Research from various sources including the Princeton University Neuroscience Institute has concluded that disorganization, in this case a messy desk, drains our cognitive resources, reduces our ability to focus, triggers defense mechanisms and avoidance, leads to increased procrastination, and decreases overall productivity. 

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When organized, the human brain becomes more focused and better able to process information, resulting in an increase in productivity. It would hardly be a stretch to assume that disorganization in the workplace, particularly when it comes to carrying out routine tasks and processes, would have the same effect on the entire workforce. 

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The negative effects of disorganization on our psyche results in behaviors and attitudes that can perpetuate the chaos. If companies don’t employ mechanisms that support routine and cohesion, then their business processes are bound for disruption and will continue to deteriorate if left unchecked. 

The High Cost of Disorganization 

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Take a look at just a few of the ways that a lack of organization can affect your business:

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• Stifled Productivity: Without a clear sense of direction and an understanding of the tasks they undertake, employees’ productivity will suffer. 
• Lack of Morale and Engagement: Without clear purpose and communication, your workforce will quickly begin to lose morale, which will in turn further jeopardize employee productivity and decrease engagement. 
• Higher Costs: Decreased engagement and productivity due to disorganization will decrease your company’s overall efficiency. Inefficient procedures eventually lead to higher costs. 
• Damaged Employer Brand: A reputation for a lack of organization in your workplace will be discovered by potential candidates, who may pass up opportunities in your company in favor of one with a more reputable employee brand. In addition, disorganized businesses may have a harder time retaining talent and employee wellbeing will suffer. 
• Jeopardized Customer Relations: A lack of organization within the company will damage your business’ reputation and carry over to the product and/or service the customer receives. 

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Disorganization can mount up and have a disastrous impact on both operational efficiency and productivity, which in turn negatively affects your service or product and customer satisfaction. Not only that, but the costs can be substantial. According to a survey of 18,000 business leaders, it was discovered that company-wide disorganization costs 57% of respondents 6 working hours per week, amounting to a cost of more than one-fifth of their salary.

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If you’re determined to improve your company’s performance and committed to streamlining your processes to yield better results, then business process management is essential. 

What is Business Process Management?

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Business Process Management (BPM) is a way of improving and standardizing the processes of an organization by utilizing methods to discover, model, analyze, measure, improve, optimize, and automate business processes.

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By modeling business processes after best practices and continually measuring and improving them, companies define routines that ensure their employees can carry out their tasks efficiently and in the best known way. 

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Business processes are all the tasks and activities performed throughout your organization to help achieve business objectives, they are strategic assets. Training, testing services and products, maintaining relationships, gathering customer feedback, all of these actions are part of a larger business process divided up into smaller processes.  Something as mundane as sending a routine email is part of your business process. 

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BPM ensures that all of these processes are carried out in a standardized manner by determining how they are designed, implemented, executed, tested, analyzed and updated. In short, BPM outlines what your business processes should be, how and when they should be done, and who should do it. Furthermore, a critical part of BPM is ensuring that all processes are accomplishing what they should, if they’re not, then it's back to the drawing board. 

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BPM is a living manual for how your business works. 

How BPM Benefits Your Business

By organizing and streamlining processes, your teams are able to perform tasks more efficiently, overcome challenges, and better accommodate change. Having a good BPM is particularly helpful in stressful situations such as when an employee leaves the company, communication breaks down, or a manager is absent or ineffective. Most importantly, a clearly defined process can be carried out by anyone if the situation arises. 

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BPM helps eliminate process gaps and offers the following benefits:

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• Supports Digital Transformation: BPM tools facilitate digital transformation with increased business intelligence and automation capabilities that can reduce time spent on repetitive and mundane tasks.
• Improves Business Agility: The ability to change and adapt business processes continually allows businesses to be more responsive and to understand the impact of changes to their processes. 
• Strengthens Relationships: Well-defined procedures is one way to improve communication between teams and leaders. When business processes are more efficient, the result becomes visible in the end service or product and customer satisfaction grows as well. 
• Improves Employee Wellbeing: Organization helps reduce stress on employees and increases employee satisfaction and morale, allowing them to work more healthily and productively. 
• Simplifies Operations: BPM standardizes and clearly defines procedures for simplicity. BPM software also contains automation tools which can help reduce overly-complicated processes and eliminate the need to complete mundane repetitive tasks altogether. 
• Increases Efficiency: BPM results in E2E improvement in processes by optimizing repetitive tasks and eliminating unnecessary ones. Furthermore, increased visibility allows process owners to quickly modify processes when necessary and track the outcomes of the changes. 
• Improves Security: Clearly-defined step-by-step procedures and security protocols reduce the risk of human error, and automated BPM tools help your business stay compliant with laws and regulations.
  
  

In addition, you can expect reduced costs, increased visibility, and more timely processes. That’s not all, according to Upwork, 22% of the American workforce will work remotely by 2025, and the trend is not limited to the U.S. The transition to remote and hybrid work environments provides even more motivation for companies to ensure they have a solid BPM in place. 

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For a company monitoring employees remotely, the ability to maintain organization and ensure processes are clearly-defined and carried out is absolutely critical. When tools like employee task tracking software are coupled with BPM and associated tools, companies can greatly boost their ability to keep processes flowing without any hiccups.

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The benefits of BPM are too significant to ignore. Are your company’s processes as effective as they could be? Read on to discover how to implement BPM in your enterprise and begin reaping the benefits of more streamlined business processes. 

How to Implement BPM in Your Business

1. Design Processes:  The goal of the design stage is to gain an understanding of current business procedure through review and interviews with stakeholders. Identify current processes and proposed changes, and discuss desired outcomes with management to ensure they are in alignment with business objectives.
   
   
2. Model Processes: The goal of the modeling stage is to identify, define, and make a representation of new processes that support current business procedures. Use a what if analysis to model change proposed on multiple variables
   
   
3. Execute Processes: The goal of the execution stage is to pilot new business processes on a small test group followed by a larger group.
   
   
4. Monitor Processes: The goal of the monitoring stage is to track metrics against established KPIs using reports and dashboards . It is important in this stage to track the entire process as well as individual components of the process.
   
   
5. Optimize Processes: The goal of the optimization stage is to streamline and improve process efficiency and alignment with strategy through constant redesign. Effective reporting is important to drive this stage. 

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In order to reap these benefits, it's important to continuously invest in your resources - people and technology. Regular training and open lines of communication are essential for nurturing your workforce and keeping in step with best practices. 

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BPM is enabled and supported by the use of technology. This ensures the viability of the managerial approach when under constraints and the organization’s ability to adapt to change. To support this, BPM relies on both human efforts as well as automation and analytics tools.

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Support BPM with Technology 

There are software and tools available for monitoring and metrics, which is essential for the execution stage of the BPM process. In addition, many comprehensive BPM software options exist, which can help you and your business facilitate better organization for your processes. 

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There are also a variety of supplemental tools which can support different aspects of BPM implementation like data management systems, software to monitor computer activity of remote employees, time tracking and scheduling software, business intelligence tools, and productivity monitoring software. Employee monitoring tools are also popular for BPM. Employee monitoring software is available for Windows, Linux or as employee monitoring software mac tools.