Under the traditional approach, once you've defined your processes you then have to benchmark them so that you can measure performance and, therefore, improvement. But the information-gathering and measuring processes in most organizations are cumbersome and manual.

This is another problem that BPM capabilities can solve. Good BPM systems provide a backbone of solid information that runs throughout the organization, serving as a foundation from which all strategic and most tactical decisions are made. At the root of this information is the hierarchy of measures and metrics that appear on dashboards and scorecards. These can provide a baseline benchmark for performance prior to the process improvement initiative, eliminating the time and effort needed to measure the processes targeted for improvement. If the specific measures needed are not yet in the model, the process initiative provides an opportunity to add them, enhancing the model and ensuring that the targeted improvement areas are actually important.

Making Change Stick

Once the process improvement team moves on to the next project, process owners are left with the same resources they had prior to the change, but now they must also monitor the changes. Too often, they lack a mechanism that quickly reveals employee or process performance and provides a way to correct bad behavior.

Again, this is where BPM shines. By providing indicators that are attached to key measures and metrics and updated weekly or even daily, BPM can help managers to quickly assess compliance and determine whether the changes are working as expected. Corrections to the changes or modifications of employee behavior can be made quickly so that the revamped process becomes the new norm.

BPM and process improvement initiatives are complementary in another way, too: BPM often struggles to show a positive ROI because its benefits are often "soft" returns -- for example, better decision-making. By integrating process improvement and BPM efforts, companies can directly tie the BPM initiative's returns to those of the improvement effort.

BPM is synergistic with process improvement, just as it is with most organizational efforts. This is because BPM, when implemented properly and applied holistically, changes the very nature of how an organization manages itself. It places timely, fact-based information at the center of all decision-making, focusing effort on tangible results, driving tactical performance toward strategic goals, and creating competitive advantage. There can be no greater organizational improvement than the achievement of these goals.