BPM (Business Process Management) and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems have both become essential software for medium to large enterprises. Both systems can optimize your business operations, help your employees to work more efficiently and save on operating costs.
However, despite their similarities, they serve different purposes. So, you need to make sure that you select the software that is right for your needs, or if you are using them together, properly deploy and integrate the two different systems so that they achieve their full potential and you can reap the benefits.
BPM (Business Process Management) allows users to map and analyze business processes, which enables process standardization and ensures compliance. It can be used to manage single processes, such as customer onboarding, or used as an end-to-end solution to optimize and integrate business processes across an organization.
When processes are mapped out, it enables workflow automation to streamline business activities. BPM enables tasks to be routed and automatically handed off to the next person or stage in the process, providing visibility of where the tasks sit within the process and what stage they are at.
BPM offers numerous benefits to users. The visibility of processes allows opportunities for continuous improvement as you can identify bottlenecks, redundancies, and inefficiencies in business processes, which can then be addressed and enhanced.
The agile nature of BPM allows organizations to adapt business processes quickly. This lets you respond to external changes, such as market fluctuations or regulatory changes, or internal factors, such as a change in strategy to provide a more competitive service.
Additionally, BPM improves collaboration between departments by providing communication channels, incorporating feedback loops, and facilitating task assignment. BPM allows organizations to automate dynamic and complex, enterprise-wide processes, improving business efficiency.
An ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system is software that brings business data together in one place and acts as the system of record for an organization. It usually houses business functions such as accounting, procurement, human resources, supply chain operations, general project management and more.
This helps to manage day-to-day operations of an organization by enabling the flow of data between departments. An ERP acts as a single source of truth that optimizes resource usage across the enterprise and aids productivity.
Without an ERP, data can end up in standalone systems, leaving valuable information trapped in silos. ERP systems provide a central database with visibility of data across departments, which informs decision-making and gives a complete view of information for more efficient operations. This holistic view of information also allows staff to easily see customer details and the status of their interactions, allowing agents to provide better customer service.
Additionally, having an ERP reduces the need for employees to manually input data into different systems, which lowers the risk of errors or duplicate records. This ultimately leads to increased productivity and lower operating costs.
There is some cross over in what BPM and ERP systems can do, which can cause some confusion. But they do have different uses. Essentially, an ERP facilitates the storage and sharing of data around the business, and BPM enables process management, optimization, and automation.
ERP focuses on centralizing data, whereas BPM focuses on the flow of data. You would use an ERP for data visibility and storage in a central environment, allowing different departments to input data in one location and BPM then provides more granular data management, ensuring process steps are carried out by the right people, in the right order.
Acting as the centralized repository, ERP is better suited for integrating core business functions, whereas BPM can help with end-to-end process improvement and provides workflow customization.
Despite their differences, there are also some similarities between BPM and ERP where their benefits overlap. Both BPM and ERP systems optimize processes by reducing manual data input and steps, mitigating errors and optimizing efficiency. The two systems provide data management for improved consistency and accuracy of information across the organization.
BPM and ERP both have reporting and analytics capabilities to provide visibility into business operations and aid strategic decision-making.
BPM is more process-centric and can automate more complex processes that an ERP can’t. So, it can be beneficial to integrate BPM with your ERP system to enhance overall efficiency and see the benefits of both platforms. You can use an ERP to control the database requirements, and a BPM system to manage the flow of data.
Multinational document solutions organization, Kyocera used SAP as their ERP system to manage vast amounts of data across the organization. They wanted to optimize their business processes so that they no longer had to rely on email and Excel spreadsheets to share data and manually enter it into their systems. They integrated Bizagi with SAP to automate the special pricing approval processes, reducing process time by 85% from 10 days to just 1.5 days on average. This accelerated turnaround to win more new business, with a pipeline of €300million in revenue each year.
“The integration of Bizagi with our ERP system, SAP, was an emotional breakthrough for our organization… It was not about convincing those people their job has disappeared, but showing them how easy that task now is, and providing them with opportunities to better spend their time,” said Kyohei Shimada, Senior Manager Technology Centre Department at Kyocera Document Solutions, Europe.
A BPM solution is the best choice for you if you are looking to optimize business processes end-to-end across your organization by modeling and automating processes while ensuring work is carried out in a particular sequence. BPM systems are more process-centric and will help to optimize and manage business operations.
An ERP solution is the best choice if you are looking for a centralized database to manage large amounts of data across different departments by integrating business processes and functions into a single platform for data management. ERP systems will help ensure connected business operations by managing data concisely.
The Bizagi platform allows you to model, design automate and manage your business processes on a single low-code platform. Our platform is helping companies around the world to evaluate, improve and automate business processes, all on one enterprise platform.
