I had a very interesting and lengthy discussion this evening with an SMB that had been reading about our company’s BPM software and was pretty certain that Business Process Management Software in general could be used to improve the way he did businesses. He prefaced the call by saying he had only a handful of people in his company and that he understood based on my previous blog post that this meant that he probably wouldn’t be a candidate for BPM Software. However, he had also read that there were exceptions (as I noted) and that he believed his business was an exception because his business was based on a very sophisticated, high value add workflow thereby justifying the utility of a good bpm software. He ran through the process with me verbally over the phone, and ….eureka! Together we struck BPM Gold. His business was indeed based on one of those beautiful, niche based workflows that could easily be automated with a simple to use workflow software solution eventhough he was part of a very small SMB.
So, I thought it would be worth digging a little deeper (without talking specifically about this man’s particular business) in order to help other SMB owners and managers out there reading this blog to understand whether or not BPM software can help improve your business. To make things a little more interesting, for the purpose of this post, we are going to narrow our focus and talk about SMBs that have less than 30 employees. As I said previously, if you have 100 employees or more, and they are using computers (i.e. office workers instead of picking oranges) than BPM is definitely for you. So if that is the case, you should skip this blog post and start finding a good BPM Vendor and start trialing their software.
Assuming you are a business with less than 30 employees, or a consultant (BPM consultants, Business Process Improvement Consultants, business re-engineering consultants, etc) trying to figure out if BPM software is the software you need for a client then try taking the test below.
Now, bare in mind what I have developed is a HIGHLY experimental framework. I’d love to get feedback on whether or not this worked for you or not. If you score below 5 then you definitely do not need workflow software. For each question below if you answer positively then give yourself 1 point. If you score between 5 and 7 then you are an average candidate for workflow software, and if you score a 7 or higher than you are an excellent candidate for BPM software. So here we go (REMEMBER, only take this test if you have less than 30 employees!).
1) Are you a services business or a product business? If you have less than 25 employees and you are a product based business than you are less likely to need BPM software (remember your ERP software will handle most of the basic manufacturing and accounting processes).
3) Do you have 2 or more 3rd parties that you subcontract part of your service to?
4) Do the companies you interact with require you to pass structured data in order for them to provide their service to you?
5) Have any of the companies you interact with mentioned that you can use their service through a web services API?
6) Do you have 5 or more forms that require you or a customer or supplier to input structured data (names, numbers, addresses, yes/no)?
7) Are your revenues above $4 million annually?
Do you produce 1 or more documents (contracts, invoices, letters) for each transaction in your business?
9) Do you already have a document management system, wiki, or collaboration portal set up?
10) Do you wish you had access to reports which told you how long your core process was taking and where it is getting stuck?
So, how did you score? Do you need a BPM system? Of course this test is far from perfect, but give it a shot and give me some feedback!