Introduction
Business process refer to correlated tasks and activities that are carried out by employees or company systems to achieve a particular business function or objective. They may be involving technology, people, or both, and can be either informal or formal.
Business process usually have a specific workflow or series of steps that reach the end goal. These business functions are essential in ensuring that the company’s operations are running smoothly and efficiently or not. Examples of some business process can be inventory management, sales forecasting, marketing campaigns, financial reporting, etc.
Importance of assessing and improving business processes
Before learning how to assess and improve business process, let us know why it is important in a corporate setup.
Efficiency and productivity
Companies can streamline their operations, eliminate roadblocks, and help reduce the waste of resources by analyzing and upgrading their business activities. This helps the companies achieve greater efficiency and productivity, optimization of resources, reduction in costs, and ultimately increase profitability.
Customer satisfaction
Another advantage of assessment and improvement of business operations can be companies provide better and improved customer service. This is crucial in today’s highly competitive and cut-throat environment. By rationalizing processes, firms can reduce their response times, improve accuracy, enhance user experience, and enjoy higher levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Compliance and risk management
Streamlining your company’s processes can help you identify and mitigate compliance risks, avoid unnecessary fines or penalties, and maintain the confidence and trust of customers and other stakeholders.
Innovation and agility
Doing this can also help companies create a more agile and innovative culture that is better equipped with new technologies and is ready to embrace new business models and opportunities. Innovation in the company helps remove rigidity and inflexibility to market conditions.
Employee engagement and retention
If companies are aware of where they are lacking, they can provide employees with the tools, resources, and training they will need to perform their jobs efficiently. By this, organizations can create a more engaged and motivated workforce leading to higher levels of employee satisfaction and retention.
Steps for assessing business processes
Identify Key Business Process
Figuring out which business processes are critical to your organization is the first step in the assessment of your business. Companies should identify and define the scope of each of these critical processes. To identify key business process, it is important to understand how the organization works currently and then map out the steps involved in a particular process through a business process analysis (BPA). This will involve identifying the inputs and outputs in each step and evaluating their effectiveness.
Once you are done with the identification and defining of the scope, start to prioritize the activities based on their importance to your organization. Focus on the ones that are core to your business and have a direct impact on the customers. Also, identify key performance metrics for each process to evaluate its effectiveness.
For example, if you are looking at the order fulfillment process, you might measure the time it takes to process orders, the number of orders that are shipped on time, or the percentage of orders with errors.
Document Current Processes
Once you have recognized your key business process, their scope, and their key performance metrics, the next step is to document the current processes. This can be done by gathering information on the processes like process inputs, outputs, tasks, and responsibilities from the stakeholders who are involved in the process. Use the information to create a process map which is a visual representation of a process outlining the steps and activities in the process.
Once you have created the process map, validate it with stakeholders to ensure that it accurately reflects the current process. Make any necessary changes based on the feedback received. Then, collect data on the process performance such as cycle times, lead times, error rates, and other relevant metrics, and use it to evaluate the performance of the current business process mapping.
Analyse and Identify Improvement Opportunities
Look for inefficiencies, bottlenecks, delays, roadblocks, or other issues that are impacting the process’s performance and identify areas where the process is inefficient and areas where there is a scope for improvement.
Once you have recognized these areas, you can then analyze the root cause of the inefficiencies to determine the best course of action. Based on this whole analysis, improvement opportunities like business process reengineering, redesign, automation, or other changes to streamline the process, can be identified.
Evaluate each opportunity and determine the potential impact on your firm and its operations. You can then move forward and develop an action plan that outlines the steps required to implement the identified improvements. Assign responsibilities and timelines to ensure that it is executed effectively.
Steps for Improving Business Process
Redesigning Process
Once you have assessed your business process, and identified inefficiencies and improvement opportunities for the current operations of the firm, the next step is the redesigning process. This involves analyzing the data that you have collected and identifying the most effective changes that can be made to the process. Brainstorm ideas and come up with potential solutions to optimize current processes and develop new process maps.
Once you have developed the new process maps, the next step is to implement and test the new processes. This will require providing training to your staff on the new processes and conducting tests to ensure that they work seamlessly. By this, you can improve efficiency, reduce costs, and also engage your workforce in supporting processes.
