What is the Difference Between Business Process Management and Project Management?
Every company strives to achieve efficiency to enhance its business functions. Regardless of the status of your company — established or a start-up — you require a functional and well-maintained management framework to accomplish your goals. To yield both quantitative and qualitative results and ensure your business runs smoothly, you should organise your operations properly, and that is where business management strategies come in. Every company requires a different approach, and primarily, there are two types of tools: business process management and project management.
Business solutions depend on your tasks and operations. While both business process and project management approaches are essential, they solve different problems. Business process management handles the monitoring, assessment, evaluation and optimisation of business operations. On the other hand, project management increases the efficiency of business functions by ensuring different functions coordinate correctly.
What is Business Process Management?
Business Process Management (BPM) looks after the current business operations and tasks critical to almost every project. Ongoing functions, such as HR management, finances, marketing, accounting, client satisfaction etc., are crucial aspects of every business. BPM ensures the workflow in all ongoing operations is constant, stable, and enhanced. Using BPM as a tool allows you to monitor and analyse your methods, make the required and necessary changes, and become more sustainable. With business process management, you can optimise resources, build a stable base for your company, expand your scale, and ensure your business runs smoothly.
BPM helps you refine your strategies and policies according to the current market environment using five components:
● Designing
● Building a model
● Executing
● Analysing
● Maximising resources
Types of Business Process Management
There are three types of business process management:
● Human-Centric Processes
Human-centric processes use workforce resources to create business strategies such as meetings, presentations, discussions, and interviews. As the name suggests, employees carry out different tasks, monitor and track activities, and approve operations.
● Integration-Centric Processes
Integration-centric processes are procedures that do not require humans to monitor the operations and can work independently. They act as a meeting point to connect information, data, networking, and tools and equipment. Using integration-centric processes increases efficiency, saves time and data, and reduces errors in the project.
● Document-Centric Processes
Document-centric processes enable routing, formatting, verifying, producing, approving and signing documents required to maintain the workflow.
What is Project Management?
While business processes refine the ongoing tasks, project management creates and develops new methods, plans and strategies to enhance your project. Project management depends on your end goal: do you wish to improve your business as a whole or enhance a specific operation of your company? Project management ensures you finish your projects successfully, efficiently and on time. In project management, you overlook all your project processes — curating the budget, compiling resources, creating a team, and assigning tasks. Since a project also requires identifying, monitoring, and developing strategies to eliminate risks, the project manager’s responsibility is to handle that.
Types of Project Management
There are various types of project management strategies, but primarily, there are four commonly used methodologies:
● Waterfall Method
The waterfall method ensures a project is finished according to the prescribed guidelines and is started and finished stage by stage. The project manager sets a budget, gathers a team, obtains the resources, develops strategies, and identifies, monitors, and eliminates risks before starting a new project. Carrying out linear operations prevents multiple check-ups, modifications and re-evaluations before approving the final project.
● Six Sigma Method
The six sigma methodology works on projects with specific requirements. Every stage of the project involves meticulous measurements, observation, enhancement, and improvement to ensure there are no discrepancies. In case of a problem, project managers find the source of the problem to eliminate it. The six sigma methodology ensures there are no differences, or hardly any difference, between the original idea and the final project.
● Agile Method
In the agile method or approach, team members find new strategies and ways to turn a vague idea into an improved and finalised project. A project manager forms a team, and the team members organise “scrum” meetings to suggest unique approaches to enhance a project. The agile method leaves room for new ideas, improvements, and flexibility to develop better versions of the original idea until the project meets all the requirements and is finalised.
What are the Differences between Business Process Management and Project Management?
Even though business process management and project management tools are vital for a company, they are very different. It is crucial to understand the differences between the two tools to decide your approach and yield optimum results. The right system for your business can enhance its processes, develop a better workflow, and function in an organised way.
● Management Style
One of the main differences between BPM and project management is their management style. BPM requires permanent management as it manages the ongoing parts of a business, such as HR, accounting, invoices, etc. On the other hand, project management requires short-term management as it overlooks specific projects.
● Focal Point
Business process management focuses on operations that businesses require daily, like designing, building models, executing, monitoring and maximising resources. In contrast, project management involves procedures required by different projects, such as planning, forming a team, compiling resources, analysing, managing, team-building, and finalising projects.
● Types of Management
Both management tools have different management methods:
Types of business process management are human-centric, integration-centric, and document-centric methods.
Project management has various methodologies, including the waterfall method, six sigma method, and agile approach.
● Project Manager
In BPM, the project manager looks after the overall model of a project. On the other hand, in project management, the project manager is responsible for all the tasks a project requires, such as finances, monitoring, analysing, approval, etc.
● Type of Project
If your project is focused on increasing efficiency, improving productivity, cost-efficiency, financing, expenditure and revenue, the business process management will be more beneficial. Project management is commonly used for budgeting, expanding the consumer base, team-building exercises, and planning projects.
Summing Up
Every business handles various projects, and every project requires an approach based on its requirements. The two tools to improve your business operations are business process management and project management. Your project, its needs, resources, and the focal point of your operations decide the tool you should use for optimum results.