Process Management: your foundation for a succesfull hyperautomation journey

In today’s world of global business, the pace of change is accelerating exponentially. Companies need to quickly adapt to changes, drive transformation and boost performance. Hyperautomation is one of the key drivers that can help companies achieve or maintain their competitive advantage. As mentioned in our article about hyperautomation, hyperautomation leverages a combination of automation technologies, such as RPA, Low-code, AI, and Intelligent Document Automation on top of existing systems of records. However, reaching the full potential of these technologies can be challenging without the foundation of a deep understanding of the business processes and a culture of continuous improvement and process aligned to the business strategy. At the core of these principles lies process management. This article covers the often-overlooked discipline of process management, its benefits and how it can drive your hyperautomation journey.

At its core, process management designs the way of working aligned with the organizational goals and customer needs by focusing on end-to-end processes. The scope of process management is broader than process optimization and design, it also incorporates elements such as strategy, culture, organizational structures and roles with the aim to establish the foundation for continuously improving end-to-end processes and process governance. By implementing process management, companies ensure the design and the documentation of the end-to-end processes remain relevant and up to date. Including performance measurement in process management positively impacts managing process cost. Furthermore, compliance to the increasing regulatory requirements should be included in the design of end-to-end processes.

However, achieving the goals of process management is complex in a world where customer needs are constantly changing, and new technological innovations are creating new business models. Therefore, we still see the following challenges within organizations, which also impact the performance of automation initiatives:

• Complexity: The scope of process management is complex in view ofthe integration of processes, data and technology in the process model and – in some cases – the differentiation between countries or business units. Leaving these factors unmanaged will lead to a suboptimal implementation of the process management function.
• No clear governance and process ownership: Organizations may struggle to establish clear guidelines and assign roles and responsibilities. Without clear process ownership, organizations lack clarity about who is responsible and accountable for managing specific processes. This can lead to inefficiency and lead to a decrease in the quality of process performance or output. It also has a negative effect on the adoption level of automation initiatives as there is no clear owner that drives the automation agenda for the process.
• Lack of transparency on process level: Process transparency within an organization refers to the clarity and openness of work procedures and responsibilities. Without process transparency, employees and stakeholders do not fully understand how decisions are made or tasks are performed. This can lead to miscommunication or employee distrust in management and impact your automation initiatives, because it is harder to define use cases.
• Heterogeneous processes across the company: Organizations often struggle with legacy systems and legacy processes with a large variety in the way tasks are performed and how resources and data are managed. This can lead to inconsistency and inefficiency in business operations. It also makes it difficult to achieve synergy between departments. Automation initiatives are impacted by heterogenous processes due to inconsistent or even contradictory requirements for the automation initiatives and higher costs when different supporting systems are used or with a high level of customization. 

Overcoming these challenges requires the adoption of a strong process management function. This foundation is based on four pillars: 1) Process governance 2) Collaboration and knowledge management 3) Business process management 4) Process mining.

Creating the foundation starts with the embedding of robust process governance, where the ambition of process management is articulated and mandate, roles & responsibilities are formalized. A significant opportunity exists from managing processes in an end-to-end manner rather than a functional manner. Global process owners (GPOs) are responsible for an end-to-end process, the design and implementation, the continuous improvement and accountability for the performance of the proces. The GPO is supported by process experts, who are the subject matter experts for specific processes and act as champions within their own community. Together they identify and prioritize the improvement initiatives. Therefore, they are essential for the success of your automation initiatives. A global process owner has a strong voice in driving the digital agenda of a process and is a critical stakeholder in making decisions involving your automation initiative. On the other hand, process experts have important subject matter knowledge that helps clearly define business requirements for your automation initiatives.

Collaboration and knowledge management is the approach to coordinating all efforts, resources, and capabilities within an organization towards a common objective. A robust collaboration management platform enhances internal communication, knowledge sharing while cutting through departmental silos, and ensuring all team members are moving with a common vision towards achieving organizational goals. A practical example of a way to enhance collaboration and knowledge management is by setting up a platform where the process model and process flows, roles and responsibilities and work instructions are published. An interactive platform provides the employees with functionalities for review, questions and contributions to design. The platform can help an automation team to better understand the business processes and communicate changes to processes after a finalized automation initiative.

Business process management is the discipline of mapping, analyzing, optimizing, and monitoring business processes to ensure efficiency and effectiveness. BPM ensures that processes are designed to be responsive and adaptable to change. By standardizing workflows and reducing bottlenecks, BPM paves the way for improved productivity, reduced costs, and enhanced operational agility. Using business process management practices also acts as a springboard for automation initiatives. Once a process is optimally designed from a process perspective, automation tools can be used to further drive efficiency and effectiveness. Without BPM practices, there is a risk of automating waste, which can lead to a higher cost of maintenance and may require more changes to your automation, because the process is not designed to be responsive and adaptable.

Process mining is used for process intelligence and process conformance and utilizes advanced data analytics techniques to extract insights from event logs and transactional data. It helps organizations uncover hidden patterns, bottlenecks, and inefficiencies within processes, enabling data-driven decision-making for process optimization. Process mining is crucial in process management as it provides a data- driven insight in how processes are performed by the end user. It also drives the automation strategy by providing better insight in process improvement opportunities and by determining the added value of an automation initiative by looking at indicators such as the throughput time of a process.

There are several key success factors that organizations should keep in mind when implementing process management. The most important ones are:

• Top-Down Support and Buy-In: Leaders must understand the value of process management and be committed to driving change.
• Process Governance and Ownership: Strong process governance is essential in effective dynamic process management.
• Technology in a platform: Using the right technology and process management tools is crucial to the success of dynamic process management. Using a platform brings all elements together.

By implementing process management with these success factors in mind, an organization can drive process improvements and operational efficiencies, continuously adapt to new business requirements, increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, and stay ahead of competition.

Process management is the foundation that exposes the benefits from the digital environment, the value of data from the systems of records and digital enablement using the hyperautomation technologies together. However, there are more factors that determine the success of your hyperautomation journey. KPMG’s Hyperautomation Maturity Scan helps your organization by providing a detailed report on the maturity level of your hyperautomation capability based on factors such as vision and strategy, automation tools and governance. Would you like to obtain more insight into how process management can help your organization, or more information about our hyperautomation scan? Feel free to contact us using the contact details below.