White Paper

10 Best Practices for BPM Implementation

By Rodrigue Le Gall, Co-Founder & Chief Services Officer, BonitaSoft

Business Process Management Overview

Business Process Management (BPM) is the discipline focused on optimizing the efficiency of a business. Although
Business Process Management implementation has many immediate and long-term benefits, a poor start can
jeopardize the overall success of the mission. The following steps and guidelines will help ensure the success of your
organization's BPM implementation while minimizing the possibility of any potential setbacks.

1. Dont try to model how you should work--model how you actually work

When deploying BPM in your organization, you must
establish a starting point. For instance, you could
identify a benchmark for how people currently perform
a given function at an optimal level of output and
prepare a model of that, whether graphically or as a
simple document. Once youve established these
benchmarks based on actual performance, you can then
establish a workflow model that you wish to implement.
There is considerable knowledge in any workplace that
goes undocumented: emails, phone calls, chats, or other
means. Organizations can use BPM to find that elusive
information and then capture it in a basic flow model
that shows how people are currently working. Before
deciding which tasks or steps performed by people in an
existing process can be improved, it is important to
recognize the realities of their environments.

2. Think big, start small

Individuals in an organization, department, or group Some common examples of processes that are easier to
may not realize how the process in which they are manage include filing expense reports, purchase orders,
involved is connected to another process, which is in and other administrative tasks.
turn connected to another process, and so on.
Though, the first implementation should be one in
Modifying one process without proper planning may
which real improvement actually makes a difference to
adversely affect other related processes as well. End-to-
the organization. This is mostly for the benefit of senior
end business can be complicated and it is important to
management, in order to convince them that future
take a graded approach rather than forcing changes on
BPM endeavors will be worthwhile; however, the results
the big picture all at once. However, it would be
will become even more effective if a large number of
wrong to claim that the big picture is not important. It is
people notice it as well. No one will be impressed if the
best to start with a smaller, more easily manageable
first application of BPM results in improvements like
project that will produce measurable results while
better handling of useless or truly unimportant tasks.
keeping the larger focus in mind.

3. Involve All Project Stakeholders

Another great debate in BPM circles lately has been business tool or the IT experts who are designing,
focused on who should own the BPM project: deploying, and maintaining the process applications.
the process stakeholders who are using BPM as a

