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Where are your processes falling apart?

Cindy Cheng, ​Sr. Director of Marketing Communications, EMEA, Appian
November 13, 2013

If work isn't working for your company, how do you fix it? This is a common question that executives should be asking themselves as technology changes and the way businesses operate is altered as a result. Issues like poor customer service, slowing time-to-market or increased pressure from the competition can reduce a firm's overall morale, affecting productivity and profits. If the way things are currently going is starting to provide diminishing returns, perhaps it's time for your business to take a new look at its processes.

In order to review and improve operations many companies are turning to high-quality business process management software. Process management focuses on how a company's daily operations proceed, and making even small improvements can have a wide-ranging effect on overall success.

Going social

According to the McKinsey Global Institute, 70 percent of all enterprises across the globe use social media in some way, with 90 percent of those firms deriving some form of value from that use. Additionally, 80 percent of all online users - approximately 1.5 billion people - interact with social networking on a regular basis. This makes social media a prime target for business process management improvement.

Why social? Further studies show that professionals spend nearly 28 hours a week writing email, searching for information online and collaborating with their colleagues. These are all social actions that can be improved with social BPM- by as much as 25 percent increased productivity. This translates to nearly $1.3 trillion a year of unlocked potential for businesses.

Social process management initiatives help employees work collectively in a more intelligent, invested manner that boosts the workplace community and leverages technology more efficiently. Furthermore, these efforts help workers see the value in collaboration more clearly.

Coming full circle

But where is the advantage in improving workflow with social BPM? Increased productivity has obvious effects on daily operations, but there are many secondary advantages as well. More companies will see those diminishing returns reverse, not only halting a decline in operational prowess, but increasing efficiency as more professionals will be working at a faster pace overall. These efforts will focus operations on growth, rather than maintenance, while providing a foundation to drive future improvements from.

Ultimately, BPM solutions aren't so much an advantage for enterprises today, but a necessity for keeping up with modern operational demands and streamlining the processes that take companies from keeping up with the competition to outdistancing it.

Cindy Cheng

Director of Product Marketing