The main objective of Business Process Analysis (BPA) is to define and execute process improvement strategies. Once a process has been analyzed and its value assessed, the most appropriate improvement strategy should be chosen to deliver the greatest value. There are four different business process improvement strategies: This article provides an overview of all four business process improvement strategies, specifically calling out what they are and how you can see them through to execution. Modernizing processes refers to extracting processes from limiting legacy environments and then re-platforming them onto more efficient, modern technologies.
1. Modernize Processes
One typical example of this process improvement strategy is taking existing automated processes from legacy RPA platforms and re-platforming them onto newer generation RPA tools that promise a lower cost of ownership, more accessibility to automation, better capabilities, scale, and higher returns.
For example, we’ve seen a lot of interest and actual movement in the market as automation programs look to re-platform from vendors like Blue Prism or Automation Anywhere to UiPath and Microsoft Power Automate.
Not all Business Process Analysis (BPA) tools can do this as seamlessly as organizations would like. However, Blueprint’s Business Transformation Platform uses a Common Object Model (COM) that harmonizes processes into a consistent format and dataset, regardless of the source.
This enables Blueprint to act as a “Hub” and exchange process information with a variety of other toolsets. COM is a common language of applications, actions, and parameters that is common across popular RPA tools like UiPath, Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, and Microsoft Power Automate. It also handles logic, structure, screen interactions, selectors, variables, parameters with scoping, and templates that enable organizations to redeploy automations to more modern technologies.
Learn More: How Blueprint Supports RPA Platform Migrations
Blueprint does this by converting automation data into and out of COM using mapping tables, algorithms, and even machine learning while doing a lot more than just “lifting and shifting.” Blueprint can improve and transform processes during the migration in several ways. If you’d like to learn more, download the Tech Overview: Blueprint’s RPA Migration Assistant.
2. Optimize Processes
As a process improvement strategy, optimizing processes refers to leveraging predictive analytics and simulation capabilities—for example, simulating changes to resources, costs, execution times, etc., to tune and optimize improvements before they’re implemented.
In a strong BPA practice, processes are optimized continually or at some regular cadence, and this applies to all processes, whether they be manual, automated, or outsourced.
A business process analysis solution that acts as a central, consolidated process hub enables effective process optimization. It also lets you run what-if scenarios across processes to localize areas for optimization, ranging from the fine-tuning of resources or work being done to more dramatic refactoring, with both high-level processes and even lower-level tactical processes.
3. Standardize Processes
Standardizing processes is an improvement strategy that aims to drive consistency, improve quality, and increase process execution times.
Organizations are finding success with process standardization by reusing processes and process components. A large company runs thousands of processes. Those business processes have many commonalities that can be leveraged. The practice of reusing processes or process components has many benefits, like reducing the volume of processes you need to manage and govern while increasing returns with marginal investment.
Reuse fits into standardization because you’re reusing processes that have been vetted, tested, approved, tuned, and proven to deliver value. A good BPA solution will also empower you to reuse process components, so you can shift into a mode of assembling processes from standard components instead of authoring them from scratch, enabling you to increase quality, consistency, and speed all at once.
4. Automate Processes
Automating processes is arguably one of the most prioritized process improvement strategies because of all the benefits automation promises.
This is another area where Blueprint’s Business Transformation Platform goes above and beyond to facilitate and accelerate process improvement strategies.
Blueprint converts processes and all associated context into Digital Blueprints which accelerate automation development because they export processes directly into development platforms while automatically generating user stories and tests.
Digital Blueprints can be used in several powerful ways. Firstly, they are a common process format independent of the type of automation approach you choose—whether it be RPA, lo-/no-code development, custom development, or anything else. They’re also very intuitive, so all stakeholders can work with them or collaborate around them.
In addition, they can be exchanged with any automation technology but are also technology- and platform-agnostic, so they’re not tied to any specific tech or tool.
If the approach is custom development and not automation, Digital Blueprints generate user story backlogs and can synchronize them into JIRA for development, in addition to automatically generating both traditional functional tests as well as gherkins for acceptance testing.
Whatever your business process improvement strategy, Blueprint can do it all. For more information on how, download the brochure: Improve Your Processes, Transform Your Business.
