Co-Author: Nimish Gupta
Quite often people wonder on the play of BPM in the changing world which is driven by adoption of emerging core automation capabilities. One way to look at it is whether one is keen to look at their best sustainably with a healthy diet, exercise, lifestyle etc - or is fine to take a short term facelift with some makeup, hulk sweat-shirts etc. It’s as simple as that.
As technologies that promise specific value proposition are emerging, organizations are able to camouflage their deep routed inefficiencies by being able to run non-standardized processes very effectively. Don’t be surprised if the Titanic eventually hits the ice-berg! A bolt-on approach towards adopting a new technology without giving the underlying process it’s due consideration, is always risky and prone to failure. It would be immature to say that organizations don’t acknowledge the same and some large setups do consider these technologies as a way to re-look at their processes and automate for good and have a comprehensive approach towards digitization.
Any automation or for that matter any new technology initiative must be driven by a strong process capability. While plug and play solutions may give a head start to the automation journey and at times could be done at a lower cost saving the process optimization effort, but in the long run the deep routed process inefficiencies will surface. This potentially makes the entire transformation agenda trickier than ever with several technology layers hiding deep pockets of inefficiency. BPM principles or the process thinking needs to be the backbone for any process improvement. Like there is no short cut to success, there is no short cut to optimization (read as automation these days).
Once the organizations can get their backbone right, there are multitude of solutions available in the market these days which can enable automation and technology adoption seamless and effective in the long run.
Cost conscious organizational setups can consider adopting some of the open source BPMS platforms. Some of these platforms may prove pretty cost effective in eliminating process inefficiencies and setting up a robust backbone for implementing Living Processes; processes which can adapt and self-learn much like how one would expect AI to behave!