The advantages of business process management: How to convince your CEO

If you want to make the case for process management, it's always beneficial to highlight specific pain points within your organization that can be solved with process management software. For example, are you experiencing delays due to non-transparent processes that negatively impact revenue? Is your company losing time and money due to errors caused by manual systems? Remember, even poor processes can feel normal to your team over time, so your colleagues and superiors may not see the need to invest in a process management solution. Your first goal, therefore, should be to convince the decision makers in your organization of the importance of process optimization. Clearly highlight the operational inefficiencies from your real day-to-day work and, ideally, use concrete figures to show how poor processes affect individuals in your company, for example. In this way, you not only give a face to the problems, but also symbolically demonstrate how the entire company is negatively affected and can evoke emotional reactions.

To blurt it straight out is rarely a good idea. Therefore, do not mention the costs of the process management solution right at the beginning, but rather focus on the positive effects and especially the potential savings that the use of process management will bring to your company. If you focus on the costs, you will only reinforce the idea of the BPM system as another IT cost center that does not deliver any added value. Your management is used to automatically calculating the return on investment (ROI) for every company expense - so show exactly how your business will benefit from the investment: What are the costs associated with incorrect orders, late payments, and incorrect invoices? How many employee hours could business process management software save? Where could routine manual tasks be handled through simple automation? Once you have highlighted these benefits to your business, it should be easy to justify the cost of the software. If you have all the necessary data, you can also calculate when your company will reach the ROI - this gives your managers another point of reference and puts a concrete target in front of them.

Read more benefits of process management here

Take a look at how other companies in your industry are successful with business process management. In the succcess stories in our GBTEC Infohub, we give you a deep insight into the diversity of our projects, so you can see our customer successes for yourself: What challenges did other companies face? How did process management help them overcome them? How quickly were they able to increase productivity with process management? Find out how other companies in your industry have established efficient process and quality management and what concrete benefits they have gained from it. If your industry is not represented, take a look at the bigger picture: Which company had a similar starting situation as you currently have? For example, if you are an organization with multiple locations worldwide, look at how other global companies have successfully implemented a centralized process management tool despite having different languages. No matter what business you are in or what your goals are with process management, you are sure to find someone who has already gone your way. Share this success story with your management and use examples from others to illustrate how process management can also support your digital ventures in the company.

Explaining process management only in theory will not get you there. Schedule a meeting with your management or ask for some time at the next board meeting and impress the executives with a short presentation of your chosen BPM software demo. Keep the demo short and simple and package it in an engaging presentation. Highlight the benefits and features of the tool without going overboard with the technology. Focus on the features that are likely to impress your superiors the most, rather than showing complicated IT tricks. Instead, demonstrate processes that your management is directly involved in, for example, so they can immediately see how the software eases their workload. With this interactive experience, you can evoke a "wow" feeling, visualizing the value and benefits of business process management on an emotional level. Because they can only understand what they can see - and you're well on your way to getting buy-in for what you're doing.

If you follow the tips above, your CEO should already be more open to the idea of considering process management software for your company's processes. Finally, keep in mind that executives are always interested in facts - in addition to costs - so it's best to include those right away. Provide your managers with a step-by-step schedule of how long the implementation of a business process management system is estimated to take. For example, in each phase of the implementation, record how much time will be needed to introduce and train employees, who will support them, and whether there may be any interruptions during the implementation. The more details you disclose, the better, because if you communicate a clear goal and path to get there and hold out the prospect of potential success at the end of the process management implementation, you are much more likely to get your management's support. And if you want to be even more convincing, show the day-to-day work with process management at the end of the schedule, explaining how process management will positively change the tasks for the HR manager or the marketing department, for example.