The business processes that worked when you had fewer team members or before you reached the current scale may now be outdated, inefficient, and ineffective.
Business process management (BPM) helps you analyze and optimize your current processes through proven process improvement practices. This could mean business process improvements like automating repetitive work, removing bottlenecks, fixing inefficient processes, or resetting goals around business outcomes.
Let’s see some business process management examples and best practices that improve efficiency and cost savings and help in digital transformation.
10 Business Process Management Examples and Best Practices
Summarize this article for me pleaseWhat is Business Process Management?
Business process management, or BPM, is an approach in which organizations evaluate, model, and redesign their business processes to drive maximum efficiency and revenue growth.
A business process is a series of tasks or activities your business performs by coordinating people, systems, and information to produce business outcomes that support your business strategy or achieve specific goals.
BPM aligns business IT investments to business strategy and helps standardize operations, improve agility, increase workflow efficiency, and improve compliance.
How is business process management different from business processes?
A business process involves the different tasks, activities, and workflows that allow organizations to achieve their goals. It drives a business’s day-to-day activities, including customer support, manufacturing, procurement, financial management, etc.
Business process management optimizes these business processes to make them more efficient. It helps manage both the strategic and operational side of your business processes.
Summarize this article for me pleaseUnderstanding Business Process Management in Detail
How is business process management different from project and task management?
Task management focuses on organizing, assigning, prioritizing, and tracking tasks and activities to ensure they are completed on time. You monitor the day-to-day tasks that contribute to larger projects or processes.
Project management oversees all the activities in a project from start to finish. This includes defining project scope, assigning tasks, creating schedules, tracking progress, and allocating resources.
Read more: Project management vs. task management
BPM optimizes different business processes and operations to help organizations achieve larger objectives such as customer relationship management, procurement, employee onboarding, supply chain management, and order fulfillment.
| Overview | Task management | Project management | Business process management BPM |
| What is it | Involves completion of self-contained and individual tasks | Involves events that have a start and end date | Deals with ongoing strategies and existing processes |
| Focuses on | Managing your team’s workload | Oversees singular events as the need arises | Maximizes efficiency of day-to-day business processes |
| Goal | Team management | Transparency | Efficiency |
Benefits of business process management:
- Increased efficiency: Process optimization minimizes operational costs, improves employee productivity, and eliminates redundancies to save time and effort
- Better decision-making: Business process management software gives stakeholders valuable insights into the operational efficiency of particular business processes. It helps them optimize processes company-wide through business process reengineering with analytics and reporting to make informed decisions
- Increased agility: An adaptable and scalable process can withstand changing marketing conditions, fluctuating customer demands, and competition
- Better customer experience: Consistently deliver value to customers by improving process performance and automating workflows for all departments
- Better compliance: Conduct regular process audits to check for regulatory compliance. Aligning business processes with industry compliance standards and internal policies helps mitigate risks, maintain security, and avoid penalties
- Reduced costs: A business process management tool helps you automate repetitive tasks and identify processes that can be improved, reducing wastage and optimizing business processes to save labor and material cost
Summarize this article for me pleaseTypes of Business Process Management
1. Human-centric BPM
Human-centric BPM revolves around human involvement, typically for tasks requiring approvals.
An example of this would be reviewing data and creating documents such as reports, proposals, and vendor agreements.
You can use BPM to automate supporting functions such as task assignments and stakeholder notifications.
2. Integration-centric BPM
This type of business process management does not require much human involvement for continuous improvement.
Integration-centric business processes depend on APIs and systems that integrate data across different applications, such as customer relationship management (CRM) or project management.
3. Document-centric BPM
This type of BPM focuses on specific documents, such as proposals or contracts.
It centralizes and standardizes all processes, from document creation to approval to archiving.
For example, when a company purchases a product, the contract has to go through different departments and several rounds of approval for an agreement between the client and vendor.
Summarize this article for me pleaseTen Examples of Business Process Management
Let’s look at some relatable business process management examples before you put them into practice.
1. Customer onboarding
Here’s how you can implement the BPM lifecycle to streamline workflows in the customer onboarding process.
Example: A bank wants to optimize its customer onboarding process to increase efficiency, minimize errors, and improve the overall customer experience.
Start by building a process map of the different steps involved in onboarding. This includes account application, identity verification, and account setup.
Next, consider what processes you can automate using BPM technologies.
For instance, online account applications can be integrated with banking CRM systems to capture customer information and initiate the identity verification process automatically.
A centralized business process management system can digitally store customer documents, making them easy to access and reducing paperwork. BPM standardizes these processes and ensures smooth handoffs between different departments involved in the onboarding process.
Result: Quicker customer onboarding that also complies with the necessary regulations.
Read more: Here are our 10 favorite workflow templates for virtually any team and process
2. Employee onboarding
Employee onboarding BPM helps you to onboard your new hires efficiently. BPM streamlines everything from paperwork to integration into your organization.
Set up triggers and assign tasks using workflow automation tools or a BPM platform to ensure smooth handoffs between departments.
For instance, once HR receives an employee’s completed forms and paperwork, the system automatically assigns tasks to the IT department to help set up the employee’s computer and system access.