Automating Processes
Companies can improve their performance a lot by automating business processes through the use of technology. Start by determining which processes can be automated. It can include tasks like data entry, report generation, or customer service queries. Once you have identified the processes that can be automated, evaluate different automation solutions, like different software, robotic process automation (RPA), or different artificial intelligence (AI) tools.
Using these solutions can help the employees of the company focus on more strategic work rather than repetitive and time-consuming tasks which can then be automated. This can increase the firm’s productivity, and efficiency improves cost-effectiveness and overall performance of a successful business.
Improve Continuously
After automating your processes, it is essential to monitor process performance to ensure that your business continues to operate effectively over time. Monitor the key performance metrics that you decided on in the first step of the assessment. These KPIs provide targets and milestones through which you can gauge processes and insights that can help make better organizational decisions and automate business processes.
To do this, it’s important to collect feedback from both employees and customers which can help you identify areas where problems exist with operational processes and where the process is not meeting customer needs. You can make ongoing improvements to ensure that your processes continue to align with the needs of your customers and also your business goal. By doing so, you can foster a creative and collaborative culture internally alongside enhancing customer satisfaction over the long term.
Tools for Assessing and Improving Business Processes
Below we have listed three options out of the tons of tools and software that can be used for business process assessment and business process improvement too.
Process Mapping and Modelling Software
This is a tool that allows you to visually represent your business processes in a graphical format. It helps you to identify the steps in the process, the inputs and outputs, and the flow of everything within the process. Process mapping and modeling software can help you to identify capabilities and obstacles in your processes and to develop solutions to improve them. Popular examples of process mapping and modeling software are LucidChart, GitMind, Edraw, etc.
Lean Six Sigma Methodologies
This is a set of methodologies that focuses on improving the firm’s quality of work and efficiency of business processes. It combines two powerful tools – Lean and Six Sigma – to point out and eliminate waste in processes and then reduce defects and errors.
It involves a structured approach to problem-solving and process improvement with the use of data and statistical analysis to identify the root cause of problems. These two tools can help you streamline your business processes and improve brand performance while reducing costs.
Business Process Management (BPM) Software
BPM software is a tool that helps you to manage and automate your business processes. It allows you to create, model, and analyze your processes, and pick out areas where improvements can be made or are necessary. BPM software can help you to optimize your processes and make them efficient and cost-effective. It also allows you to monitor and track your processes in real time, giving you greater visibility into your operations.
Heflo
HEFLO is a cloud-based software designed for Business Process Management (BPM) that supports users in modeling, managing and automating all business processes. This software comes with several features such as business rules management, process analysis, communication, lifecycle management and process modeling and design support.
Kissflow
The most user-friendly BPM product available is Kissflow. An automated business process can be created in minutes by anyone familiar with how it should function.
Appian
Appian has been a prominent name in the world of high-end low-code BPM processing for a considerable time providing users with a wide range of tools to create and automate various programs and processes.
Signavio
SAP Signavio Process Intelligence is an essential tool for enterprises seeking to improve their process analysis and operational efficiency. The software accomplishes this by identifying bottlenecks and recommending ways to enhance processes. Companies can also gain value from monitoring and analyzing historical or real-time processes using SAP Signavio Process Intelligence.
ProcessMaker
ProcessMaker is an excellent option for individuals who are more inclined towards data analysis than other BPM solutions. It comes with customizable dashlets that users can design to display specific reporting metrics related to their operations. Moreover, it has an Employee Efficiency report that allows businesses to identify which employees are efficient in completing tasks and which are causing delays.
Conclusion
To summarise, assessing and improving business processes is critical for any organization seeking to gain a competitive advantage and meet customer demands and expectations. Streamlining your management processes and operations can help you not only make more money but also improve your company’s work culture and quality of work. It can assist you in achieving organizational goals and allowing the company to grow at all levels.
We at Ruskin Felix Consulting help clients generate long-term value for all stakeholders. We help clients transform, grow and operate while fostering trust through assurance with our services and solutions. Please feel free to contact us at contact@ruskinfelix.com
