Business process support spanning functional areas and legacy systems can be challenging. Depending on the company, the business process will involve thousands of steps, involving people and machinery. If it’s not well-designed, the business may be hampered in achieving its objectives. Embedded analytics are a great way to gain visibility into process performance.
A good business process will break a task into repeatable steps. This can help organizations predict their resources. Typically, a customer request will span across a variety of systems, from the customer care and billing systems to the shipping and accounting systems. For example, if a customer wants to know the status of an order, they will need to know where it is in the system. Moreover, they will need to know if it’s been processed or shipped. Having a robust communication channel is key for transferring data from one application to another.
Embedded analytics are also a good way to identify bottlenecks. Using a Smart Proxy to intercept messages, for instance, improves basic system service capabilities. Similarly, a data domain expert can resolve normalization issues.
Another important element of business process support spanning functional areas and legacy systems is middleware. Middleware is software that acts as an interpreter between applications. It’s particularly useful when integrating legacy systems with modern ones. Specifically, it allows a company to perform functions such as data analysis and cross-application integration. Ultimately, it frees up workers’ time to focus on the human aspects of their job.
There are many enabling technologies that can help companies optimize their business processes. Some of these include business process management (BPM) and robotic process automation (RPA). The latter can mimic the actions of humans, but is better suited for complex tasks.
While the above are some of the more common BPM techniques, there are still a number of other ways to improve your processes. For instance, there are tools that can automatically check and sign documents, reduce paper forms, streamline purchasing processes, and speed up onboarding new hires. Similarly, there are tools that can help you automate employee travel requests.
Identifying and implementing the best business process support spanning functional areas and legacy technologies is a critical step in your organization’s journey to digital transformation. However, the process is only as effective as the organization’s ability to see the value in a change and to implement it properly.
Business processes are a complex and ever-changing part of every organization. Unfortunately, this complexity can get out of control without automated tools to guide the process. Luckily, intelligent technologies have emerged to provide a new way to measure workflows, discover patterns, and automate workflows. Using these advanced tools, a company can increase efficiency, increase productivity, and free up its employees’ time to pursue the process improvements that matter most.
Despite the challenges, there are many ways for companies to improve their business processes. By breaking a task into repeatable steps, using embedded analytics, and employing robotic process automation, a company can boost its productivity and efficiency.