company, which I cite in the example, were not allocated, we used the tools that were already in the company, or rather, the accounting system.
The task was to, if necessary, the payment of an invoice by an employee, the amount of payment passed through certain stages of coordination.

What it looked like:

• In the system are appointed responsible persons for the coordination of costs;
• On the basis of any document (order to supplier, receipt of goods or another document) a document is created Application for spending funds in the status Not agreed;
• If the person in charge agreed the application and changed the status to Agreed, the invoice was sent to the accounting department;
• If the status was set as Rejected, it means that the application went back to the person who initiated the process.

In this company, the CEO is responsible for the coordination of expenses, and this is what was needed to enable him to perform his functions as agreed:

• create access to the system;
• train to work with the necessary documents;
• configure the interface for ease of use;
• configure access rights.

At the same time, the accounting system had to fill in a lot of unnecessary information to create and approve the application: the beneficiary’s and the company's own account, the counterparty, the expenditure item, the cash flow item, the basis, etc. All this information, in fact, is not necessary for the CEO to make a decision, but, nevertheless, it must be filled in by the employee sending the application.

For making a decision in this case, only 3 points are interesting:

1. money (how much we have to pay);
2. recipient (to whom we must pay);
3. appointment (for what we pay).

And, therefore, filling in the extra information, the employee loses time, and the coordination process is delayed.

In addition, such implementation of coordination in the accounting system is quite primitive and does not imply variability (for example, the division of areas of responsibility depending on the amount of the document or item of expenditure).

In the BPM system, nevertheless, the coordination process itself is important, and not the reflection of information for future reporting, etc. Here there are just people who need, based on the context of the information, to quickly execute the process.

So, the main differences of business processes in BPMS from the accounting system:

1. In BPMS, what is being done is important. What is important here is not accounting information, not reporting, but the need to quickly make a decision in order for the business process to go further. With the accounting system, this will not work, here we must indicate which documents are created at the expense of which, etc. - it is not comfortable. There is no clear context.
2. Simplicity of logic and development. If we conduct a business process in the accounting system, we must take into account a large number of logical links: how documents are handled, transactions, what it affects, what additional licenses to buy, etc. - although it would seem that the person responsible for the coordination is not necessary. But in the accounting system, we must necessarily bind to the configuration objects or modify them, which is not very correct.

This is exactly what the BPM systems were created for, in which all logic is directed not at calculations, not at storing data, but at quickly executing the process and controlling it.

We now turn to the third approach and consider how this business process should be solved in the BPMS system.

BPMS process approach

First, we define the logic of work and divide the business process into successive stages.

In our example there will be three:

1. Creating an application for the approval of the account;
2. Verification of the application;
3. Result of the application:
   
   • if approved, print out the application,
   • if not approved - report this to the supplier

Next, we design the conditions under which events or attributes certain actions take place (for example, it is possible to reflect the dependence of the person responsible on the amount of the invoice if the company has different amounts agreed by different employees; or sending alerts at a particular stage of work).

In the system, each user works under his login and password and sees only his form and his place in the business process. In our example, the employee is responsible for creating the application, and the manager is responsible for checking and agreeing, and each of them sees only their own forms, their own tasks, and can only perform their own actions.

Accordingly, if the employee who created the application clicked the transition to the next stage, then responsibility is removed from it and goes to the manager, who should check the application. By this we achieve separation and control of areas of responsibility.

This example clearly shows that in BPM systems everything depends on the context. All forms of interaction are aimed at ensuring that the user sees only what is needed and only what he needs at a particular stage, based on the context of the process.

If other systems are designed to ensure that the operation was performed, then in BPMS we are focused on actions.

The BPM system can be compared to the Japanese Yumi archery technique. In schools of shooting, the umi preach the following approach: if you want to get in, you do not need to concentrate on the goal, you must do every action correctly now. Those. here, the principle used in the Japanese Yumi archery that I have mentioned is used: focus on each action, at each stage, perform each action qualitatively. And then you will definitely come to the goal!

.
And if you transfer such an approach to a particular enterprise, each of the employees must do what is necessary. And concentrate only on that. The employee should not think about the goal, he should do only what is necessary at a particular moment.

In fact, in the BPMS system, each employee works as if on a pipeline. Each task, each business process in which the employee participates, becomes a separate conveyor line. And, as a participant in this process, an employee within a given task can only perform certain actions, strictly limited by the task execution algorithm.

Of course, the comparison is not entirely accurate, because an employee can choose which of the business processes he will process now and which one he will process later. Those. up to a certain point, it is above the processes, and can choose which of the branches of the conveyor it will join at a given time. But within the framework of a certain business process, it becomes a participant in a conveyor belt, the processes in which impose strict restrictions on each of the participants.

Let us go back to the example of the reconciliation of the account, and consider what opportunities there are in the process approach:

• Division of areas of responsibility;
• Concentration of work of employees on specific actions;
• Notify users of changes in the processes (or the need to make changes) in which they participate.

In the BPM system, we describe the business process in BPMN 2.0 notation. In this notation, there are already many points that suggest how to customize a particular business process. There are other various systems for automating business processes, but they rely on their own logic, which is not universally accepted. In order to model a business process on the basis of such systems, it is necessary to understand these systems, understand their operation logic, set up forms and interconnections.

BPMN 2.0 is a recognized standard for describing a business process and people familiar with this notation will immediately understand the business process model written in this format.

Conclusion

So, I hope that I managed to clarify the question of what a BPM system is and why it is needed by comparing the process approach with other work options. In the next article I will show how the modeling and execution of a business process technically takes place using the example of a specific system.

More articles on this topic:

• What is a business process and business process description
• Business modeling. Basic approaches
• Introduction to the IDEF0 notation and usage example
• A brief description of BPMN with an example
• We understand the concept of BPM. What is business process management?
• Using GAP analysis to identify and coordinate project tasks

Also, currently I am preparing a book for publication and an online course in which I will describe in detail my own vision of the process approach to business, as well as my own practical experience in the field of functional and process modeling. Anyone can subscribe to the notice of the release of a new book on and other news link .