What Is Business Process Monitoring: 5 Crucial Aspects

Data forms the backbone of informed decisions, making its active monitoring and utilization critical for success. Whether delivering value or executing tasks, processes thrive on data, and expectations often fall short without monitoring. This article will explore the importance of business process monitoring and how it can transform workflows and outcomes.

What Is Business Process Monitoring?

Business process monitoring is about analyzing the key workflows that drive your organization. It involves tracking, analyzing, and optimizing these processes to ensure they run smoothly, meet expectations, and deliver the intended outcomes. Think of it as a real-time health check for your organization's operations.

Process monitoring is critical to the broader discipline of Business Process Management (BPM). While BPM focuses on designing, improving, and managing workflows, process monitoring ensures those workflows perform as intended.

Imagine a global logistics company managing thousands of shipments daily. With business process monitoring, they can track the entire order delivery pipeline - from warehouse dispatch to final delivery. Monitoring systems can flag the issue immediately if a bottleneck occurs, enabling teams to take corrective action before customers are affected.

Business process monitoring is crucial because it forms the foundation for improving processes. Even minor inefficiencies in critical processes can cascade across departments, leading to delays, higher costs, and dissatisfied customers. Organizations gain transparency and control by monitoring processes, enabling teams to make data-driven adjustments that reduce waste, cut downtime, and boost productivity.

Key Components of Business Process Monitoring

Business process monitoring revolves around three key components that keep workflows efficient and aligned:

• Performance Indicators and Metrics: These are the benchmarks that define success. Whether it's delivery times, error rates, or customer satisfaction scores, tracking the right metrics is essential to evaluate process health.

• Monitoring Tools and Technologies: From dashboards to real-time analytics platforms and IoT sensors, these tools provide the visibility needed to stay on top of processes and address issues proactively.

• Real-Time Data Analysis: Data is the lifeblood of process monitoring. Analyzing it in real time allows organizations to detect and resolve problems before they escalate, ensuring smooth operations.

Business process management software and AI-based tools already play a crucial role in automating key tasks throughout the entire business process lifecycle.

As Tom Davenport, a pioneer of the process-reengineering movement in the 1990s, and Tom Redman, a leader in applying process thinking to data advisory services, put it: "Process management and technology are mutually reinforcing." (Harvard Business Review).

Key Benefits of Monitoring Business Processes

• Improved Process Efficiency: Monitoring ensures processes run smoothly by identifying inefficiencies and enabling teams to optimize workflows for maximum productivity.

• Early Detection of Process Bottlenecks: Real-time monitoring highlights delays or disruptions, allowing organizations to address issues before they escalate, reducing downtime, and maintaining operational continuity.

• Enhanced Decision-Making: Business process monitoring provides data-driven insights that improve decision-making.

• Compliance and Risk Management: Monitoring helps organizations adhere to regulatory standards by providing transparency and detailed records. It also mitigates risks by early identifying and addressing compliance gaps or process vulnerabilities.

These benefits create a more agile, efficient, and resilient organization equipped to adapt to dynamic business environments.

5 Steps to Implement Business Process Monitoring

If improving operational performance is your goal, optimizing processes is a no-brainer. Whether you're managing specific activities or reimagining end-to-end workflows, starting small and scaling gradually can deliver significant results. Here's how to approach business process monitoring effectively:

1. Identify Critical Business Processes

Pinpoint the workflows that have the biggest impact on your organization's performance. Focus on processes tied to key objectives, such as customer satisfaction or cost reduction.

2. Define Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Set measurable benchmarks to track process success. These should align with your business goals, such as cycle times or on-time delivery rates.

3. Select Appropriate Monitoring Tools

Choose tools that offer real-time data tracking, analytics, and customizable dashboards. Ensure the solution integrates seamlessly with your existing systems.

4. Establish Monitoring Procedures

Create a clear plan for monitoring processes, including frequency, data collection methods, and reporting structures.

5. Continuously Review and Improve

Regularly analyze data and feedback to refine processes, fix inefficiencies, and adapt to evolving needs. Performance metrics can also uncover new processes and technology integration opportunities to boost efficiency.

Tools and Technologies for Business Process Monitoring

The global business process management (BPM) market will reach US$ 24.5 billion by 2028. This growth reflects the rising adoption of BPM solutions for managing massive data sets - monitoring employee behavior, collecting customer insights, and analyzing customer service responses.

