Key Points

• Technology is vital for any BPR effort, not just an additional tool to aid in initiatives’ sticking.
• Before setting out on any BPR effort, make sure to map your current processes to see where things are going wrong.
• Automation and AI can eliminate the tedium and guesswork that comes with analyzing thousands of data points while providing valuable insights.

When you have an undertaking as massive and diverse as a BPR effort, you need a little help to get things rolling. While getting your workforce on board with your efforts is instrumental to the initiative’s success, that isn’t the only consideration you’ll need to keep in mind when planning your BPR effort. Leveraging modern technology is a fantastic way of promoting effective business process reengineering.

With that in mind, today we’ll be looking at some pieces of technology to streamline the process. You’ll find that technology isn’t just a helpful addition to your planning, but vital for the implementation and success of any BPR efforts. We’ll also highlight some of the top tools you can rely upon for future BPR efforts.

Process Mapping

Before you start looking at any means of effective business process reengineering, it helps to take the time to understand processes as they sit. You cannot readily identify where your pain points are with a given process without a full map of the inputs, outputs, and other components making up a given element of your current workflow.

Process mapping software, like Visio or Lucidchart, is a fantastic way of getting a visual aid for your current processes. Further, it helps to standardize the documentation efforts at the start of your BPR effort. Some dedicated software solutions even allow you to simulate and compare the current processes versus future implementations.

Simply put, this is an ideal way of presenting your current processes in an easily digestible form, which can be instrumental for getting leadership and stakeholders on board with your BPR efforts.

Robotic Process Automation

Automation is the way forward for many businesses, and it isn’t just limited to the manufacturing floor. If you’re looking to have an effective business process reengineering implementation, cutting out the tedium can help boost overall productivity in the early stages of the effort. RPA bots can readily handle the more mundane tasks like data entry, data extraction, and report generation.

This frees up your workforce to focus on more pressing tasks, while also saving costs in the long term. While some organizations might chafe at the notion of utilizing automation for such basic tasks, freeing up the workforce from busywork and doing tasks that matter for the success of your BPR efforts is appealing. Additionally, RPA can aid in streamlining business processes going forward, accelerating cycle times, and ultimately reducing errors.

BPM Suites

A BPM, or business process management, suite is a comprehensive set of tools intended to allow organizations to monitor, optimize, and execute process workflows. Services and software suites like Appian and Pegasystems allow teams to fully visualize the end-to-end performance of a given process, while leaving room for continuous improvement. In the early stages of any effective business process reengineering effort, you’ll want to make sure you’re sticking to the game plan.

A BPM suite isn’t just a vital tool for guaranteeing process efficacy, but lays the groundwork for future improvements. Organizing workflows and promoting visibility of your processes’ current status are just a few of the major benefits offered by any of these software suites.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence has made waves in a big way over the last few years. As far as they apply to effective business process reengineering, you can leverage the technology to better suit your analytics. AI can identify historical trends, make informed predictions, and identify pain points in current production workflows.

This saves time and energy for your workforce, meaning they can get to work on designing processes that are better suited for your BPR efforts. When combined with other tools like RPA, AI can handle complex tasks like quality control or customer service automation.

Additionally, you can leverage artificial intelligence to better understand the actual flow of a given process. From there, you and your team can identify bottlenecks, pain points, and ultimately find issues that manual process mapping might have missed.

Cloud Computing

One of the biggest challenges behind any effective business process reengineering comes down to the technological infrastructure in place. If your organization is looking at BPR in the first place, there might not be the resources in place to handle a larger implementation of technological resources. Cloud computing offers competitively priced resources intended to scale for any organization.

Resources like Salesforce, Workday, and SAP for ERP promote standardization of workflow as everyone is relying upon the same tools. Additionally, it’s a great way to enhance organizational collaboration. Another net benefit is the reduction of IT overhead costs. It’s cheaper to rent platforms every month than it is to rely on dedicated staff to run the infrastructure needed.

Data Analytics

Data is going to play a huge role in any effective business process reengineering efforts. As such, you need a robust, powerful data suite to help analyze, sanitize, and ultimately present your findings to the higher brass. Analytics packages like Tableau and Google Analytics take some of the guesswork out of things and leverage AI to provide greater insights into your data.

Using a data analytics suite can help to identify useful metrics like KPIs, while also highlighting areas sorely in need of improvement. If you’re looking to make informed decisions, having the data to support those decisions is crucial.

ERP Systems

It can be all too easy for any organization to fall into silos for its processes. An ERP, or enterprise resource planning, system helps to streamline the process and create a single, unified system for managing processes across the entire organization.

Further, leveraging this sort of technology is a fantastic way of standardizing data, automating departmental hand-offs, and getting a holistic view of everything happening at your organization. Popular platforms like SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft Dynamics are used regularly in some of the top businesses on the planet, and for good reason.

Digital Workflow Automation Platforms

There is a bit of overlap with BPM tools when considering digital workflow automation platforms, but you’ll likely want to lean on both to aid in any effective business process reengineering efforts. You’ve likely got a stream of data, documents, tasks, and other bits of information flowing through your business at any given moment.

Streamlining and standardizing the flow of information reduces the need for people to get in the middle for assigning tasks. Further, utilizing platforms like this aids in process consistency, something that is going to be vital at the end of any BPR efforts.

Communication Tools

While you might be taking the time to do much of this work in person, having the means to readily communicate and collaborate with remote teams can be crucial for any effective business process reengineering efforts. Tools like Slack, Teams, and Zoom enable workers to communicate effectively with one another, even if they reside in different time zones.

Additionally, leveraging software like Asana to aid in project management can set your team up for success across the board. Not every organization is leaning on remote teams, but hybrid workforces are steadily becoming a common sight across businesses around the world. As such, having the means to allow for asynchronous and simultaneous communication is key.

Digital Adoption Platforms

Onboarding new and current employees for newly implemented processes can be difficult. At the end of any effective business process reengineering efforts, you’ll want to make sure your team is equipped with the right tools to make the most of the newly implemented workflows. DAP, like Whatfix or WalkMe, provides guidance, walkthroughs, and context to allow your team to get on the same page with current workflows.

These software packages aid in user adoption, accelerating the time needed to get familiar with workflows. Additionally, they serve as a great means of reducing training time while also providing a consistent level of educational excellence to everyone in your workforce.

Other Useful Tools and Concepts

Looking for some other tips and tricks to go with your morning scrolling? You might want to take a look at the best practices for managing remote teams in Scrum. Scrum is a growing approach for businesses, and learning how to leverage good practices can see your teams’ productivity skyrocket.

Additionally, you might want to consider looking at some of the top challenges posed by Six Sigma in healthcare. Six Sigma is often used in manufacturing, but the methodology is well-suited for the likes of healthcare as well. However, you’ll have to tread carefully to meet regulatory guidelines in the industry.

Conclusion

Technology is a wonderful thing, and can certainly aid in any effective business process reengineering efforts. Knowing the right tools means that your organization is well-equipped for the difficult task of implementing whole new workflows from scratch. Make sure you’re using every possible advantage to get your team up and running.

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