Business Process Governance and its Importance: Complete Guide

Business Process governance is one of the biggest concerns in process management, but still is often overlooked and neglected by many organizations. Simply put, we say that process governance is the way of consolidation of process management initiatives by an organisation, staying within the standards, guidelines, and rules to work towards a common objective.

We can understand the term governance as the ability and capability to target and coordinate combined efforts with the approval and acceptance of all. The purpose of process governance is to prevent isolated and detached initiatives taken by the management from the processes that contribute only to small, and localized results.

It is essential that process improvements add value to the supply chain consistently, systematically and in an integrated manner when the strategic plan is already set by the top management of the company.

What is a Business Process? What is the Importance of an Efficient Business Process?

Business process definition can be a collection of tasks linked to delivering a service or product to a client. Simply put, processes are basically the set of activities or tasks, which, once completed, lead to the accomplishment of the business goals.

An effective business process is one that is based on a set of distinct and clearly specified business objectives. It ensures the highest efficiency of the processes, thus improving the quality of work.

Clearly defined processes yield the best results. In order to add value to the business process, it is important to develop a strong understanding of the business processes.

Efficient business processes have the following major qualities:

• Customer-centric

Customers are always the first for a successful business. Both internal and external processes affect the customers. Internal processes like accounting serve mostly internal customers.

But they have a great impact on the external customers as well. For example, inaccurate billing due to problematic tracking of labour hours affects external customers.

• Simple processes

Simplicity simply means a reduction in the number of tasks in a process. It also minimizes the training costs, interruptions, redundancy, replication, and blunders.

Large corporations keeping all the processes is almost impossible. They can still simplify their processes as much as possible, so there’s no stacking, or piling up of huge tasks.

• Lesser business rules

There are certain unavoidable rules that businesses need to follow: Security, authorization, wellbeing, and environmental and ecological norms. Ample rules are to be followed by any business.

Some rules are present to maintain the quality and steadiness of a business. Others are for bureaucratic purposes and to serve personal interests. With each rule, a wide range of processes is increased, which increases both, the process costs and cycle time. For example, do you really need multiple signoffs for office expenditures?

• Clarity of roles and responsibilities

Clarity of roles nurtures the responsibility and ownership of work. Without clear roles and responsibilities, people will tend to be cut off from the work they don’t understand. And, create workarounds that make sense to them. With the evolution of business, job roles tend to change.

These changes could be substantial, particularly for major transformation initiatives. It becomes crucial to revisit every person’s role and responsibilities periodically.

• Smart Sequence of work

Tasks which are streamlined bring efficiency to execution. An in-depth understanding of what is to be done helps sequence the tasks appropriately. This optimizes the flow, thus minimizing the wait time.

• Perfect Alignment and Integration

When there’s involvement of a lot of people from various departments or locations, there is a chance of bottleneck creation within the process.

These are the top qualities of a sound process that make it effective and efficient. The interdependency of tasks and potential overlaps of work across an organization introduce complexity to processes.

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What is Business Process Governance? | Definition

Business process governance, or process governance, or business process management (BPM) governance definition is the incorporation of rules and regulations for BPM program managements and initiatives.

In Business process governance, you need to set standards and prioritize the BPM efforts. The BPM efforts involve the identification of leaders in BPM governance and defining the participant’s role in the BPM project. All this is done to improve the strategies of BPM.

The final objective of both process governance and process management is the optimization of the business processes within an organization. This is used to make the workflow smoother, more efficient, and effective.

Business process governance comprises establishing the internal BPM centres to achieve excellence or competency centres to share the best process improvement practices and spread awareness of the right BPM standards and set priorities.

The work of governance is also monitoring and documenting the success and failure of the organization’s BPM initiatives. Business process governance is usually supervised and monitored by teams consisting of both IT and business professionals.

Borrowing the concept of BPM governance from the IT sector, we can deliver the BPM project’s goals. For implementing any BPM project, how do you determine which elements can or should be considered to be a part of BPM governance?

Pro Tip: While setting up the BPM governance for any BPM project, you should always keep in mind the ops or operational aspects involved in the project delivery!

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What should be the approach of Business Process Governance?

The governance approach related to BPM should be able to define a certain set of strategies, roles, responsibilities and processes that describe how the project-specific BPM activities must be directed, administrated, and controlled.

All of these processes align together to meet specific standards. The core elements of the governance approach, like domains and building blocks, need to be further detailed.

What are the BPM Governance Domains?

The BPM Governance domains include the following:

• People: The entities that perform various roles, responsibilities and relationships within an organization.
• Processes: Governing and governed processes facilitate governance by providing an accurate definition of processes.
• Technology: The major tools and infrastructure required to handle Business Process Modelling (BPM).

What is the Importance of Process Governance?

