Business Process Mapping and ERP
By Johnny Nugent
Business Process Mapping (BPM) is a way to visualize what a business does by taking into account things such as roles, responsibilities, and standards. There are many tools out there that can help with business process mapping, such as Microsoft Visio, which allows users to build many different types of diagrams and flowcharts.
The Benefits of Business Process Mapping
Visualize Your Process
The biggest benefit of business process mapping is the ability to visualize how the various processes at your business flow together.
Refine Your Process
After you visualize how your business currently works, you can use the BPM to refine your business processes. Many mapping tools have a drag and drop feature so you can change around your process on the fly.
Increase Compliance
Whether its ISO 9001, SOX, or some other compliance regulation, a robust business process map can help ensure your company is meeting the necessary requirements.
Training New Employees
Having processes documented in a business process map is important when it comes to training new employees. Being able to visualize how business processes work on a day to day basis in a flowchart or diagram is often easier to understand than reading a wordy document.
Creating Easy Audit Trail
Understanding how items flow throughout different parts of the business will help with any internal audit needs.
How BPM and ERP Relate
Creating a solid business process map is the best way to kick off an ERP search project. If you don’t understand where your company processes are currently, how can you verbalize where you’d like to see your company processes go when conducting an ERP search?
Conclusion
Start by creating a thorough business process map of how your company processes flow currently. After that is complete you can look for areas of weakness and ways to optimize those processes. Choose an ERP system that helps you address these weaknesses and improve overall efficiency and productivity.
