How BPM can help companies thrive in a hybrid workplace

Over the past few years the Covid-19 pandemic has forced companies to pivot to a remote-work model and implement processes that minimize and even eliminate the need for in-person interactions. Companies have found themselves scrambling to create best practices for an environment they didn’t plan for, while prioritizing business continuity.

How is your hybrid workplace working today?

This forced test of remote and hybrid work models allowed many enterprises to reduce expenses and retain valuable talent that really appreciated the increased flexibility. More and more companies are attempting to stick with remote or hybrid work models for the benefits they offer, but what are the downsides that could disrupt critical business processes?

Hybrid and remote work models can lead to disorganization

Disorganization that can come with less connected staff and operations is one of the biggest challenges facing companies who have moved to a remote or hybrid work model. Onboarding in office processes for new hires can often be more challenging in a remote environment, which leads to less consistency among employee experience. Additionally, it may not be easy to adapt in-person based systems that are already in place to a new hybrid or remote workforce.

Unfortunately, this level of disorganization in the workplace can quickly lead to:

• Unhappy employees and low office morale
• Less productivity and more wasted time leading to increased costs
• Lower customer satisfaction due to inconsistent relationship management
• More difficulty retaining talent due to workplace stress
• Less connected, less collaborative teams

Companies struggling with these effects of a hybrid work environment might consider going back to a fully in-person environment, but then this can limit their talent pool and increase costs. How exactly can companies retain a hybrid workforce without sacrificing productivity and profitability?

Business Process Management for the hybrid workforce

Fortunately, there are ways to establish better processes and streamline operations without abandoning a hybrid workforce model. A comprehensive business process management (BPM) platform can help avoid many of the pitfalls of working in a hybrid model, by:

• Building processes that are well structured and easily adopted: A BPM solution is designed to streamline processes anywhere in the company. This ensures that there are documented and standardized processes for regular business practices. In a hybrid workplace, you can centralize operations in a BPM solution, fully customized as needed for a specific office or group of people.
• Supporting digital transformation: Using a BPM solution also supports the shift towards digital automation. As companies move to more remote work models, they need to translate many processes to the digital environment. The Bonita BPM-based process automation platform is open source and extensible, so it can leverage legacy applications as companies look to integrate all systems into a central location.
• Strengthening relationships with customers: It’s no surprise that improved and streamlined processes often affect overall customer experience. If service and account functions like support tickets and invoicing are well automated, fewer client needs fall through the cracks. The result: more satisfied customers.
• Increasing business efficiency and agility: A BPM tool makes it easier and faster to identify candidate processes for automation, potential errors to be fixed, and optimization opportunities. Higher levels of automation and improved processes make day-to-day work easier, and allows a climate of innovation to improve overall productivity and employee morale.

Bonitasoft understands what companies need to be successful. That’s why we’ve built our BPM-based business process automation platform to accelerate business process application delivery. Bonita’s flexibility and platform extensibility equips professional developers with powerful tools to develop highly customized, fully integrated business applications faster. Here are 3 ways to learn more:

1. Build highly personalized, process-based applications today, for free, with our open source Bonita Community Edition.
2. See how you can reinvent your business processes with BPM.  Watch our on demand Bonita Platform Demo.
3. Interested in full project lifecycle support and services from development to operations? Try unlocking the power of the Bonita Subscription Edition.  Contact us to learn more.