Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Business Process Management Helps Companies Work Smart and Fast

BALTIMORE – The economic decline is continuing to pummel hospitals in the form of reduction of reimbursements, rise of uninsured patients and decrease in number of elective procedures for insured patients.

In this environment of balancing shrinking budgets, staff reductions and patient safety, hospitals are more open to generating efficiencies using IT. Process improvement is a good investment in times when companies need to improve efficiency.

According to an article in Heath Care IT News, "Streamlining administrative processes while continuing to invest in patient care is not mutually exclusive. Business process management, or BPM, can provide a clear view of processes across all systems, including billing, accounting and other legacy systems. "The end goal is to improve business processes running on software, doing things in the smartest and fastest ways, which automates processes, reduces resources and increases accuracy.

An additional benefit of implementing BPM is being able to document and track data in real time, which improves the process for compliance certification and audits."

By using IT to help their businesses fix process issues, C-level hospital executives can "step up and be the champions," especially in this economic environment.

No World Borders' team of BPM experts have cross-industry and cross-technology experience to help your company improve operating efficiencies, reduce cost, and improve process.

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Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Process Excellence - Cost Savings and ROI in Health Care

According to a new Association for Information and Image Management (“AIIM”) of Silver Spring, MD study, the enterprise is not taking maximum advantage of business process management concepts.

Surprisingly, only 3% of companies felt that they had achieved "process excellence." AIIM Vice President and report co-author, Carl Frappaolo states: “This is disappointing ... Despite decades of market attention on process excellence—from the manufacturing industry, into the world of “knowledge workers”, and across all industries—it’s been a long, slow journey, and many have yet to embark on the journey. The damage lies in the fact that processes are the core of any functioning organization.”


Some of the benefits of process excellence initiatives include:


  • Customer retention and satisfaction, as well as better competitive advantage are directly linked to use of business-process management practices.
  • ROI via change. According to Tower Group, business that make changes based on Business Process Modeling (BPM), will see visible ROI from improved and faster operations, better employee productivity, and the ability to reach strategic objectives.
  • Efficiency gains by mapping and gapping. Simply mapping and closing the process gaps between current practices and those desired can provide 30% of the operational efficiency that a company gains through the BPM initiative.

Important ingredients for operational efficiency include:

  • Business and IT Alignment – Business, technology, strategies, and resources must be aligned to achieve results.
  • Best-Practices Measurement – Metrics, methods, and frameworks to help you know that change management is helping to achieve business goals.
  • Process Change and Innovation – Enabling the transition up the ladder of competency to CMM, ITIL or other measures fundamentally means working with people and helping them see a better way to work..
  • Extending Intellectual Capital – Intellectual capital is the real wealth of organizations and this is the bottom line with Business Process Modeling (BPM) - managing people more effectively for Organizational Excellence.
  • Management's commitment and leadership are key drivers for successful BPM. Technology can't replace this.
Is your company taking advantage of business process management concepts and reaching toward excellence?

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