Better Control Over Your Information Through BPM

Recently, a former CEO of a major healthcare services provider was indicted on charges of fraud and violations of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act related to signing off on false corporate statements. This sends a wake-up call to every CEO and CFO in America about the importance of adequate controls over information assets and the business processes that generate them. At its core, business process management (BPM) can provide a measure of control over a company’s internal procedures, while streamlining transaction processing and enhancing decision-making.

Large or small, public or private, anywhere in the world, virtually all organizations are driven on some level by the day-to-day processes that support business operations.

The benefits of BPM to your organization include:

• Improved productivity through fewer manual processes, streamlined transaction flow and enhanced information access
• Greater efficiency in using electronic routing, online documents and other content to drive day-to-day operations
• Reduced risk realized from enhanced control over business processes and transaction management.

Benefits of BPM

Today’s employees know that their organization depends on their ability to collect, manage and deliver the right information to the right person at the right time. That’s why many organizations are implementing automated, integrated content management and business process management solutions. These integrated solutions can deliver gains in three critical areas:

• Productivity—Any business function can become more efficient when the data it needs to perform that function is readily accessible and usable. In addition, eliminating manual routing tasks can free up time for employees to focus on higher value tasks. For example, with integrated content and business process management, an accounting staff can better track payables, make more informed decisions about invoice approval and speed up payment to vendors—ultimately improving the company’s credit rating and lowering the overall cost of credit.
• Efficiency—With integrated content management, your employees will be able to seamlessly access, retrieve and process electronic data, versus spending time on manual searches, routing and distribution or other time-consuming, outdated processes
• Compliance—Many regulations, including the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, CFR Part 11 and HIPAA require that a company exercise technical or process controls over their information. Implementing a BPM solution can help by enabling the organization to document processes and procedures, define controls around critical steps in the procedure, and enforce those controls. In addition, most organizations are required to retain certain types of data for many years for auditing and tax purposes. When combined with content management, BPM can help ensure that this data is captured and retained appropriately. Further, conversion of paper documents to electronic formats significantly reduces the amount of storage space required for documents—therefore reducing or eliminating your costs for off-site archival storage. And, you can readily access the documents you need in the event of an audit or other enforcement action, speeding resolution.

Applying BPM to Business Functions

Consider some core business functions such as accounting, human resources and customer support—in many organizations, these are still handled with a combination of paper documents, e-mail, manual searches and routing, and other time-intensive processes. This is also true of business functions unique to certain types of industries, such as claims processing by insurance companies or loan processing by banks or mortgage brokers. These inefficiencies result in overhead expenses, rework and mistakes —but the good news is that BPM can make significant operational improvements, which provide tangible, bottom-line results.

To understand the benefits that can accrue from an integrated content and business process management solution, consider the accounts payables (AP) function—a universal business operation. An integrated content and business process management solution for AP should include five core capabilities:

• An electronic repository of documents and other information—Your organization will speed up processing, minimize manual searches and create a valuable information repository by converting paper documents into an electronic format. This can be done via scanning technologies that should be part of your overall content management solution. Converting to electronic documents also minimizes the space and overhead associated with files and boxes of paper documents, while enabling electronic processing of transactions
• Workflow, or business process automation capabilities—Automating specific processes in accordance with your organization’s business rules can dramatically improve efficiency. Once a particular step in a process is completed, say matching an invoice to the purchase order in the accounts payables process, or obtaining necessary approvals throughout the organization, the document(s) and associated payables transaction are automatically routed to the next step in the payables cycle. This streamlined approach to payables processing provides dramatic enhancements in overall cost reduction as well as increased transactional bandwidth without the need for additional resources
• Integration with existing accounting applications—The solution you choose needs to feature open architecture and software development kits to allow for easy integration with your existing applications. This type of integration helps combine the processes that exist within the accounting application with the documents and other materials that support the process. The integration should enable users to access documents directly from within the accounting application as well as allow for the automated input of BPM managed transactions directly into the financial system. This not only reduces the amount of manual data entry traditionally required to perform transactions, but also increases the quality and accuracy of the information itself
• Browser-based access to information—A Web interface to your electronic documents means your staff can process documents no matter where the information or the staff resides. As a result, your staff can be productive, regardless of location, time zones and other constraints associated with traditional accounting processes. The AP operations can be done with keystrokes and mouse clicks, not manual searches, faxes, and multiple hardcopies
• Data protection—No solution would be complete without secure, accessible storage and data protection. Look for a data storage and management component that is flexible enough to let you choose the storage media that is best for your organization—including optical, WORM, tape, DVD and CD, as well as newer disk-based options.

An integrated content and business process management solution for accounting should include:

• Web-based access to a universal electronic repository of all accounting information and supporting documentation
• Workflow or business process automation capabilities to streamline operational process and associated transactions
• Integration with existing business software applications
• Secure, accessible storage of electronic information for cost-effective storage and compliance requirements

In addition to the above capabilities, be sure to select a content and business process management solution that is backed by a company with the experience, resources and support that you will require to maintain this business critical function.