Undertaking a BPM (Business Process Management) approach clearly aims to optimize the organization’s business processes thanks to the overview it provides of the interactions and the ability to detect any unnecessary knots or loops within the processes. . But for that, it is still necessary to fully understand all its concepts and adopt a common language between all the stakeholders. This is the goal pursued by BPMn modeling (Business Process Model and Notation), which provides a standardized and intelligible graphical representation so that everyone can move in the same direction and make business processes more reliable and more agile.
A process concerns a set of organized activities, which follow one another and are nourished by various incoming flows, to produce a result over time. Each activity can be broken down into tasks which can in turn be broken down into actions. Processes can be associated with any type of operation or service, from support to management, etc. They are therefore transversal and highly likely to evolve according to the development of the organization.
BPM (Business Process Management) is a methodology that aims to identify, break down and model the business processes of an organization: mapping, study of workflows, priority processes, management, supervision, etc. The purpose of using BPM is to maintain the fluidity of work and to support decision-makers in their operational performance objectives.
The BPMn standard (Business Process Model and Notation)
The BPMn standard (or “business process model and notation” in French) makes it possible to model the functioning of the organization by representing the business processes . It thus establishes a universal common language on the substance and on the form to visualize the succession of the activities of a process, the various changes and actors concerned, while being based on the concept of the swimming pools and the lines of swimming. BPMn experts consider that a pool corresponds to a process, a business entity or a role interacting with the process, and that it includes corridors which identify the stakeholders performing a set of tasks.
BPM and BPMn: too “process-centric” an approach?
With the acceleration of digital transformation in recent years, the BPM market is therefore definitely growing! Estimated at 9.2 billion dollars in 2021, it should reach 13.1 billion dollars in 2026 (source: In this context, the BPMn standard which offers both a macro and micro view on the functioning of the organization, facilitates the identification of all the collaborative workflows , sub-processes and tasks that one wishes to develop as part of a digital transformation project.
BPMn tools are therefore essential during the upstream design phase to formalize the processes but do not really allow them to be optimized . Indeed, if certain BPMn tools can manage process execution simulations in order to have a preliminary idea of their effectiveness, the modeling in itself is limited to the definition of the process and ultimately brings little or no optimization benefits.
Moreover, this purely “process-centric” approach quickly finds its limits in a digital transformation project because it does not sufficiently consider the exchange of information from one activity to another . The process-centered approach will certainly improve relations between those who work and those who organize the work, but the reality remains that at each stage of a process, information is moved, transformed and generates other information that will influence the very nature of the following processes… However, enhancing the value of data remains the key issue of any digitization project.
Data the great forgotten approach solely focused on processes
All processes lead to manipulate, transform and produce information. Deploying business applications based on BPM tools is important for the fluidity of work processes, but we must not lose sight of the fact that the exchange of information between individuals and data between applications constitutes the basis of what runs an organization. Also, more and more BPM software publishers having added application development studios to their solution, are now working on better taking into account the data behind each process. Especially since if the data and the processes influence each other, they can For example, in the context of the sale of a product, the order taking and validation process may frequently change while the product will remain the same but its codification will also be likely to change…
BPMn therefore remains an asset of any digital transformation, but one thing is certain, it is that discarding data amounts to setting aside the very essence of exchanges and business needs. Expectations are indeed less often expressed in terms of process than in terms of concrete data and information.
So, to succeed in your digital transformation projects, do you have to be “Data Driven” or “Process Driven”? The answer certainly lies in a compromise halfway between the two approaches where the Data-Driven approach naturally integrates with the dynamics around the processes in order to make good use of the data.
To maximize your chances of success in your digital transformation projects, don’t hesitate to read our expert opinion on best practices for switching to agile mode and improving the way you work…