Business Process Management and Productivity - Essay Sample for You

Business Process Management (BPM) is a concept that current businesses continue to embrace amidst the increasing competition driven by the technological advancement. Organizational managers and professionals have found the BPM concept main criteria to success since it helps keep the process of business in control (Van Der Aalst, Ter Hofstede, & Weske 2014). The idea of the process management is essential in ensuring that the needs of the customers are met and that customers are satisfied through the control of the business process. Omar AlShathry examines the various organizations in Saudi Arabia and their applications of the process management and brings out the status of BPM among the multiple organizations.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

The full documentation of the business processes involving policies, models and procedures is an essential practice that would allow those using the process to execute it successfully. Thus, the documentation should be on the frequent basis by an organization (Van Der Aalst, Ter Hofstede, & Weske 2014). However, this is not the exact case with the Saudi Arabian organizations according to the outcome description by AlShathry. Only 40 percent of the surveyed organizations indicated they do frequent documenting of the business process while others do not frequently document (AlShathry, 2016). This outcome means the failure by the organizations in Saudi Arabia to conform to the basics of the process management that would, in turn, allow the smooth execution of the business processes. The successful implementation of the business processes involves the entire organization thus different process users take part in process execution. Thus, full and frequent documentation allows the users to understand the business processes and follow for the proper performance. In the execution of the business process, however, there should be an element of consistency where the implementation is made similar to avoid process performance discrepancy (Van Der Aalst, Ter Hofstede, & Weske 2014). This is important especially in cases where organizations have different business processes even though their goals may go hand in hand. The outcome of the survey by AlShathry indicated that on 20 percent of those surveyed organizations showed to have the level of standardization of the business processes that are good. This outcome suggests that despite the attempt by the Saudi Arabian organizations to apply the BPM, a good number of them still lag behind on how best to maintain consistency and avoid discrepancy. This, in turn, has affected the way these organizations achieve their goals due to the different approaches to business processes that ultimately hinder the maximum production of the organizations.

Organizations rely on the value chains to generate values thus the business functions which allow value chains should be maintained well. The outcome of the survey by AlShathry indicated that only one organization out of those investigated allowed the primary business process to go through a well-defined model (AlShathry, 2016). Surprisingly, a good number of the rest organizations did not seem to have such a model or have information on the value chains. The outcome indicates that only a few organizations properly consider the process management to facilitate the business functions to improve the value chains. The majority do not think this concept and for the few that consider adding value to the productivity does not have well-defined models that would allow the business process increase the value of the productivity (AlShathry, 2016). In turn, the value of what is produced by these organizations is low and lowers the production outcomes. In further inquiry about the measurement that would help organizations assess the value chain process performance. Majority of the organizations were either found to have no idea about the same measurement or for those that had such measures; they were limited to part of the business process. Only a few indicated to have a process metric that was active for the business process. Again the outcome means the little knowledge by many firms on how the measurements of the business processes are undertaken something that undermines the value of production among these organizations. The fact that there is no right criteria value chain measurement shows that the organizations cannot account for their improvement as the competition sets in due to technological advancement.

According to AlShathry, the majority of the organizations in Saudi Arabia do not indicate consistency in the way they run the business processes and the software applications used to run them. Among them, for those who show some consistency, it is not substantial but only occasionally in some applications. Just a few have the full conformity between the businesses processes and the subsequent software applications running them. This causes a lot of inefficiency on the part of the production of the organizations as the automation process not built on the effective and matured business processes (Ko, 2015). The automation through the use of the software applications should be able to increase the efficiency of the well-structured business process which is not a case for the majority of the organizations. The results were in line with the findings which showed that there is a lack of required skills and the managerial training to allow proper management of the business processes. The situation has affected a good number of organizations that have been able to improve the product through appropriate management. Thus, this outcome by AlShathry reflects the little understanding among the majority of the organizations in Saudi Arabia that yearn to embrace the Business Process Management (AlShathry, 2016). It is this lack of adequate understanding of the implementation and the execution of the business process that has led to most of these organizations being unable to better the production (Ko, 2015).

In general, it can be observed that the organizations in Saudi Arabia have a considerable favor of the Business Process Management. However, the successful implementation of this concept is hindered by the immature practical understanding of this concept among these organizations. Therefore, various steps need to be taken to allow the improvement in the level of productivity in connection to the process management. There is an excellent need for these organizations to change the way they view the BPM concept. This involves having a holistic value- based on this concept which regards that the successful implementation and the execution of the BPM concept encompass not few individual but all the stakeholders within the organization. This will create a situation where the process management is not just a duty left to managers and professionals but all people working in the organization. Another step that will be vital in getting productivity improved is the merger between the IT and the business process. The continued disjoint has created a gap between the two business functions which aim at a common goal. With the IT and the business processes working together, they will work in support of each other and allow the automation to increase the efficiency of the business processes. This is because such operations will be useful and aligned with the developed software applications.

References

AlShathry, O. (2016). Business process management: a maturity assessment of Saudi Arabian organizations. Business Process Management Journal, 22(3), 507-521.

Ko, R. K. (2015). A computer scientist's introductory guide to business process management (BPM). Crossroads, 15(4), 4.

Van Der Aalst, W. M., Ter Hofstede, A. H., & Weske, M. (2014, June). Business process management: A survey. In International conference on business process management(pp. 1-12). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.