With enterprises facing extreme competition in a continuously evolving business landscape, it is of paramount importance to have business processes that are improved significantly. And in this regard, Business Process Management (BPM) and Lean Six Sigma complement each other really well. Both methodologies have something really good to offer for an enterprise resulting in higher efficiency and excellence.
While implementing Lean Six Sigma, the deployment teams and leadership think that technology does not play a major role in solving process problems. Similarly, people who use BPM do not appreciate the fact that how Lean Six Sigma techniques help in effective BPM deployments. Though BPM involves technology, they both complement each other in many ways, but many are not aware of the benefits of integrating these two. Let us look at five such benefits of integrating BPM and Lean Six Sigma in an enterprise.
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Real-time Execution of Processes and Business Ownership:
The key benefit of combining both BPM and Lean Six Sigma is that it speeds up the real-time execution of processes even when the team is dispersed across different locations. With the right amount of technology input through BPM and robust process improvement techniques in Lean Six Sigma, enterprises can offer excellent orchestration of processes, inputs, outputs, evaluation, documentation, feedback, failure analysis, and more. This collaboration results in process automation which can be executed through BPM’s automation techniques.
By integrating both BPM and Lean Six Sigma, business owners can have better control by regularly monitoring predictive process performance metrics. Because BPM is associated with the software, it helps in capturing data for implementation and designing of the process. This helps to execute processes according to their requirement which in turn minimizes the problems down the line.
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Greater Agility with Increased Speed:
There is greater Agility and increased speed in business-critical processes when both BPM and Lean Six Sigma are combined. For example, a third-party vendor can improve their competitiveness by decreasing the time to deliver their services. And with Lean Six Sigma, an enterprise can create a value stream map that emphasizes metrics that helps to reduce the overall lead time.
The value stream map helps to break down processes to the point where wastage and failure are addressed. With BPM automation, most of the data for improving process performance are collected in real-time, and this results in reducing the time required to wait for approvals and signatures in many key areas of the organization.
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Creates Effective Problem-Solving Techniques:
Lean Six Sigma at times focuses just on resolving only narrow and highly specific issues. By combining both BPM and Lean Six Sigma, the data that is required to erase all wastage can be determined efficiently. Nevertheless, a traditional Lean Six Sigma implementation at times does not realize its full potential. And this is where BPM comes into the picture. Often, enterprises benefit the most when the infrastructure in place that supports the integration of two concepts to ensure all the angles are covered rigorously.
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Addresses the Weak Points:
Deploying Lean Six Sigma alone has a couple of weak points. One, the enhancements made via implementing Lean Six Sigma will become isolated and less focused which will create problems with services/products in the context of an enterprise. Two, Lean Six Sigma deployment requires data collection at critical junctures both in-house and from competitors. Because different business units have their own priority ratings, reviewing the priorities slows down enterprise improvements.
Though BPM is not into statistics, an IEE structure creates a framework where workflows and processes can be modified to allow the deployment of enhanced outputs that are derived from Lean Six Sigma.
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Improved Returns:
When companies deploy BPM or Lean Six Sigma, they are known to improve the bottom line compared to the ones that do not utilize either of them. However, when they integrate both the methodologies effectively, achieve long-lasting benefits across the organization.
Currently, we are seeing only large companies that deploy both BPM and Lean Six Sigma together. But SMBs / SMEs can also reap rich dividends by integrating both methodologies. Industry experts believe that those companies that utilize either Lean Six Sigma and BPM, or both gained tremendous improvement on various organizational KPIs, But, whereas those who performed the integration of these two initiatives gained more success in terms of better revenue generation.
There is no doubt that both initiatives complement each other really well, as their main objective is to streamline and manage processes more efficiently. While both may take different routes, the effort is towards the removal of wastage, gaining better control, and improving overall quality.