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A Bonitasoft White Paper
Often, there are three major stakeholder roles involved
in a BPM deployment. Since business users or functional
owners are the people who actually know how the
process works and who are most often responsible for
its effectiveness, they must be involved during the
process modeling phase. One example of such a person
might be a purchasing director. Next, there are IT people
who know how to transform the process model into
business process applications. They understand the need
for connecting the application with existing systems and
are able to implement those connections. Lastly, there
are end users those who will eventually use the
deployed application. Tilting ownership of BPM too far in
one direction or the other poses a multitude of risks. On
the one hand, it is important that any BPM deployment
integrates seamlessly into your organizations existing IT
infrastructure.
On the other hand, it is also important to take process
stakeholders (the business users working with BPM on a
4. Choose the Tool Based on Needs
BPM applications come in many different forms that are
designed for different audiences. For instance, some
solutions are tailored to business executives. These are
mostly designed to track business processes with a
primary emphasis on control, visibility and efficiency.
Other tools are designed for software developers who
do application development based on BPM constructs.
Typically, open source BPM solutions are preferred by
developers due to the transparency of the code along in
addition to providing an ecosystem of complementary
solutions. Since these two classes of tools have
completely opposing purposes, it is essential that your
BPM implementation covers both roles with sufficient
versatility.
5. Choose a Champion to Lead the Way
First, you should find and select a champion to
manage the implementation process. This champion
should have a strong sense of initiative and must always
be searching for solutions to common problems. The
champion does not necessarily have to come from
management depending on the situation, it may be
wiser to appoint someone with a technical background
(bottom-up approach) instead.
In order for the implementation to move forward
smoothly, the champion must guarantee success to
those in upper management. If you do choose a
manager to serve as your champion, this person should
not have any additional workload or responsibility lest
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10 Best Practices for Business Implementation
daily basis) into account and recognize how they work.
BPM is about automating both human and system
interactions, so it is always critical to keep both
elements in mind. IT teams should understand how the
process stakeholders work and tailor their BPM
deployment so that they can understand and interact
with it.
Encourage as much collaboration as possible between
developers and end users throughout the deployment
process. IT can invest a lot of time developing the
perfect BPM application, but unless they involve the
end users that will be employing the process in their
actual work, there is no guarantee that the two sides will
ultimately make the project work. Conducting quick-and-
dirty test deployment during development to get hands-
on user feedback and check the usability of online forms
can make all the difference between a BPM deployment
that is quickly adopted and one that is quickly
abandoned.
Cost is also an issue since BPM is an investment towards
improving your organization's overall efficiency. As such,
the total cost of ownership (TCO) should be taken into
consideration; proprietary solutions usually have a per-
seat license cost and possibly even additional operating
costs as well (if deployed as software-as-a-service, for
instance) whereas open source solutions tend to cost
much less. For these reasons, proper BPM
implementation requires an economical tool that is
suited for everyone in your organization, though not
necessarily at the same time. For instance, a tool may be
used by executives to plan a BPM implementation and
then by IT workers to actually develop it and make it
work properly.
he or she become distracted from the main task. In any
case, the champion assumes all control of (and
responsibility for) the project.
As such, the champion must work to meet all essential
objectives: providing the necessary tools, training, and
ensuring service delivery. The main purpose of the BPM
champion is to oversee and direct the implementation
process by reporting to senior management, directly
intervening in the project when necessary, and
allocating personnel and resources to the project.
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A Bonitasoft White Paper
On a day-to-day basis, the role of the champion would
be to adapt existing routines to include BPM and
overcome resistance to these changes as necessary. The
champion should also protect the BPM implementation
6. Establish Milestones
BPM implementation becomes a daunting concept that
is difficult to achieve if it is incorrectly viewed as a large
singular goal. Instead, you should view the introduction
of BPM into your organization as being a smaller series
of changes that work towards a larger goal of full
implementation. Breaking the large main process down
into smaller phases keeps you from becoming over-
whelmed and even regressing backwards away from
your goal.
The champion should prepare a strong business case in
the implementation's early planning phase. This is
essential because many people tend to be adverse to
change and having everything planned in advance would
help to convince them that your proposal to implement
BPM is sound.
If there is any doubt or uncertainty, your champion
should be there to provide reassurance when necessary.
The business case is essentially the guidebook for the
entire project; it should cover the planned scope and
goals of using BPM in your organization in detail.
7. Provide Deliverables Promptly
Once BPM has been implemented, it is imperative that
the first benefits be available soon afterward. By
definition, a deliverable in a BPM context is a return-on-
investment of the BPM implementation, not the BPM
8. Encourage Collaboration
When planning your BPM strategy, it is essential to
ensure adequate communication and the appropriate
level of participation between all responsible parties
during the implementation process. Communication is
essential since BPM implementation requires you to
receive data from anyone else involved in the
implementation process in a timely manner.
Collaboration comes in a number of forms including:
shared developments amongst BPM developers (e.g. in a
shared repository), social mechanisms to share
discussion on particular aspects of the BPM project,
process execution, and the notation itself in which the
processes are expressed. BPMN (Business Process Model
Notation) is a graphical notation used to structure,
represent, and model business processes. BPMN helps
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10 Best Practices for Business Implementation
process itself and all staff involved in the process from
interference by senior management or other managers
in general.
For instance, it could address how BPM would improve
the lives of your workers or discuss how BPM would
fundamentally change how business is done. Having a
strong case from day one would allow you to easily set
goals, identify costs, and track the return on investment
of implementing BPM. Most importantly, the case
would contain the planned milestones for your
particular implementation.
To help refine the BPM implementation process into a
series of smaller steps, the champion should set a
reasonable deadline for each phase, modifying the
original business case if necessary. Each small deadline
should contribute to the main deadline. This allows you
to reap short-term benefits from BPM while maintaining
the long-term goal of large-scale implementation.
Furthermore, this strategy minimizes risk; by simplifying
a large implementation plan into a series of smaller
steps, the failure of any one phase only creates a small
setback instead of threatening the success of the whole
plan. This risk mitigation also allows for easier
adaptation if necessary.
infrastructure itself. In order to qualify as such, a
deliverable must be something that other people can
observe or use and it must be in a fully realized form.
(not future results or speculation)
to break down the barriers that exist between technical
people and management by allowing complicated
information to be presented in a way that everyone can
understand.
Ideally, the champion should work closely with all people
involved in the implementation process at any level. This
helps alleviate the management disconnect problem
where middle and senior management may not have a
full understanding about the day-to-day issues that
workers face. For this reason alone, it is important to
take a more democratic approach of including everyone
involved in the decision making process instead of
expecting middle and senior management to set the
policies in the typical top-down business environment.
BonitaSoft, 2011
A Bonitasoft White Paper 10 Best Practices for Business Implementation

