Sustainability is a holistic approach that aims for long-term prosperity by examining the economy, society, and the environment in its various dimensions. It focuses on green practices while trying to preserve the integrity and resilience of the ecosystem. Business Process Management (BPM), by definition, is inherently green. This methodology, which is centered around designing, managing, and improving business processes, aims to reduce environmental factors. In other words, it refers to transforming business processes into more sustainable resource consumption practices. This allows companies to save money, increase efficiency, and also protect the environment.

Environmental Impacts of Business Process Automation

Companies must consider the environmental impacts of their business processes when planning them. This not only helps avoid legal liabilities but is also important in terms of meeting customer expectations and strengthening brand image. As consumers’ interest in eco-friendly practices increases, companies that adopt sustainable business practices gain a competitive advantage.

So, How Does BPM Support Sustainability?

There are several strategies that companies adopt to achieve their sustainability goals. These include setting environmental performance indicators related to business processes and regularly monitoring them, implementing green supply chain management, adopting a culture of continuous improvement, and establishing sustainability-focused collaborations with customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders. The outcomes of these strategies include:

1. Identifying and Reducing Resource Consumption: This can be done by finding ways to reduce the amount of energy, water, materials, and other resources used in a process.
2. Minimizing Waste: More effective ways to reduce the amount of waste generated by a process can be identified.
3. Encouraging Sustainable Practices: Companies can raise awareness of the importance of reducing environmental impacts by training employees on sustainability. They might also implement policies to recycle paper and plastic waste.
4. Analyzing the Existing Process Portfolio: All business processes should be defined and their environmental impacts assessed. The result of this should be a good process documentation system, which, with the creation of a company’s digital twin, helps minimize paper consumption and space waste.
5. Using Process Mining Effectively: Process mining can help uncover hidden patterns and inefficiencies in business processes, providing opportunities for improvement.
6. Optimizing Processes: By optimizing inefficient processes identified through process mining, new opportunities can be discovered.
7. Testing Changes: Process simulation allows for testing changes in business processes before they are implemented, helping identify their environmental impact.
8. Implementing Changes: This refers to the application of the changes, which requires the collaboration of all stakeholders.

Sustainable BPM strategies play an important role in achieving sustainable development goals. Very soon, the integration of environmental sustainability with business processes will become central to BPM practices. Companies will be able to reduce their environmental impacts, increase efficiency, enhance customer satisfaction, and gain a competitive edge. Sustainable BPM strategies will be the key to success, not only in today’s business world but also in the future.