The 10 Biggest Trends in Process Management

Operational excellence is top of almost every company’s to-do list in 2020, with process quality, customer satisfaction, and cost-cutting the primary goals.

Operational excellence is a collective term for optimization programs that align all business processes with customer needs, quality and efficiency. Finding out where your processes can be improved, with errors and spending reduced, is the best way to begin. But where do you start?

Here are some of the top trends in process management to set you on your operational excellence journey in 2020.

Under Pressure to optimize

This will be the year of a Renaissance in operational excellence, with an unclear economic situation adding to the pressure to get it done.  After years of talking about disruptive transformation (“Are we doing the right things?”), you will now hear more about process excellence projects (“Are we doing things right?”).

Business models – from concept to action

Almost 50% of all companies currently report that their business model has changed or is in the process of changing. In 2020, many companies will use their process repository to integrate new business models into their operational business operating system, to achieve sustainable effects.

Customer-oriented processes

Competitive advantages arise from the understanding of customer needs along the customer journey and the critical touchpoints that massively influence customer satisfaction. In 2020, innovative companies will close the conceptual and organizational gap between the more inward-looking business processes and external customer journeys.

A single point of truth

2020 will see a further rollout of enterprise management systems to standardize processes and bring the necessary process know-how to every workplace. Enterprise management systems translate strategic goals and standardized process models into the individual language of the employee and make the process knowledge available at the workplace on a role-specific basis.

Process mining & LOB

Many companies have launched process mining initiatives to take the next step in the maturity of their process management. In 2020, analyzing the conformity of processes will gain importance. Monitoring actual executed processes provide insights into the potential for optimization in terms of throughput times, quality and costs. Process mining tools are now so easy to configure that projects are driven by business departments (with IT support).

Process mining & customer journeys

As the main competitive advantages lie in customer-oriented processes, 2020 will bring an extension of process-oriented monitoring to customer interactions; marketing departments will use process-mining applications to analyze customer journeys; journey mapping and journey analytics will merge into an integrated customer lifecycle management.

Robotic process automation (RPA)

Many companies have successfully implemented RPA systems to automate activities at the workplace level, often with different RPA systems tested and used in the same company. 2020 will bring consolidation: Companies will integrate RPA-supported, workplace-oriented processes into the company’s process landscape; the introduction of RPA competence centers will also lead to a standardization of applications.

Task discovery as a rising star

Task discovery is relatively new, it is an innovative discipline within the framework of RPA – with the aim of automatically detecting and analyzing activities before they are automated. In 2020, task discovery components will merge with process mining applications: The analysis of individual tasks will be integrated into the end-to-end analysis of business processes and will provide a picture at various levels of detail that will be used to optimize the overall process.

The license to operate

Proof of compliance and control of processes in all legal regulations for all relevant segments is an essential aspect in the context of process management (license to operate). 2020 will see a continuation of the trend to use enterprise management systems for the management of these documents in close connection with the company’s business processes. In addition, compliance analytics is gaining ground, i.e. key figures and performance indicators for the management of compliance and quality, using process mining approaches.

UX, UX, UX

The user-friendliness of apps and applications in process management is of outstanding importance for acceptance and overall success enterprise-wide.

In 2020, process management applications will change to meet the target groups in business departments with good usability and user experience (UX) to ensure simple and intuitive use.

Written by Helge Hess