What is business process management?

Many business processes within an organisation can be partially or wholly “re-engineered” to reduce running costs, increase process efficiency and boost productivity. DCS workflow and business automation software - FileStore helps improve efficiency of document driven processes by automation of manual tasks. Some stages and aspects involved in automating business processes are:

Know your process – the first stage in business process management

The first stage towards automating a business process is to understand it “as is” because any changes made to existing processes will affect processes within and external to the organisation.

With experience in business process re-engineering and process flow designing, DCS consultants can help you evaluate the viability each process for automation and help ensure you derive the maximum benefit from it.

Defining a business workflow

Business process automation involves setting up rule-based workflows. The DCS workflow management software FileStore BPM provides easy-to-use yet powerful functionality for workflow design and implementation. The various stages of designing a business workflow are:

• Process mapping – With an easy to use Visio based interface, FileStore BPM allows you to sketch or map out the stages in a business workflow and then apply business rules to each stage.
• Forms creation – The mechanism by which users receive and enter information and the workflow progresses to a subsequent stage.
• Linking to people – At this stage the users in the business workflow and their roles are defined so documents and notifications can be routed to them accurately.
• Linking to systems – A business process will involve interaction with one or more business systems. Achieving robust workflow automation will require workflow management software such as FileStore BPM which integrates with a wide range of database systems and line of business applications.
• Escalations – If pre-defined workflow conditions are not met, a range of automated actions can be triggered to escalate a case, invoking other escalation workflows or sending out notifications for manual intervention. 
• Reporting – FileStore BPM is a web-based application which provides dashboards to monitor process real time and generate customised reports.

Initiating automated business processes

With the DCS business process automation solution, automated business workflows can be triggered by the arrival of application forms, sales orders, invoices and other documents.

Management reporting

Though not part of the workflow itself, the ability to generate management style reporting is a valuable tool for business workflow management. Reporting features in FileStore include:

• Dashboards
• Audit trails
• Key performance indicators