Result: Quicker onboarding with minimal manual effort, improving the onboarding HR processes.
3. Compliance management
You can standardize compliance-related processes across your organization to ensure compliance with industry regulations and internal policies.
Process automation tools help you map out compliance activities and automate compliance checks, approval workflows, and data validation.
Example: A pharmaceutical company must comply with healthcare and government regulations regarding producing and distributing drugs and medicines.
In this case, whenever a new regulation is released, the BPM software immediately triggers an evaluation process to assess the company’s current compliance processes. The system automatically assigns different tasks to the relevant departments involved in the compliance management process.
Once the evaluation is complete, the findings are consolidated into a report, and a workflow is created to implement necessary changes and review and approve them.
This lets you get a complete overview of your compliance processes to ensure that every step is followed. The system sends out alerts whenever a task is overdue or when there is a compliance gap. It also maintains an audit trail to keep track of all compliance-related tasks and activities.
Result: Your business stays compliant, with lower effort required.
Read more: 10 Best business process documentation software
4. Product lifecycle management
Business process management helps you to systematically manage everything from conception to design to development and distribution of a product.
Example: A software company is developing a new CRM software for small and medium businesses.
Implement BPM to streamline the process of gathering and managing important information, such as user requirements and product specifications. This allows product managers and developers to access critical information easily during product development.
BPM tools can also help you coordinate the deployment process and manage customer communication and support ticketing.
Result: Reduces the time-to-market for software releases and ensures that the product is better aligned with customer needs and expectations.
5. Project management
BPM can be used to streamline processes from initiation to completion of a project.
Example: A marketing agency that has implemented BPM for better project management.
BPM can help standardize campaign planning and customer communication, automate task assignments, manage data with relevant documentation, and allocate resources effectively. It can also give stakeholders a 360-degree view of how different campaign launch activities are progressing.
Result: Optimized project workflows, increased collaboration, and improved quality of project outcomes.
6. Contract management
Process automation in contract management allows teams to create and manage contracts faster,
Example: A legal firm uses business process automation to generate and manage contracts. These contracts are then routed through an approval workflow with multiple approvers. When an approver signs off on a document, it is automatically sent to the designated approver in the next stage until it is approved by all the relevant stakeholders.
Since contracts are time-bound, you can set up automated reminders to send out renewal notifications to everyone included in the contract.
Result: Quicker contract processing and renewals.
7. Risk management
One of the best business process management examples is BPM which evaluates risk assessment processes.
Example: A financial institution implements process automation software to manage risks associated with loan approval.
The system streamlines the loan approval process by analyzing customer data, credit scores, and previous financials to determine whether the borrower is a credit risk. If the analysis shows that the customer is high-risk, the application is routed to another team for further review.
Low-risk applications are processed immediately without any delays. This helps the financial institution disburse loans without risking its assets.
Result: Reduces errors and helps in risk mitigation.
8. Acquisition and procurement
Business process management in acquisition and procurement streamlines vendor selection, goods delivery, and invoice processing.
Example: Business process management helps a manufacturing company automate creating purchase requests.
When the inventory of any particular product reaches a pre-defined threshold, the BPM software immediately triggers a purchase request. The request passes through an approval workflow and is evaluated against budget, item availability, and vendor qualification factors.
Once the request receives the final sign-off, a purchase order is created and sent electronically to the vendor. The BPM system then tracks the purchase order status and manages communications until the product in question is restocked.
Result: Compliant and efficient procurement process.
9. Vendor management
You can create processes to automate vendor onboarding and contract management.
Example: A manufacturer of car parts wants to improve vendor management.
It needs machine learning BPM technology to collect and evaluate vendor information. The algorithm rates each vendor based on factors such as compliance, qualifications, and performance history.
These ratings are then consolidated into reports and sent to the relevant stakeholders, who can decide which vendor to proceed with.
Once the vendor is finalized, BPM systems can also be used to manage contracts, renewals, and compliances. This way, you can automate manual tasks such as vendor selection and get visibility into the status of vendor relationships, contracts, compliance, and payments.
Result: Improved vendor relationships.
10. Logistics
Business process management in logistics can optimize warehouse management and transportation.
Example: A global shipping company uses BPM tools to improve the efficiency of its logistics operations.
Whenever a customer orders, the BPM system immediately triggers a shipping request. The request is then assigned to the most suitable carrier based on factors such as delivery timelines, shipping routes, costs, and vehicle availability.
When the order is on its way, the system tracks the shipment’s location and sends status updates to the customer so that they know where their order is and when it is expected to be delivered.
If there are any roadblocks, the carrier immediately receives a notification, allowing them to take corrective measures immediately.
Result: Improved delivery times and increased customer satisfaction.
Summarize this article for me pleaseBusiness Process Management Best Practices
ClickUp’s Project Management Software has many versatile features to help you create your workflows and build a business process management system that works for you.
Let’s look at some business process management examples with ClickUp. The platform can help you improve your BPM with automated workflows, team collaboration, real-time reporting, process mapping templates, a built-in AI assistant, and feedback collection forms.