Process Governance is used to fill the bridge between the strategy and execution of an organization. If Process Governance is absent, there will be a huge chance that you might not find any takers for the process improvement initiatives.

In the beginning, you may be successful in wooing the higher authorities to enable the new process improvement initiative. But without an effective process governance framework, they will start losing their interest with the passing of time, and there is a high chance of your initiative going down the drain.

An efficient process governance framework makes sure that the success of an organization is based on a set of consistent processes and not just a handful of skilled employees.

Business process governance is important in a business because it serves the following:

• Standardization of the process initiatives.
• Encouraging the alignment of these initiatives.
• Encouraging continuous improvement of business processes.
• Definition of roles and responsibilities of the processes.
• Determination of power to decide the procedures.
• Transformation into a more agile organization in response to the occurrence of changes.
• Promotion of the quality of process initiatives.
• Modification of management processes for daily application of culture.
• Alignment of management processes with the strategic objectives of the company.
• Ensuring that the processes office coordinates these initiatives and gives the necessary support to all areas involved.

To simply put, process governance should be capable of promoting the guidance and direction of process management to create collaboration between the initiatives and continuous improvement. Due to this reason, it can use some of the initiatives.

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How do we implement Process Governance?

Companies create their own CoE (Center of Excellence) for Process Governance that consists of process consultants and analysts’ teams who provide guidance, backing and training for any BPM initiative that runs across the organization.

The core CoE team members take the responsibility to make contact with business operation teams, learn their ache areas and finally figure out new performance improvement ideas.

Being a part of the Process Governance CoE, apart from providing your expertise on niche areas like process consulting, process modelling using specific tools, etc., you also need to have a certain business understanding in order to have a good discussion with the business operation teams and comprehend the business value chain.

One of the major factors in implementing a successful Process Governance framework or a CoE is driving the buy-in from the potential and current business leads and the executive team. These business leads and executives must be engaged at the very first stage while the ideas are being structured so as to implement a new process improvement initiative. They have to get involved in creating the roadmap for the initiative.

How is a Process governance model created?

Korhonen proposed 4 levels of the Process governance model, which are as follows:

• Committee procedures: Strategic level

They are perfect for the macro processes. They create effective alignment with the corporate strategy. Selection and prioritization of projects are enabled in this process. You need to allocate resources at this level.

• Office processes: Tactical level

They are required to train and help in the sustenance of project implementation methods. At this level, specific methods, standards, rules, and tools have to be defined. It determines and maintains the process architecture.

• Group Manager processes: Tactical level

He is basically the “owner” of the processes. All your performances are tracked at this stage. You need to lead projects along with these processes.

• Group project manager: Operational level

It needs to be operated every day in the process. The operational level is basically responsible for its implementation.

As described above, the process governance concept is like a caretaker of a company’s integrity, and it should be able to maintain its steadiness and align with the organization’s visions at the same time. You need to use apt and up-to-date BPM tools to implement process governance correctly.

How does BPM help in Managing Process Governance?

To understand why we need BPM, you must know what happens if you don’t use it.

1. Shortage of data.
2. Wastage of time.
3. The chances of errors increase by many folds.
4. Unsatisfied customers.
5. Dispirited employees.

Sounds awful, right? To save yourself from all the above situations, you need proper process management.

Successful business process management is capable of producing the desired outcomes. With the emergence of BPM platforms, the tedious manual work has now become automated. That means, fewer human interventions are required. This, in turn, ensures better accuracy and efficiency.

You now focus all your energy on your core competitions while the BPM platform does all the tiresome tasks. Due to this, resource optimization is ensured, and balance is maintained.

Good business process management techniques assure the best results at a very low cost. It comes in handy while managing and performing process governance norms accordingly.

Business process governance, or process governance, or business process management (BPM) governance definition is the incorporation of rules and regulations for BPM program managements and initiatives.

In Business process governance, you need to set standards and prioritize the BPM efforts. The BPM efforts involve the identification of leaders in BPM governance and defining the participant’s role in the BPM project. All this is done to improve the strategies of BPM.

The final objective of both process governance and process management is the optimization of the business processes within an organization. This is used to make the workflow smoother, more efficient, and effective.

Business process governance comprises establishing the internal BPM centres to achieve excellence or competency centres to share the best process improvement practices and spread awareness of the right BPM standards and set priorities.

The work of governance is also monitoring and documenting the success and failure of the organization’s BPM initiatives. Business process governance is usually supervised and monitored by teams consisting of both IT and business professionals.

Borrowing the concept of BPM governance from the IT sector, we can deliver the BPM project’s goals. For implementing any BPM project, how do you determine which elements can or should be considered to be a part of BPM governance?

Pro Tip: While setting up the BPM governance for any BPM project, you should always keep in mind the ops or operational aspects involved in the project delivery!

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What should be the approach to Business Process Governance?

The governance approach related to BPM should be able to define a certain set of strategies, roles, responsibilities and processes that describe how the project-specific BPM activities must be directed, administrated, and controlled.

All of these processes align together to meet specific standards. The core elements of the governance approach, like domains and building blocks, need to be further detailed.

What are the BPM Governance Domains?

The BPM Governance domains include the following:

• People: The entities that perform various roles, responsibilities and relationships within an organization.
• Processes: Governing and governed processes facilitate governance by providing an accurate definition of processes.
• Technology: The major tools and infrastructure required to handle Business Process Modelling (BPM).

What is the Importance of Process Governance?

Process Governance is used to fill the bridge between the strategy and execution of an organization. If Process Governance is absent, there will be a huge chance that you might not find any takers for the process improvement initiatives.

In the beginning, you may be successful in wooing the higher authorities to enable the new process improvement initiative. But without an effective process governance framework, they will start losing their interest with the passing of time, and there is a high chance of your initiative going down the drain.

An efficient process governance framework makes sure that the success of an organization is based on a set of consistent processes and not just a handful of skilled employees.

Business process governance is important in a business because it serves the following:

• Standardization of the process initiatives.
• Encouraging the alignment of these initiatives.
• Encouraging continuous improvement of business processes.
• Definition of roles and responsibilities of the processes.
• Determination of power to decide the procedures.
• Transformation into a more agile organization in response to the occurrence of changes.
• Promotion of the quality of process initiatives.
• Modification of management processes for daily application of culture.
• Alignment of management processes with the strategic objectives of the company.
• Ensuring that the processes office coordinates these initiatives and gives the necessary support to all areas involved.

To simply put, process governance should be capable of promoting the guidance and direction of process management to create collaboration between the initiatives and continuous improvement. Due to this reason, it can use some of the initiatives.

How do we implement Process Governance?

Companies create their own CoE (Center of Excellence) for Process Governance that consists of process consultants and analysts’ teams who provide guidance, backing and training for any BPM initiative that runs across the organization.

The core Coe team members take the responsibility to make contact with business operation teams, learn their areas of expertise, and finally figure out new performance improvement ideas.

Being a part of the Process Governance CoE, apart from providing your expertise on niche areas like process consulting, process modelling using specific tools, etc., you also need to have a certain business understanding in order to have a good discussion with the business operation teams and comprehend the business value chain.

One of the major factors in implementing a successful Process Governance framework or a CoE is driving the buy-in from the potential and current business leads and the executive team. These business leads and executives must be engaged at the very first stage while the ideas are being structured so as to implement a new process improvement initiative. They have to get involved in creating the roadmap for the initiative.

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How is a Process governance model created?

Korhonen proposed 4 levels of the Process governance model, which are as follows:

• Committee procedures: Strategic level

They are perfect for the macro processes. They create effective alignment with the corporate strategy. Selection and prioritization of projects are enabled in this process. You need to allocate resources at this level.

• Office processes: Tactical level

They are required to train and help in the sustenance of project implementation methods. At this level, specific methods, standards, rules, and tools have to be defined. It determines and maintains the process architecture.

• Group Manager processes: Tactical level

He is basically the “owner” of the processes. All your performances are tracked at this stage. You need to lead projects along with these processes.

• Group project manager: Operational level

It needs to be operated every day in the process. The operational level is basically responsible for its implementation.

As described above, the process governance concept is like a caretaker of a company’s integrity, and it should be able to maintain its steadiness and align with the organization’s visions at the same time. You need to use apt and up-to-date BPM tools to implement process governance correctly.

How does BPM help in Managing Process Governance?

To understand why we need BPM, you must know what happens if you don’t use it.

1. Shortage of data.
2. Wastage of time.
3. The chances of errors increase by many folds.
4. Unsatisfied customers.
5. Dispirited employees.

Sounds awful, right? To save yourself from all the above situations, you need proper process management.

Successful business process management is capable of producing the desired outcomes. With the emergence of BPM platforms, the tedious manual work has now become automated. That means, fewer human interventions are required. This, in turn, ensures better accuracy and efficiency.

You now focus all your energy on your core competitions while the BPM platform does all the tiresome tasks. Due to this, resource optimization is ensured, and balance is maintained.

Good business process management techniques assure the best results at a very low cost. It comes in handy while managing and performing process governance norms accordingly.

Conclusion

Business is no more mere commerce between two enterprises but has become a science and subject of study. A lot of thought and research goes into developing good business traits and efficient business processes.

Using effective process governance, one can easily uplift one’s business and manage it better. When an organization abides by the standard rules and regulations, it doesn’t face any bigger troubles in the future, and hence a sustainable working environment is created.