What are 5 Easy Steps of Process Management in '24?

Process management can assist business leaders and analysts to develop a new product or service, complete a process such as a product order, manage customer service, and educate a new employee.

Although process management is a beneficial practice, implementing it can be challenging for business analysts might confuse it with other, slightly similar process, such as process improvement, process workflow management, process intelligence, process planning and process design.

We aim to describe process management, explain its differences with process improvement and workflow management and explore 5 BPM stages.

What is process management?

Business process management, BPM, is the method for standardizing and aligning company processes with their strategies and goals for effective management of business operations. BPM includes the analysis of firm’s processes to ensure efficient and smooth cross-departmental operations and exchange of information. The processes can be relevant to customers, partner companies, systems or suppliers.

Process management can automatically measure processes, check processes workflows, and manage them effectively with Business Process Management (BPM) Software or with a process intelligence tool, such as process mining.

BPM vs workflow management vs process improvement

Process management and workflow management are distinct concepts because process management deals with business processes as a whole. Workflow management, on the other hand, deals with the definition, analysis, and coordination of a single process’ workflows, unlike workflow management where a single process’s workflows (e.g., invoice register).

These two concepts are related to each other because process management and workflow management ultimately fuel process improvement. Process improvement detects inefficiencies and improves the process performance for a better customer experience. Explore other benefits of process improvement through real life examples and case studies.

What are the 5 stages of process management?

Business Process Management (BPM) contains five main steps:

1. Analyzing

At this pre-step to management, business analysts gather data, analyze it, and model it to understand the processes and to identify the ones to improve. The analysts prepare performance metrics that assess whether the process is efficiently executing the operations and adding value to the company.

Quick tip:

The analysts should dedicate some time to choose a relevant set of tools to analyze their data. For example, data science tools can be limited for the companies that to leverage their process event log data. In this case, these firms should look for a process mining and task mining software which apply data science techniques to process data.

2. Designing & Modeling

After understanding the current situation, the analysts should design or modify already created models to map and document ideal end-to-end processes. The documents can include information about the time, duration of each task, employees involved in the workflow.

Quick tip:

The analysts should ensure that the designed or updated processes are accurate and worthy of implementation. Also, once it is designed, analysts should plan the process by diving into the process workflows visualization to identify steps and activities.

3. Implementing

At this stage, analysts apply the formerly designed and planned process. Implementing the process is often required to update procedures, change the resourcing, train employees, and look for the relevant technology.

Quick tip:

Applying and monitoring the process at a small scale is recommended to measure the impact and revise it before using it.

4. Monitoring

At this stage, the entire process is executed at a broader scale, and analysts monitor and collect data to measure the process performance. With this phase, business analysts can see if the process is effective and fulfills the main goal or if it requires more improvements.

Quick tip:

It is recommended to compare the ideal model against the actual data to calculate the exact return on investment. Business analysts can generate relevant metrics or leverage process intelligence tools such as process mining or a digital twin of an organization to assess and compare the process models.

5. Optimizing

In this final step, business analysts should monitor and refine their processes based on data-driven models. Some analysts can identify process automation opportunities to avoid repetitive or manual activities. In some cases, business analysts need to update their processes due to a market or internal change.

Quick tip:

It is important to remember that sometimes processes may need to be re-design because they do not correspond to the changes happening, or they might require innovation.

Further reading

Learn more on process improvement technologies and framework:

• Pair Methodology with Technology for Process Improvement
• 4 Technologies that Accelerate Process improvement in 2022

If you want to to manage and improve your processes, start comparing vendors through our comprehensive and data-driven process mining vendor lists and BPM software lists.

Deploy these tools to manage your processes in an easy manner:

Efficiently plan of your processes by managing them with top workflow and process management tools such as:

• Workflow management software
• Low-code/No-code development platform
• Onboarding software

Assess different vendors with a transparent methodology yourself by downloading our checklist: 

And, if you still need more help: