In this article, we take a brief look at Business Process Management (BPM), how it works, and how it can add value.

What Is Business Process Management (BPM)?

BPM is also referred to as business process improvement (BPI), business process re-engineering, continual improvement process (CIP), and process improvement. BPM is the ongoing, continuous practice or discipline of improving and controlling the processes of the business using analysis and modelling.

Types

There are different types of BPM including document-centric (built-around a core, particular document), human-centric BPM (humans decide what happens after each step in the process), and Integration-centric BPM (based around the integration of different software systems).

Why?

The goals of BPM should be to keep improving business processes to keep them in alignment with the goals of the business as the business and the business environment evolve. This will help to:

– Enable strategic clarity.

– Keep alignment of the firm’s resources and help executives to determine how to deploy, monitor, and measure those resources.

– Increase discipline in daily operations.

– Remove bottlenecks.

– Align business functions with customer needs, thereby improving marketing.

– Reduce costs and minimise errors and risk.

BPM and RPA

Whereas Robotic Process Automation (RPA) tools let companies configure software bots to capture and interpret applications and are a way to help automate monotonous, routine, and time-consuming tasks, BPM is the overall holistic approach to optimising and automating business processes. RPA is another tool that can be used as part of a company’s BPM strategy and, therefore, BPM and RPA could be thought of as being complementary.

How To Apply BPM

BPM should be based around outcomes and the process is based around 5 steps of the BPM lifecycle which are:

1. Design. This involves a review of current business rules and arriving at desired outcomes by taking account of the views of key stakeholders and management.

2. Model.

3. Execute.

4. Monitor.

5. Optimize.

BPM tools, such as BPM software enable businesses and organisations to use a proven, systematic approach to managing and optimising their business processes. Well-designed BPM software can also help IT specialists to construct business workflows and connect different systems.

Popular BPM Software Tools

Examples of popular BPM software include:

Kissflow – A platform to optimise, manage, and track all company work.

Nintex – The Nintex Process Platform enables standardising of workflows and automation of business processes.

Processmake – Low-Code BPM Software.

Busagi – Enterprise software for Business Process Automation on a low-code development platform.

Monday.com – Enterprise BPM platform.

Process Bliss – BPM software with a drag & drop process flowchart builder.

Other examples include Wrike, Forecast.app, Quixy, Orchestly, Process Street, ProWorkflow, Studio Creatio (free), Trisotech, IBM Blueworks Live, iGrafx, K2 Platform, Kintone (good for non-proftit organisations), Novacura, OnBase by Hyland, Pipefy, and Zoho Creator.

Examples

Real examples of how BPM has been used (from Kissflow and Nintex) include:

– Softbank Telecom using BPM software to create apps to enable authorities to quickly approve requests on their mobile phones, thereby improving upon the old, slow, and disjointed process of using spreadsheets and email for all processes.

– Davenport University (in the US) using BPM to automate the three processes of student course requisitions, academic scheduling, and transport coordination, thereby improving cross-departmental coordination, and operating more efficiently than the old processes which were reliant upon paper and manual intervention.

– New Belgium Brewing Co. using BPM to help it comply with new legislation by standardising and automating how it handled privacy requests from its California customers, thereby freeing up staff time to concentrate on brewing beer.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Using BPM (software and tools) can provide businesses with a systematic approach to managing and optimising their business processes which essentially helps businesses to be more efficient, work smarter, save costs, reduce risk and errors, become better at what they do, and eliminate many of the problems and bottlenecks that may have been preventing them reaching their goals and unlocking their true potential. Investing in BMP can deliver real benefits, add value, and improve competitiveness while giving managers more fuel to make better decisions.

An error in the HM Courts and Tribunals Service computer system meant that 5,000+ defendants were wrongly assigned guilty pleas.

Accidental Criminal Convictions

The problem that led to 5,000+ people being wrongly given criminal convictions was an error in the computer system’s bulk amendment facility, which was used to update the cases of magistrates’ hearings that were adjourned due to the impact of the pandemic. The error meant that guilty pleas were copied onto cases that defendants were still contesting.

Where?

It has been reported that the error has affected cases related to magistrates’ courts in Westminster, Highbury, Wimbledon, Willesden, Thames, Uxbridge, Croydon, Bexley, and Bromley.

Example

As far back as last October, The Guardian newspaper questioned whether convictions on the Police National Computer were accurate after it uncovered an example of where a mistake appeared to have been made. At the time, a female defendant who had denied an offence related to a violent crime had a guilty plea entered on the PNC. This meant that she gained a criminal conviction which took her lawyers three months to correct, and led to HM Courts and Tribunal Service (HMCTS) writing to the defendant to apologise for the error.

Investigations by HMCTS following this example revealed that 5,231 individual defendants and 55 companies had actually been affected by the computer bulk uploads error.

The ICO

The error was referred to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) by the Ministry of Justice in October and it has been reported that, after a comprehensive review, the correct ‘not guilty’ pleas were restored by mid-November.

Although an HMCTS spokesperson said that the issue was “temporary” and had been “promptly resolved” with no-one receiving an incorrect verdict or sentence, the ICO has said “People have the right to expect that organisations will handle their personal information… responsibly”.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Under UK GDPR, businesses are expected to comply with data laws and to act responsibly with the data of customers, employees, and other stakeholders or face some serious consequences (e.g. large fines and reputational damage).  Some businesses may, therefore, feel justified in criticising the police over the errors in their computer system which could have caused problems for thousands of people and for businesses. For example, it is possible that before the error was discovered, a criminal record check by a potential employer could not only have resulted in the candidate not getting the job due to a wrongly recorded conviction but may also have robbed the business of the hiring an otherwise great candidate who may have brought considerable skills to the company. There are also, of course, the potential the emotional and social effects to consider of a person being (wrongfully) assigned a conviction to consider.

A survey by consumer watchdog Which? has revealed that almost half of adults in England are unaware of plans for their medical records to be shared with a new NHS database.

What Data Sharing?

Back in May, NHS Digital launched its plan for sharing medical data from GP records in England. As part of the General Practice Data for Planning and Research (GPDPR) scheme, GP surgeries in England can automatically upload and share the medical records of every patient in England to an NHS Digital platform, unless the person has opted out.

Original Opt-Out Date Has Passed

Although the original opting-out date of June 23 has now passed, a campaign supported by medical professionals and MPs has acquired an extension period to an (as yet) unspecified final opt-out date after it was agreed that the scheme had not been publicised enough, and also, extra time was needed to work on the necessary privacy safeguards.

Confirmed By The Which? Survey

This lack of awareness of the scheme and its implications was confirmed by recent Which? survey where only 55 percent of the 1700 people surveyed said they had heard of it, and 71 percent of them said that the NHS hadn’t publicised it well.

Why Is The Data Being Collected?

NHS Digital says that the data is being collected to support the planning and commissioning of health and care services, such as the development of health and care policy, public health monitoring and interventions, and to help with research (e.g. analysing the long-term impact of COVID-19).

What Kind of Data?

The medical record data that’s being shared under the GPDPR scheme includes your sex, ethnicity and sexual orientation, physical, mental and sexual health, and lots of other data including referrals, diagnoses, test results, medications, allergies and immunisations.

What About Insurance Company Access?

One of the big concerns of those who are aware of the scheme is whether data (that could be linked to an identity) will be shared with insurance companies. However, it has been reported that data from the scheme will not be shared with marketing or insurance companies. Also, data shared in the scheme will be anonymised, thereby replacing some possible identifiers with unique codes making it more difficult to directly link details to an identity.

