Does BPM help SMEs improve business performance in New Zealand?

Abstract

The argument remains open on how well business process management (BPM) fits with small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). While BPM is not new, existing theories and literature have not been able to cope with the reality of BPM in SMEs. However, when discussing how BPM can be useful for businesses to stay competitive and increase productivity, SMEs should not be ignored. SMEs play important roles in the economy, especially in New Zealand. Better performance in SMEs will benefit the whole economy. This study focuses on how well BPM can help New Zealand’s SMEs to improve their business performance. A multiple case study method was used to investigate the real values that SMEs derived from BPM System (BPMS) implementation. In total, three vendors and four users were interviewed. Grounded theory methodology was used to analyse data and generate research findings. This study is the first research focused on BPM use by SMEs in New Zealand. It has both academic and practical implications. The major findings are that SMEs derived value from BPM in general to help them improve business performance, but monetary improvements were invisible in some cases in the short term. Overall, BPM is not a good solution for micro and small organisations, because they don’t have many processes and their employee structure is not complex. These micro and small firms can function easily without BPM software, and the investment required for BPMS set-up may be a big financial burden for them. BPM is, however, an appropriate tool for medium sized organisations with growth potential as it can help them to handle complex management tasks and achieve greater successes in the future.