Leading BPM tools integrate advanced features such as process mining capabilities, automation modules, and real-time analytics.

✅ Process mining is especially critical, as it allows organizations to visualize workflows, uncover inefficiencies, and identify opportunities for improvement.

Uncovering a process bottleneck on a work process board in Businessmap

✅ Automation streamlines repetitive tasks, reducing manual effort and errors.

Using the" Move card" process automation rule in Businessmap to change work item color to signal highest priority

✅ Real-time analytics provide the insights needed for data-driven decision-making.

Using the "Workflow Performance Summary" widget in Businessmap to monitor key process metrics at a glance

✅ Artificial intelligence (AI). Key players in the market are further enhancing BPM solutions by incorporating artificial intelligence (AI). These technologies enable tools to gather real-time data, address issues proactively, and gain deeper insights into business operations.

Using AI-powered subtasks in Businessmap to reduce manual work

Popular BPM solutions also support content and document management, integration, and process optimization, making them indispensable for IT-enabled process management.

Real-World Success: Industry Examples of Business Process Monitoring

Encoparts: Transforming International Purchasing with Process Monitoring

Encoparts, a logistics company, faced challenges in its international purchasing division, including complex workflows, low visibility, and poor communication. They adopted process improvement through Lean management practices.

The team gained transparency by implementing detailed workflow boards and flow metrics like lead and cycle time and identified inefficiencies in their processes. Within two months, they stabilized their workflow, achieving 152 work items in 12 days and nearly doubling their flow efficiency from 34% to 67%.

Increased flow efficiency within two months of applying process improvement and monitoring

Encoparts transformation demonstrates how process monitoring and data-driven insights can resolve operational challenges and drive measurable success. (Encoparts Case Study)

Flapper: Transforming Technology Team Efficiency through Process Monitoring

Flapper, an air taxi charter marketplace, faced significant inefficiencies within its technology team, impacting product stability, workflow visibility, and delivery predictability. Challenges included unprioritized demands, excessive work in progress (WIP), and inefficient workflow management, resulting in prolonged delivery times and inconsistent quality.

Average WIP (Work In Progress) drop shown after implementing the practice of limiting work

By leveraging the Businessmap built-in analytics solution, the team introduced metrics such as cycle time, throughput, and WIP limits to track and optimize performance. These changes led to rapid improvements, with delivery times dropping from over 150 days to 122, then 90, 60 days, and ultimately 27 days, with a stable WIP of 10 items/week, significantly enhancing efficiency and team confidence. (Flapper Case Study)

Monitoring average delivery times using the Cycle Time Scatter Plot in Businessmap

Vehicle Manufacturer: Streamlining Production to Reduce Costs

A major vehicle manufacturer faced production inefficiencies at one of its top-performing facilities in North America. High volumes, a diverse product mix, and reliance on multiple digital systems added complexity to their manufacturing processes. These issues increased production costs per unit and created hidden inefficiencies in their workflows.

The company partnered with McKinsey to tackle these challenges and leveraged process mining technology to create virtual value-stream maps for over 100,000 vehicles. This approach uncovered significant inefficiencies, including waste in unnecessarily moving vehicles between repair bays and thousands of hours spent on end-of-line repairs instead of catching defects earlier in the production line, where repairs required 40% less time on average.

Armed with these insights, the team implemented key changes:

• A training program to minimize vehicle movement between repair bays.
• Improved defect prevention and earlier repairs during the production line process.
• Enhanced performance management to cut overall repair hours.

By addressing these inefficiencies, the manufacturer identified a 20% reduction opportunity in rework costs and achieved a 15% reduction in cost-per-unit production. These results marked a significant milestone for one of the company's highest-performing facilities, showcasing the power of process mining and monitoring to drive cost savings and operational efficiency. (Celonis)

Exploring the Potential of Business Process Monitoring

Process monitoring ensures work runs smoothly by enabling real-time visibility, early issue detection, and data-driven decision-making. It also delivers consistent value to customers and stakeholders.

If your organization is ready to enhance performance and achieve sustainable growth, now is the time to embrace process monitoring. Start small, focus on key processes, and watch as better visibility and control unlock new opportunities for success.