Process improvement in any organization is challenging as the businesses today have complex and dynamic business network. The key is to have the right approach/partner can get you there.
Ameet Gokhale, President - Professional Services & eZeBPO, e-Zest Solutions, talks on Business Process Management and the right approach to manage the company’s business processes to ensure corporate excellence.
Q: Apart from the conventional definition, please tell us what is Business Process Management (BPM) according to you in the current market context?
Ameet’s Response:
To put it simply, BPM is a systematic approach to manage and optimize the company's business processes to ensure corporate performance is maximized. This is done by involving any combination of analytical modeling, automation, control, measurement and optimization of business activity flows. One needs to discover, document and automate to continuously improve business processes to increase efficiency and reduce costs. The key is that BPM needs to be a repeatable predictable process so that it becomes a business discipline. BPM gives an organization the ability to define, execute, manage and refine processes that:
- Work with multiple points of contact (failure points when too many own or drive one process)
- Involve human interactions – recruitment or human resources
- Handle dynamic process rules that keep changing based on the nature of work
Q: What is your personal definition of the best approaches followed in BPM?
Process improvement is challenging as the businesses today have complex and dynamic business network. The key is to have the right approach that can get you there. We have already helped our clients from a wide range of industries successfully meet their process improvement goals. We do this by charting a custom roadmap for process improvement success that meets our clients business’ unique needs, without breaking their budget. This is done by:
- Look at the low hanging fruit
- Working on processes that add maximum business value
- Map the long term value and then start with short term quick fixes
- Ensure the improvements happen across the business
Q: What are the most difficult challenges within a BPM project that e-Zest has overcome?
We have already helped our clients come up with better ways of maximizing their footprint with minimizing cost and time. One of our clients created the world's most downloaded password security and management software for mobile devices and computers. They were looking for a 24x7 global, consolidated, robust support model for product sustenance and user support. So we looked at the key points that our client wanted to address. We put together a dedicated product sustenance support team to address technical as well as customer support needs from onsite and offshore location. Some of the key activities handled by this support team include:
- Handling installation issues for application on Windows, Mac, Linux, IOS, Android, and BlackBerry Z10 & Q10 OS and also on Windows Phone 8
- Managing support requests for managing data syncing issues for all the operating systems
- Issues related to authentication and authorization of application for all platforms
- Handling new device setup for same user account
- Handling customer support requests with e-mail and live chat support
- Application setup on Web App and browser extensions support
- Resolving issues with auto-launch of websites and auto-fill of login information in websites.
- Cloud backup of data and restoring support
- Providing solutions with latest launch of Keeper for groups issue which is perfect for a large organization
- Assisting users to navigate client website with purchase, download, support, webinar, benefits and other enquiry related issues
This helped our client by ensuring their team was able to concentrate on their product lifecycle, creating new features, improving on the UI and UX, scaling without having to invest on recruitment, training.
Q: What are the best practices followed by e-Zest in BPM?
One feedback we keep getting from all our customers is the value add we provide to them. Our approach is one of not just a trusted partner but a consulting one where we take ownership of the work we are delivering and are constantly looking for ways to value add. Here are some simple, yet effective, practices we follow:
- People: Hire and start with the existing resources
- Transition: Smooth transition with onboard resources
- Implementation: Immediate implementation with industry experience
- Accuracy: Key metrics show quality in frequent performance reports
- Consistency: Automated weekly reports keep predictable schedule
- Feedback: Always provide comprehensive analysis and calibrations
- Collaboration: Joint weekly, monthly, or quarterly business reviews
- Assessment: Team performance and challenges are discussed
- Refinement: Dynamic, responsive application of client feedback
Q: Considering the current market trajectory, where do you see e-Zest standing in the next five years in BPM?
Five years is a very long time in this every second counts industry. We ourselves are a constantly evolving and transformation oriented company with innovation at the heart of our approach of delivering services or products. We have been and will continue to be known as one of the market leaders when it comes to using and implementing the latest technology. We constantly keep looking at the technologies that are shaping our customers world and we are in a good place to understand these well. But there are a number of nuances that one tends to miss out particularly when you look at evolution over a longer period of time.
Today everything is into much more real time information therefor all the systems are geared towards trying to establish information and senses that can pick up these signals on a real time basis. But when you think about progression and evolution those are longer term trends where Business Process Management will move towards ‘Process Progression Predictability’ where improvement prior to application will need to be quantifiable. My belief is that with some of the work that is currently being done at e-Zest Innovation Labs we will be one of the pioneers of this. We will be able to assist our clients with defining strategies and laying out the frameworks for this and do the execution and implementation of these strategies.