Still Possible To Identify A Person

The data, however, will not be completely pseudonymised which means that although it is unlikely that anyone can be identified from the data, it is still technically possible.  For example, software could be deployed to decode the data where there is a legal reason to do so.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Since the pandemic and the development of vaccines, many people may be feeling more sympathetic to the need for sharing data, perhaps their own, to be used for medical research and, as such, might be less worried than before about their medical data being shared.  That said, the thought of personal medical data being shared with companies that could use it for marketing (targeting) or by insurance companies to make judgments about eligibility or ramp up premiums is a worry for many, even though there are assurances in this case that marketing and insurance companies won’t be able to do this. The fact that the scheme requires opt-out rather than opt-in and that the opt-out date has long passed with half the population knowing about the scheme at all does feel as though it is something that is being sneaked in. That said, it’s worth noting that UK’s data protection laws already allow access to data when needed for research and scientific purposes. This story is also an example to businesses of the importance of communication, transparency, and giving plenty of information in plenty of time for any important changes to terms, services, or any other factors that customers feel are important, of value, or may influence (have influenced) their decision about choosing or continuing with services.

If you’d like to know a fast way to minimise all your open windows with one click in Windows 10, here’s how.

– Look at the bottom far right-hand side of the screen, to the right-hand side of the ‘notifications’ icon. You will see a tiny, vertical line.

– Click on the line and all your open desktop windows are instantly minimised.

– Click on the line again to restore/maximise all the windows.

The new Online Media Literacy Strategy from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) is aimed at supporting 170+ organisations to improve media literacy rates in the UK, and thereby help young people to spot disinformation.

As an aside, misinformation is information that is simply wrong, inaccurate or misleading (without necessarily having any intention to propagate the misinformation) whereas disinformation is a subset of it, i.e. information that is deliberately wrong, inaccurate or misleading.

As aside to the aside, mistrust and distrust are roughly the same in meaning (i.e. not to trust someone or something) although, according to Dictionary.com, distrust implies having evidence to support that feeling.

Disinformation Problem

The Strategy, which was promised in the government’s online harms white paper, is intended to help tackle the problem that many young people in the UK are not able to distinguish between disinformation/misinformation and truth in what they read online.  For example:

Ofcom figures show that 4 out of 10 UK adult internet users don’t possess the skills to critically assess content online.

National Literacy Trust research figures show that only 2 percent of children have the skills they need to identify misinformation, half of teachers (53.5 percent) think that the national curriculum doesn’t educate children with the literacy skills they need to identify fake news, and 2 in 5 parents (39 percent) don’t watch, listen to, or read news with their child at home.

Pandemic Highlighted Problem

The fact that many young people may have been deterred from accepting the COVID-19 vaccine and/or have believed misinformation and conspiracy theories about the origins and causes of the pandemic have highlighted the problem. For example, popular stories believed by some in the UK, highlighted in University of Cambridge research (Oct 2020) include that:

– COVID-19 was engineered in a Wuhan laboratory (22 percent believed it).

– The pandemic is “part of a plot to enforce global vaccination” (13 percent).

– 5G telecommunication towers worsen COVID-19 symptoms (8 percent).

Who and Why?

Back in October 2020, Cambridge’s Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication + UK Cabinet Office: Go Viral!, studied correlations between certain beliefs and demographic categories and the perceived reliability of misinformation. They discovered that:

– High levels of trust in science equates to low levels of susceptibility to false information (across all nations).

– Better Numeracy skills are a predictor of greater resistance to misinformation.

– Being older is linked to lower susceptibility to COVID-19 misinformation.

– Identifying as more right-wing /politically conservative is associated with a higher likelihood of believing COVID-19 conspiracies.

– With COVID-19, a tiny increase (one-seventh) in how reliably misinformation is perceived leads to a much bigger (23 percent) drop in the likelihood that the person will agree to get vaccinated.

Ultimately, as summarised by the minister for digital and culture Caroline Dinenage last week, “False or confused information spread online could threaten public safety and undermine our democracy.”

Training Trainers

The newly announced strategy is to teach a wide variety of UK organisations to teach others to get a better understanding of the online world, and how to critically analyse the content they see, thereby helping them to spot misinformation.

Criticism and Challenges

Criticism or the strategy includes that:

– It is possibly an opportunity missed and is less of a strategy and more a shopping list of useful actions that mirror what’s gone before rather than charting new directions (says LSE’s Professor Sonia Livingstone).