1. Designing
The best way to design a BPM strategy for your organization will depend on your processes and your organization’s strategic goals.
A SWOT analysis will help you understand what needs to change in the existing business processes, identify potential bottlenecks, and the new process improvements needed.
Also, get input from stakeholders into the daily operations and the new business processes you plan to implement.
Pro tip💡: Document the overall process steps and the goal of the BPM initiative on ClickUp Docs. You can even create internal wikis and share them with your team so they have access to critical details about the BPM project.
The collaborative capabilities of Docs, including real-time editing, adding comments and assigning tasks, and rich formatting, make it easy for stakeholders and your team members to participate in the business process management discussion.
You can use Docs to create SOPs, which are a centralized repository of all process-related information for current and future employees.
2. Modeling
Use process maps at the modeling stage to visualize the proposed business processes, including an overview of the various tasks, activities, flows, and events that will contribute to the process you are working on.
Create process models using a BPM tool or workflow management software to analyze the flow of activities, decision points, and dependencies. This breaks down complex processes and steps involved in process automation, adding value and removing inefficient activities.
Here, ClickUp’s Process Mapping Template helps you evaluate the processes that need improvement, gather insights into the bottlenecks, and visualize processes end-to-end.
The template provides all the tools you need to:
- Evaluate how processes could be improved
- Gather insights into bottlenecks or weak points in your system
- Visualize processes quickly and easily from end to end
Business analysts and project managers love using this template as it simplifies complex processes into easy-to-follow diagrams and shows relationships between different steps in a process.
Pro tip💡: ClickUp’s built-in AI assistant ClickUp Brain is your AI sidekick that manages and automates work such as writing product brief outlines, summarizing meeting notes, assigning tasks, and creating status reports for tasks, docs, and people.
3. Executing
This phase aims to involve automation to reduce repetitive tasks and manual errors.
ClickUp Automations supports business process management by automating task creation, assignment, and status updation. It can automatically change tasks’ statuses as they move through the different stages of your BPM workflow.
You can configure the automation to update a task’s status from ‘In-Progress’ to ‘Completed’ when all the required actions are completed.
Pro tip💡: Define role-based access for each aspect of your business process so that users can access the information they need to complete their tasks while you also keep your information secure.
ClickUp’s Integrations with 1000+ applications ensure error-free data flow between the BPM software and your tech stack.
4. Monitoring
Monitoring your business processes’ performance regularly is important to identify bottlenecks and take corrective measures in real time. This can help ensure that processes do not deviate from the expected outcomes.
To monitor the performance of your business processes, identify bottlenecks, and take corrective action, you need real-time dashboards that visualize how different tasks are progressing.
ClickUp Dashboards help you do so with real-time data about your business process model and its performance. Get a high-level and granular view of your operations and processes.
Remember to define key metrics and performance indicators to track the operational efficiency of your business process improvements. You can track metrics like throughput, cost per process, NPS, and compliance metrics to help you track the performance of business processes.
Pro tip💡: You can also use ClickUp Views to slice your data in different ways like List, Table, Timeline, Gantt Chart, and so on.
5. Optimizing
Organize regular meetings with stakeholders and team members to update everyone about the status of different processes in the workflow. You can review performance data and get stakeholders’ feedback to improve your BPM workflow. This helps in process improvement.
Clickup’s Form View collects feedback from everyone in a standardized format to help you optimize the business process, especially for tasks that need continuous improvement, such as customer support and product development.
Pro tip💡: Take help from ClickUp Brain to analyze the feedback received and create action items.
Keep making iterative changes to your BPM based on changing organizational needs, stakeholder and customer feedback, and data analysis to ensure its effectiveness.
Summarize this article for me pleaseBusiness Process Management: Future Trends
Low-code or no-code platforms
Whether you’re a business analyst or a project manager, low-code and no-code tools for business process management allow you to design process automation without reliance on your tech team, speed up development cycles, and respond faster to changing market conditions.
AI and ML
When integrated into BPM, artificial intelligence automates tasks such as creating documentation and process workflows. Machine learning analyzes large data sets to give insights to optimize existing and new processes.
Customer-centricity
Customer-centric BPM keeps customer needs at the core and focuses on improving the customer experience. Processes such as customer journey mapping, customer surveys, feedback collection, and personalization will continue to be vital to implementing effective business processes.
Also read: Process improvement templates
Summarize this article for me pleaseThe Importance and Implications of BPM for the Modern Business
The BPM examples stated above show how it goes beyond improving process performance and makes your business agile and responsive to market conditions and customer expectations.
Wherever you plan to implement business process automation—sales, vendor management, customer onboarding, or logistics, it will substantially impact your business, its success, and its competitiveness.
ClickUp is a beginner-friendly business process management software that helps you create complex business processes quickly and easily.
If you’re new to a BPM platform, we recommend you sign up on ClickUp for free and try it out.
Summarize this article for me pleaseFrequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
1. What are examples of business process management?
Business process management spans across different industries and departments. Here are some of the popular BPM examples:
BPM can streamline customer onboarding for banks, automate order processing, invoicing, and inventory management for e-commerce businesses, and automate processes such as capturing and validating employee information during employee onboarding.
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