I’m a student of business administration at a co-operative university. Last year I had to attend a lecture with the topic Business Process Management (BPM). Because it is not a focus topic in my degree program most of my fellow students didn’t pay much attention to it. They were not confronted with BPM in their companies and thus they didn’t see the necessity to learn about it.
If I wouldn’t work for a company focused on this topic, maybe I’d think the same , but in the last two years I really noticed the pros of Business Process Management
Here are a few points, why I think it make sense to learn about it during and after your studies:
First scenario:
Imagine you’ve finished your studies and you enter a company to start with your first job.
There are lots of people, information and tasks you are confronted with and so it comes to a lot of questions?
What’s the working procedure in my department? Who is responsible for this topic?Which rules or restrictions do I have to keep in mind?
It can be really tricky to answer all these questions, but if the company has a business process management system you don’t have to worry.
For example: You can click through the organizational chart to see who is responsible for a certain topic. Then you can have a look to a value added chain of the enterprise to see which role your task plays in the collectivity of the company. After this you can have a look at the EPC documenting the process you’re involved in.
So you can easily get an overview, what it makes easier to integrate yourself into the company.
Second scenario:
After a few years of working you are responsible for a specific department. Because of economic troubles the company has to be restructured to stay profitable.
The requirement for your department: You have to save 20% of costs.
How to do this? Where should you begin? In which division does it make sense to save costs and in which division could it be dangerous?
If you have no process documentation it is really difficult to expose weak points or room for improvement.
With a BPM-Tool you have all your processes documented in detail, so that you can see where you have bottlenecks.
After you have restructured your processes you can monitor them constantly through the calculation of KPIs.
Third scenario:
You have been working for many years and now you want to go into retirement.
Your successor is a person, who comes new to the company. How can you show her/him the ropes?
One possibility could be to use your process documentation. So you can hand over a large part of your process knowledge and simplify the integration for your successor.
As we can see Business Process Management accompanies us through our whole working life.
So why shouldn’t we start learning about it now, during our studies?
What do you think?
What are your experiences with BPM?
Feel free to post your comments!