– The strategy appears to blame the user for the problems of the digital world.

– The strategy may be weaker than it could be because it is linked to the Online Safety Bills, so focuses on reducing consumer harms rather than addressing the breadth and depth of the media literacy agenda.

Challenges for the strategy include:

– Exposure to misinformation and disinformation can be influenced by changes to algorithm design and content feeds, thereby meaning that tech companies have a part to play.

– Motivations for believing (and wanting to spread) misinformation are varied, can be complicated and, therefore, anti-vaxxer mentalities / ‘cult’ type and attitudes are difficult to break down and challenge, even with well-meaning teaching.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

In terms of tackling health emergencies effectively, education and tackling misinformation are vital. Many young people have social media as their main source of news, so giving many other organisations the means to educate young people in how to critically evaluate what they read is well-meaning and could have a value for young people and society as a whole going forward, which in turn will have a value to businesses. However, social media and other platforms use algorithms, which also influence what is presented to young people, which means that tech companies have an important role and responsibility to play in tackling the problem. The problem of misinformation is being tackled to a degree on social media using e.g., fact-checking, and curated news services, but the issue of misinformation is wide, and it is debatable how much of an effect the new strategy will have upon it.  One of the strengths of the new strategy, however, is that it is leveraging the power of many other trusted organisations to help deliver it.

Google has announced that (US first) Google Search users can click into details that show how their search-result matched certain search-terms (context), thereby giving a further tantalising glimpse into how specific rankings/search engine results are arrived at.

‘About This Result’ Panel

Google says that clicking the three dots next to most of its search engine results will now take users to the  ‘About This Result’ panel where they can see “useful context” about how Google returned results for the query, and find “helpful tips to get more out of Google Search”.

Google says that useful displaying of context is a way of showing searchers some more information about some of the most important factors used by Google Search to connect results to their queries.

Help With SEO?

Although Google has announced this latest addition to its search results as being something of value from a search engine user’s perspective in terms of relevance to “evaluate whether a result might be the one they’re looking for”, the implication is, of course, that this could possibly be reverse engineered to feed into SEO efforts.

Which Contextual Factors Are Shown?

Google says that the search ‘context’ factors that users can see by visiting the ‘About This Result’ panel include:

– Matching keywords: Used by Google to determine whether information is relevant is when a webpage contains the same keywords as a search.

– Related terms: Google looks for terms that its systems suggest that are related to the words in a query.

– Looking at links: It appears that relevant incoming links are still important as Google decides that pages linking to a page using similar words as the query, is likely to make a page more relevant to a particular search. Google says that this can also be a helpful indicator of whether online content creators seem to regard the page as useful for a particular topic (i.e. the page appears to have authority and be trusted).

– Local relevance: Google’s systems (algorithms) and a user’s given country and location, plus the language used in a search help to guide the relevance of the content delivered in the search engine results for a user’s area, even if a user does not name their location/area in a query/question that is locally focused, e.g. ‘where is the nearest recycling centre?’.

Google has already stated that factors it considers in establishing a searcher’s location include the user’s device location, a user’s labelled places, the home address (set in the Google Home app for the user’s speaker, Smart Display, or Smart Clock), a user’s Location History, previous activity across Google products, and the IP address of the user’s Internet connection.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Clearly, getting a better understanding of just how Google decides upon its search engine rankings is of value to businesses, suppliers of digital marketing services, and even SEO software suppliers because of how it could feed into the improvement of SEO efforts. Higher rankings tend to translate into more clicks. If Google’s assertion that these new contextual insights are related to relevant choices is correct, then a better understanding of how to create pages that are relevant to specific queries (keywords and questions) could lead to more clicks, a greater likelihood of enquiries (conversions), and even more chance of getting a page in the coveted featured snippets/answer boxes at the top of the search results. For Google, this is also a tantalising new way to engage users, and even help retain them by giving them insights that may appear to be of value, and show Google to acting fairly and taking into account factors that appear to stand up to logical questioning.