What is this blog about?
Reading the “Spirit of BPM Consulting” by Abhinava Singh – his today’s blog, I thought to briefly explain the BPM Concept for those who are not so familiar with the term. I’ve taken a simple business example AND extracting the Terminologies used in BPM Consulting, Forming a Basic Equation of the Concept & Highlighting the Need to Study BPM, I’ve provided a basic overview of BPM Approach in the blog. Subsequently I’ve explained how SAP’s BPM Methodology helps customers and have referred the reader to SAP Press Books for further reading. Additionally I’ve provided a link to BPM Certification, if someone is interested in pursuing career in BPM.
Business AND Business Jargons
A typical business owner may not necessarily know the jargons used in formal business education, however, if we ask him the story how he started his currently well-established business he’d tell a story something like the one stated below:
Extracts: Vision, Strategy, Business Processes, Organizational Structure, Roles, IT System
Transforming the story into business terms we could say the business owner had a Vision (his imagination), a Strategy (his long term plan), few Business Processes (to produce his imaginary product / service), an OrganizationalStructure (the model of his business), a few Roles (human resources to run his business). Additionally he implemented an IT System to leverage his initial investment.
Business Equation
Based on the above description of a Business, we can summarize a business model with following equation:
Input > Processing > Output
To get the desired Output, it’s obvious we’ve to have Correct Input and Processing. Referring the equation to successful businesses we could notice “Well defined Processes are key success factors”. And we can’t determine a process is correct unless we know what Output was actually required.
Business Processes’ Study
Understanding the equation requires a thorough study of
- vision & Strategy to find out what exactly company is targeting and how
- processes it employs to achieve its goals
- organizational model to know the RACI
- IT system which refines the processes
Business Process Management
Business Process Management – a Holistic Management Approach, talks about Optimization of Business Processes which is achieved by
- Analyzing existing processes of an organization and
- Designing refined & optimized model of business processes.
SAP Business Process Management Methodology
What it does?
SAP BPM Methodology addresses the need and provides details on “how-to”
- Identify the key success factors of a business
- Understand the existing processes & set the priorities for analysis
- Compare the business processes with Industry’s Best-Practices processes
- Identify weak areas, link them and Assess them together
- Develop high-level and detailed design of to-be model
- Figure-out the required adaptation areas within an organizational model
- Create a transformation plan and utilize existing landscape to support the new model
- Fit & map the changes into an existing solution with analysis of organizational and master data
Phases: A methodological approach
The methodology clearly distinguishes between the Business Approach (Top-Down) and the IT Perspective (Bottom-Up) and is divided into 4 major Phases i.e.
- Calibration
- As-Is Analysis
- To-Be Design
- Solution Transformation
It provides the necessary tools 1) to Analyze the existing processes and 2) to Design a To-Be Model.
Further Readings
For those interested in gaining further knowledge on the subject, I’d recommend the following books:
| Books | Titles | Authors |
| | Business Process Management: The SAP Roadmap
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| | Applying Real-World BPM in an SAP Environment
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One of the Authors – Rukhshaan Omar, has introduced the book in her blog on SDN at following link:
And if you’re looking for an Industry-Recognized Certification in Business Process Management with your SAP Experience, you could think of C_BPX_70. Following linkprovides the details on the Certification.
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