An introduction to process management
Process management systems — An Overview
Every business organization formulates strategic goals for themselves in order to serve their customers and maximize their revenue. In order to meet these goals, multiple divisions and departments are mobilized, each with a set of responsibilities that align with these strategic business goals. To ensure that each division carries out their responsibilities well, they need to devise systematic business processes and adhere to them.
Be it a sales team following a simple review process to get discount offers approved by top management, or a legal team following a contract management process to draft and get legal agreements approved, or a marketing team following a campaign management process to put together an promotional event, every business division in an organization follows a set of steps in an already established sequence for achieving desired results. These steps are constantly monitored and improved based on the volume of work, number of people, and other complexities involved.
Now, when we take a closer look at the execution of any business process, it does have its share of challenges. For instance, you're looking at,
- working with a huge volume of customer data, which you also need to protect at any cost.
- you are looking at steps that are repeatable and could be monotonous and boring, especially if they are routine and procedural in nature.
- there is a need to collaborate and unify communication with a lot of people in order to avoid silos and duplicate efforts.
- you are required to guide and monitor new members of a team constantly to onboard them to your processes and make sure they adhere to them to promote compliance. This could take a toll on your productive hours, which could otherwise be spent understanding customer requirements.
While processes are essential to meet business goals, considering challenges such as the ones stated above, if they are not thoughtfully implemented, they could become counter-productive. Inefficient implementation of processes could generate unnecessary "meta-work", that is a set of tasks that enable you to do your primary task.
For example, if employees are made to update their work in a task sheet, a time sheet, and a few other handful of sheets; their time is spent filling sheets than doing actual work. This is not an efficient process. You are then lost in an infinite loop of chasing meta-work.
Therefore, you not only need strategic goals and systematic processes, but you also require effective systems in place to execute them.
Welcome to the world of business software, where you will find several solutions to help you streamline business processes and optimize your time. Software systems make the execution of your business processes effective, less time-consuming, and even enjoyable.
On that note, Zoho has, in its ecosystem, a range of software applications and features to cater to different process management requirements. With Zoho CRM's process management solutions, you can ensure
- data security
- automation and data validation
- compliance
- effective collaboration and guidance
All of these benefits ultimately lead up to a seamless execution of your processes.
On that note, let's take a deep dive into the process management capabilities available across the breadth of Zoho CRM and understand their scope, similarities, and differences.
Process management capabilities across Zoho CRM can be categorized, based on their scope, into two major categories— Business process management (BPM) and Customer Experience Management (CEM).
Business Process Vs Customer Experience
Business Process Management deals with tools and strategies to make internal organizational activities more streamlined, agile, effective, transparent, and reduce operational costs. Whether it is a process to manage sales enquiries, process a deal, review a sales quote or hire a candidate, these are typically a step-by-step approach meant for the employees of the organization to follow and practice in a systematic manner.
Whereas, customer experience management deals with devising a streamlined approach to mapping the customer journey along all business touchpoints and guiding and motivating them every step of the way in order to maximize their experience.
The objective of each customer's journey could be different—for some customers, the end goal could be a purchase, for others, it could simply be to seek an answer for an enquiry. No matter the different objectives, at the end of the day, what is important is that they receive the hand-holding every step of the way to maximize their experience and promote customer delight. The process you undertake, as an organization, to ensure and optimize this could be referred to as customer experience management.
Now, the two could easily overlap. For instance, the sales cycle could be seen as a subset of the customer journey optimization. As part of optimizing the customer journey, you could have some internal sales processes to follow. After all, the goal of every business is to acquire, retain, and solve the problems of their customers. However, the nature of BPM is that it is designed from the perspective of the internal processes and people, and the nature of CEM is, it is framed from the perspective of the customer. CEM extends beyond product purchase and goes on to promote customer retention and advocacy and maximize customer experience during their entire lifecycle with your business.
Here is a simple example. Consider the case of air travel. Every airport undertakes a procedure or set of steps to make sure all the passengers board their flights. Without a well coordinated process in such a place, you will only have chaos. First, you need to prove your identity at the airport entrance, then get a boarding pass, check in your baggage, clear security-check, reach the boarding gate on time, and get into your plane. This is the tentative "process" across the globe.
