The main goal of a BPM platform is to improve the efficiency, accuracy, and agility of business processes by automating repetitive tasks, standardizing processes, and providing visibility into process performance.
Some common features and capabilities of BPM platforms include:
Process modeling and design: tools for mapping and visualizing business processes, including flowcharts, swim lanes, and other graphical representations
Process execution and automation: tools for automating tasks and triggering actions based on predefined rules and conditions
Process analytics and monitoring: tools for tracking key performance indicators, identifying bottlenecks and inefficiencies, and generating reports and dashboards
Collaboration and communication tools: tools for enabling communication and collaboration between stakeholders, such as discussion forums, task lists, and document management
Overall, a BPM platform can help organizations streamline their business processes, improve efficiency and productivity, and adapt quickly to changing business needs.
“SharePoint is an excellent platform for delivering workloads because it is a commonly used collaboration tool within many organizations. By leveraging SharePoint, you can easily notify and engage your team members, improving their responsiveness. In terms of systems of engagement, SharePoint is a highly convenient and effective platform.”
We were thrilled to have the opportunity to help the largest air conditioner manufacturer build a Business Process Management (BPM) platform on SharePoint. The following is our approach focused on making the BPM platform easy and flexible to use within SharePoint.
System Objectives
Our approach to effectively manage business processes is to utilize SharePoint, the core collaboration platform of Office 365, as your system of engagement. Since they already using SharePoint for communication and storage, integrating your business processes within this platform will provide a convenient single view of work. Some tangible benefits of this approach include:
Establishing a standard platform for processes within SharePoint
Consolidating multiple systems into a single interface
Tracking process Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to improve progress visibility
Validating data input to reduce errors
Enhancing performance and responsiveness through the use of Teams channels
Key Business Requirements
The key requirements for this solution are:
Centralized definition of authorization levels and group membership
A consolidated approvals dashboard
The ability to delegate approval tasks with a decision response report
User-defined workflow stages with notifications and Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
Configurable approval rules to handle any, majority, or all approval tasks
The ability to attach supporting documents
A discussion forum to capture the decision-making process
The ability to send notifications via email or Teams channels
Audit trails for the approval process
Configurable reports with search function
Implementation
 This system consists of three solutions:
| The organization approver groups management allows you to define the various authorization groups used by your approval systems. The consolidated dashboard shows all outstanding approval tasks assigned to a user. Users can view process details and approve or reject requests. The workflow engine allows administrators to set up approval processes using the authorization levels defined in the system. When a new process is submitted, an approval task is added to the consolidated dashboard for each approver. |
Organization Approver Groups Management
This module allows you to define the organization hierarchy authorization groups that will used for all the different processes/workloads.
This screens allows you to define the organization hierarchy authorization level for company, division and department level.
You can also define authorization groups at a functional level.
Where you can define the various members that makes up that group.
Once you have been added to an approver group, you can see all the groups that you are a member of under the "my groups" option.
Consolidated Approval Dashboard
This module displays all the outstanding requests and approvals across all processes.
All your outstanding requests and approval tasks will be displayed in your consolidated approval dashboard.
If you are going to be away, you can delegate your approval tasks to a designated team member during your absence period. During that period, all your approval tasks will be sent to your designated approver. Whenever, response have been made on your behalf, you will get a notification email to keep you informed.
You can view all the delegations to keep track of the process.
The system will track all the approval tasks for everyone.
Business Process Workflow Module
This is a reusable template that you can use to configure each workflow quickly.
You can define different approval steps for different type of process.
For each type of category, you can define the different approval steps for the process.
For each approval stage, you can specify who will approve it and how the system should handle the approver response. It also control what to do when it is rejected. You can specify if an email notification is required and what message to send.
The email notification allows you to customize the message and its layout.
Within the home page of each module, you will see all your submitted requests as well as requests from other users that are awaiting your approval.
When you drill down, you will see the details of the request which can be customized.
When you click on the approve button, the system will pop up the approval form to record your response. When all the approval steps have been completed, the system will close this request.
You will also find discussion forum between the various stakeholder, including supporting documents and approval status for this request.
With the audit report, you can view all the approval steps from start to finish.
Key benefits
There are several key benefits to using this Business Process Management template:
Streamlined process design: BPM templates provide a pre-defined structure for designing and documenting business processes, which can help streamline the process design process and ensure that key elements of the process are not overlooked.
Improved process consistency: By using a standardized template, organizations can ensure that processes are consistently designed and documented, which can improve the consistency and reliability of the processes.
Simplified process implementation: This templates simplify the implementation of new processes by providing a common template on how to define workflow as well as being able to re-use existing authorization groups.
Enhanced collaboration: BPM templates can facilitate collaboration among different teams and stakeholders by providing discussion forum and shared repository for each process.
Reduced risk: Using a BPM template can help reduce the risk of errors or inconsistencies in the process design and implementation stages, which can improve the overall quality and effectiveness of the processes.
Overall, using a BPM template can help organizations design and implement effective and efficient business processes, while minimizing the risk of errors and inconsistencies.
From our experience, our clients can accelerate the time and effort to build and deploy new workflow to within a week. Of course, even business users can build their own workflow without any programming.
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