How BPM is like Google Earth

April 25, 2017

Category: General

When we were putting together the content for our webinar “BPM 101 – the Basics of Workflow Automation,” an interesting analogy came up between Business Process Management and Google Earth.  Although it didn’t make it into the live presentation, it felt worth repeating.

Let’s start with trying to describe what Business Process Management is.

All businesses have processes. They are the individual steps that come together to make your business run.  For example – insurance verification of filling a prescription, these are processes.

Processes come together to make workflows. In our example the process of insurance verification is typically part of an intake workflow.

Business process management takes it up another level. It’s a practice that allows you to map, monitor and optimize all of your workflows. It allows you to analyze and measure performance on both an individual and aggregate basis and identify problems and possible solutions. BPM is not a one time thing that you do, but rather is a constant state of how you manage operations.

 

 

So… what does this have to do with Google Earth?

It’s simple:

A process is like Google Street View. You can land on a particular street and see the detail of one particular house.

A workflow is like Google Maps. You can see the lay of the land of a neighborhood and how houses are situated compared to one another and the pathways in between them.

But business process management (BPM)  – it is Google Earth. It allows you to pull out and see the whole county, state, country – the whole entire Earth.  It gives you the full perspective of how everything is interconnected.  You can zoom in and out as you’d like to get into the details or maintain an overall view.

BPM is visibility.

It allows you to monitor your entire operation – by process, by team, by department, by location or for the company overall. It allows you to track progress, analyze results and continue to ensure your operation is running at peak efficiency and productivity over time.

To learn more about BPM, watch our explainer video that explores the topic in under 5 minutes or fill in the form below to schedule a demo to learn how BPM can help your company specifically. 

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