In order to get business processes "flying," more firms are turning to social BPM. According to TechTarget, social media integration is providing new and unique improvements to business process management efforts, driving growth and innovation while enhancing operations through collaborative efforts. The key to these improvements is clearer communication.
"If you had an issue on-site and you couldn't resolve it right away, you entered it into a system for first-level support," Stephan Blasili told the news source regarding past and present BPM efforts at his company, EDP Renewables North America. "If that person couldn't resolve it, it would go to other people throughout the company. They would email and there was no follow-up. People in the field often didn't know who - if anyone - was working on their tickets. Sometimes multiple people were on the same problem at the same time and not realizing it."
This confusion along process pipelines slows down operations, increases related expenses and hurts overall productivity. BPM solutions are about enhancing workflow and improving the order of operations in order to eliminate these very issues.
Enter social BPM. According to the news source, EDP invested in Appian BPM software - which integrates social media with the tools used to manage processes - and saw issue resolution increase in speed by 10 percent for large-scale processes and 25 percent for smaller. The combination of social with business process management provides significant improvements to the order of operations because it clarifies workflow. When someone addresses a task, coworkers know, so that someone else doesn't tackle it at the same time. For problem resolution in a large enterprise, this is invaluable for expediting workflow.
"Anybody can see what's going on and give direct comment and feedback," Clay Richardson, an analyst from Forrester Research, told the news source.
In addition to improving the communication surrounding processes, companies are also able to crowdsource workflow, improving collaboration efforts beyond current capabilities. If one employee is struggling, or simply needs to clarify a point to confirm a conclusion, he or she can share the issue quickly and easily and gain assistance for colleagues.
The optimization of business processes through social efforts is just one advantage that high-quality BPM software can provide, however. From cloud support to mobile BPM, companies can optimize their approach to new technologies and trends with ease.
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