BPM and ECM are being implemented more and more in an integrated way in organizations to optimize management. The dialogue between the systems can bring several benefits to the business, contributing to its performance, longevity, and value creation.
In this post, we will talk about each of them, their advantages, and how they can work together to improve business performance. Take a peek!
What Is BPM?
To begin to understand the functionalities of BPM and ECM, it is necessary to understand their separate performances. BPM is an acronym that comes from the English language ( Business Process Management ), which translated means Business Process Management.
It is a management discipline widely used throughout the world and is the result of the combination of business management with techniques and tools, including technology, which seeks to identify, analyze and optimize the processes of organizations.
With BPM, a company can map, analyze, model, improve, and control its end-to-end processes. Through a BPM system, or BPMS (Business Process Management Suite), it is possible to put this discipline into practice in an automated way.
What Are The Benefits Of A BPMS?
A company that operates with a process vision is capable of segmenting all its stages in detail and involving all its professionals, suppliers, and customers in them.
Thus, everyone sees the processes in all their stages and can act on them in a more timely manner, identifying obstacles and problems and seeking solutions more quickly. The benefits of a BPM or BPMS system are varied:
- Integrated and horizontal management, since all activities (and departments), will work through the same processes.
- Cost and waste reduction, as automation is used to save time and cut unnecessary resources.
- Quality management and more value for the client, since the processes will be standardized and constantly improved.
- Constant monitoring of the activities that will be in the same system. The data generated in each process can also be analyzed and, if a fault is detected, it is quickly corrected.
- Better communication between teams.
- Possibility of accessing processes through different devices.
- And many more.
What Is ECM?
Do you know the number of documents and information that are kept in an archive and that are lost over time or that are difficult to locate and end up being useless?
The ECM solution ( Enterprise Content Management or Business Content Management) precisely helps you automate this process, allowing you to digitize, store, catalog, share, and interpret the information and data of a company.
More than simple management of printed or electronic documents, with ECM it is possible to gather papers, records, contracts, spreadsheets, graphics, and other data in the same system, providing communication between them and the crossing of information to generate structured knowledge. Having ECM software is essential for a company’s knowledge management.
What Are The Benefits Of An ECM?
Maintaining data interconnected via an ECM carries several advantages to businesses, such as:
- Reduce copy, print, and physical storage costs by 70%.
- Make the company more environmentally sustainable, reducing the paper used.
- Keep documents safe, without risk of content loss.
- Facilitate data exchange, accelerating access to information.
- Have control of the privacy and confidentiality of the files, determining the access permissions.
- Assist in the transparency and corporate governance of companies.
- Make data more crawlable** by searching for keywords.
- Integrate different areas in the same information bank.
- Facilitate process monitoring and measurement through KPIs (key performance indicators).
How Do BPM And ECM Work Together?
Although they are often studied and treated by information technology as separate disciplines, the advantages of using platforms that integrate BPM and ECM are much greater.
A BPMS system that contains the functionalities of both BPM and ECM will allow a very complete range of solutions, with a customizable platform for each business.
It can be said that the processes only generate due value if they are based on the company’s content and, at the same time, the content is always generated or consumed during the execution of the organization’s processes.
It is useless, for example, for a process to be automatically assigned to a collaborator quickly if he cannot access the information necessary to do his job.
Some features also help BPM and ECM work together. For example, a good ECM should be able to recognize characters by optical reading or OCR (Optical Character Recognition). With OCR, the desired fields are extracted from the file and the process of adding information to the system is expedited.
To protect data and ensure authenticity, an ECM must contain a digital signature; this will facilitate the legal validity of the signed documents and, in addition, will further reduce the amount of paper used.
Read This Article: Business Management Software: How To Choose The Best?
Understands The Integration Of BPM And ECM In Practice
Let’s look at a sample to create it clearer. Imagine the process of selling clothes. The customer accessed the company’s website, did their search, added the orders to the cart, and completed the payment, while you have removed the products from stock and made the shipment.
Is it possible that the customer has already made other purchases or searches on the website? Are you a loyal or potential customer? What is your average revenue per purchase? What are your consumer profile and interests?
The suppliers do you have registered that can serve you and which would have the best cost-benefit for cost reduction? How long does the logistics department take to deliver the purchase? Is it possible to speed up that process?
There are many variables and information in the same process. Maintaining all of this automated via a BPMS method that has BPM and ECM, with the details available in the system and that everyone interested is aware and busy, allows management to evaluate the entire process and obtain insights to improve in an agile manner.
While ECM works to make all information available and easily traceable, BPM clarifies the flow of activities and enables rapid process transformations.
This contributes to making decisions based on real data, which can increase the company’s profitability, productivity, and operational efficiency, customer satisfaction and gain competitiveness concerning the competition.