To truly understand and oversee the various aspects and
pitfalls of BPM implementation, the champion will need
the contrasting views and contributions of everyone
rather than blind adherence to a single viewpoint.
For instance, managers frequently view processes in a
more abstract way, with the primary focus being on the
big picture rather than the actual methods involved.
Technically-oriented people (such as developers and IT
staff) are the exact opposite since they deal with the
actual processes directly. This gives them a more refined
view and understanding of each aspect and how
everything fits together because they are the ones who
ultimately have to make everything work in accordance
with the guidelines set by management.

9. Measure the Results Step-by-Step

During the implementation process, it becomes
necessary to track the progress of existing
implementation procedures to ascertain whether the
overall plan requires any adjustments. However, BPM
implementation can be hard to measure or track
effectively because it is more abstract than other
resources in your organization.
First, you must identify what type(s) of data you wish to
measure. This is where deliverables become important;
without deliverables, there is no way to gauge how
effective implementing BPM has been for that particular
process or how much value has been added.
The use of KPI (Key Performance Indicator) helps offset
this problem by providing a means to measure this data
and track the success of the implementation. KPI
frequently takes the form of business dashboards,
charts, etc. that display aggregated data from sales or
marketing divisions in an organization. In a BPM setting,
KPI could be used to conduct benchmarks on various
processes and analyze test results.

10. Use Professional Services When Necessary

You are likely to get far better results when you use
outside consultants (such as BonitaSoft and its partners)
than you would if you handled your organization's BPM
implementation completely internally. The main benefit
of using consultants is the experience they bring to the
table.
This is especially valuable in the case of software
implementation, where a significant design flaw or
miscalculation could cause major problems and damage
the overall investment. Using a contractor may cost
more up front, but the expertise pays off in the long run.
BonitaSoft experts recently worked with a major media
company to deploy BPM in their IT infrastructure.
Their goal was to connect everyone working in the
company (more than 400 employees) and allow them to
request new features via business process rather than
manually tracking down the IT manager and asking him
directly. BonitaSoft helped the project by encouraging
the client company to start small; the first process they
implemented involved gathering purchase orders
recently put into production from a single subset of the
company. Once that project was successfully deployed,
they graduated to more complex processes that showed
demonstrable project patterns that improved efficiency,
ultimately resulting in the purchasing process being
deployed throughout the whole company.

Contacts
BonitaSoft is the leading provider of open source business process management (BPM) software. Created
in 2009 by the founders of the Bonita project, BonitaSoft is democratizing the use of BPM in companies of
all sizes with an intuitive and powerful solution at an optimum cost. The Bonita solution has been
downloaded more than 800,000 times to date by companies and organizations worldwide.
Sales inquiries: sales@bonitasoft.com | Partner inquiries: partners@bonitasoft.com
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