Now, as you know, dozens of people and authorities are deployed at every stage and have a set of responsibilities to fulfill. How can the airlines ensure that these internal teams are equipped with the right tools, infrastructure, and knowledge to execute this process? This could be tackled under BPM.
Now consider your own experience —that is, the passenger. How has your overall experience flying with the airlines been? Did you get the right confirmation email/SMS after booking your ticket? Did you get a reminder before your date of journey? At the airport, did you have clear directions to the check-in desks, security check, and boarding gates? Did you have people to direct you to the next set of points in case you were lost? Were the staff courteous? Did you get timely alerts in case of flight delay? Once your flight had commenced, was it easy to find help when you needed it? After your journey, did you receive feedback surveys and suggestions for improvement?
All of these factors contribute to a pleasant flying experience, and orchestrating these could be tackled under customer experience management.
The security clearance process or the food distribution process inside the plane could be seen as a subset of ensuring a good overall experience — however, the difference is that individually, there could be different processes and compliance needs for each of those divisions that are handled in BPM, and so BPM is from the perspective of internal teams. Customer journey mapping effectively puts the customer first is about looking at the business from their perspective—and therefore CEM attempts to give them a seamless, end-to-end experience from the first touchpoint till purchase and continues beyond. With CEM, you shift focus from operating procedures for internal teams to maximizing experience for customers at each business touchpoint and make it a seamless journey.
BPM and CEM in the sales context
When it comes to sales processes, what you configure under BPM is how a sales person should navigate an enquiry process, or a deal follow-up process, and the like. What the steps are and what they are required to do at each step. The system guides them and validates data, automates routine tasks, and makes compliance easier. The feature sets in Zoho CRM to get this done are Blueprint, Approval process and Review process.
In the same scenario, you can orchestrate customer journey to offer the customer a good experience along this enquiry follow up journey across touchpoints starting from live chat widgets on the website to help them decide what they want to prompt alerts and reminders about their product demos, and feedback surveys on their experience with the sales and support teams. How can you ensure that these touches are tailored to every customer at different points in their buying journey? The solution here is journey orchestration or CEM. The feature sets in Zoho CRM to get this done are Cadence Studio and the Command Center Suite (which includes the Journey Builder and Path Finder).
BPM solutions in Zoho CRM
The primary solutions in BPM for Zoho CRM include the following:
- Blueprint — an intuitive no-code platform to devise a systematic step-by-step business process to ensure compliance across the organization.
- Approval and review processes to facilitate the automatic submission of data that needs to be reviewed by top management before its entry into CRM.
CEM solutions in Zoho CRM
- Command Center Suite
- Journey Builder — to orchestrate a sequence of personalized engagement actions for customers across touchpoints and thereby maximize their experience.
- Path Finder — to plot various business touchpoints taken by your customers and map their journey across these points. This will potentially help discover the most effective touchpoints and streamline your engagement with the customer based on their journey.
- Cadence Studio: Designed especially for a fool-proof customer follow up strategy, where a sequence of events can be automated in the system depending on the previous response (or lack of it) by a customer.
Summary
Here is a summary of the similarities and differences between Business Process Management and Customer Experience Management.
Factor of difference | Business process management | Customer experience management |
1. Scope | To promote compliance and automate key areas of internal processes across teams in an organization. | To identify customer touch points and automate a sequence of engagement actions in order to maximize customer experience. |
2. Who is this for? | Internal teams and members in the organization. | External audience— customers, vendors, and partners of the business. |
3. How it works | Internal process management tools are designed to guide a CRM user on a sequence of steps in a business process and automate repeatable, routine actions that form a part of the process. What gets streamlined here is compliance, data validation, and automation of repetitive tasks in a process. The system will guide a user on the activities to do at each step, prompt and validate data at the right points, and make it easier for teams to follow a process their organization has designed for them. | Experience management tools are designed to map the journey of a customer in connecting with a business, identify touch points they frequent, and automate engagement actions in order to maximize their experience and delight them. What gets streamlined here is not the sequence of steps for an internal user to perform, but the right actions (emails or chat responses) to be triggered for a customer so that the business can reach out to them proactively at the right points and address their needs and give them an enriching experience. |
4. Features associated |
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Read Next
Now that you understand the overall need for process management systems, and the categories of BPM and CEM, and the division of feature sets across these two categories, let's explore the capabilities under process management in Zoho CRM in more detail.
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