As defined in business economics, business processes consist of the set of activities that, interrelated, create value. Improving and optimizing the management of these activities, therefore, results in raising the organization's performance. The more business processes are aligned with planned strategies and objectives (and monitored accordingly), the more business functions, leveraging ad hoc methodologies and tools, will contribute to creating successful products and services in the marketplace.
Technology offers invaluable contributions to the optimization of business processes or, eventually, reengineering them. There are so many, in fact, tools available for:
- Analyze the situation;
- Representing workflows;
- Facilitate the exchange of ideas and suggest possible interventions;
- Support the change and test its effectiveness in an ongoing settling.
However, it is critical that all this be done in full security and compliance: the information on which the processes are based must be secured from cyber threats and meet the requirements of national and international regulations.
From this point of view, aa strategy of process improvement cannot disregard an adequate assessment and management ofl risk, and must of course take into due consideration both the normsative as well as policies and guidelines internal. Truly effective business process optimization is inconceivable otherwise.
Process improvement: foster business process optimization
Doing process improvement means putting together a business recipe that has the ultimate goal of transforming by larger or smaller steps the culture and way of working to achieve its goals. Technology is one of the enablers that must be complemented by all the change management work that goes into making sure that the tools are used by everyone in the best way possible.
Digitizing a business process means performing an analysis of the way things are done, streamlining the steps that can be simplified with IT tools, automating part of the tasks. Basically, it is about improving business processes with a view to greater efficiency, but not only that.
Technology makes it possible to collect, homogenize and make immediately usable the data needed to work. From the correlation of such data - facilitated by specially designed software - it is possible to obtain valuable information to understand how it is right to proceed in order to have increasingly better performance. Big data analysis platforms are able to present elaborate strategic lines based on the real opportunities that may occur in the company and in the market, playing a leading role in strategy building.
Process improvement: optimization of business processes in full security
Mobile working, smart working, new production dynamics involving, among other things, international teams: as a result of all this, operating environments have changed radically. Networks are fluid, data sources countless (think IoT - Internet of things and Industrial IoT), and one of the biggest challenges for companies is security and privacy.
More specifically , process improvement is critical to keep in mind the prevention or otherwise minimization of risks. From an IT perspective, one must consider which assets are sensitive and implement all necessary policies to protect them. Monitoring and security policies and measures must extend to the entire supply chain as workflows increasingly contemplate the interchange of data and documents with partners and suppliers as well.
How to ensure business process compliance with Security by design
Evolved software tools designed with security in mind are essential allies in defining processes as safe as possible from vulnerabilities and regulatory compliance. In the latter regard, ideally, the principle of security by design as outlined in the European Data Privacy Regulation GDPR should be followed in writing the adopted code. This concept, in a nutshell, relates to the ability to release services designed with the intention of preventing problems related to regulatory noncompliance as much as possible.
In summary, adopting a secure software platform to improve business processes will generate in the company, therefore, a reduction of redundancies: each task will be framed and evaluated in the overall system so as to rationalize workflows as much as possible. Communication and, in general, knowledge sharing will also be improved.
All of this will help create a more agile and flexible organization, capable of responding to competitive challenges and reacting to market changes. In full compliance with security and compliance parameters.
