The approach or view that can help align your processes with your business is to first establish the “how to” deliver your product or service rather then the “what to” deliver. If you have a business already established, then you already have a “what” or product to sell or do something with. Process development in business needs to be broken down for easier understanding, while at the same time working on process modeling and improvements.
By taking a process, dividing that business process into events and then analyzing those events further enables you to have a completely different view of the entire process. Many people categorize this division of process events as procedures. Each procedure of the process as a whole must be further subdivided and evaluated for inputs and value to the parent process. In other words, this is your process modeling stage. A key role withing Business process modeling stages is to ensure that you are vigilant about aligning all activities with the vision or goal of the company or business. Keeping the business goal and vision in focus throughout the development stages is key to an efficient, and outcome driven, design.
In reality, what happens is that you are in the middle ground between existing processes and new ideas, which leads to process re-design or process re-engineering. In some cases, you are developing processes for the first time. At this point in development you will need to do some initial process design, outlining your end-goal, or target. Process input must be defined clearly in the design and all possible variations. As part of the process mapping exercises, a clear decision point at each level within the process is also identified.
Once you reach a design phase where your process or processes have been clearly modeled, a review and evaluation of the process as a whole can be initiated to improve the performance and efficiency. Business process improvement strategies include both a high level view of multiple processes and goals, to individual layers and decision points within each process or procedure. Process improvement during the design and mapping phases tent to occur naturally as people usually look for the best way to accomplish each task within the process. However, a dedicated process improvement stage is crucial when you are looking to streamline and increase productivity or revenue.
Business Process Improvement to Increase Revenue.
Ah, the golden word “revenue”. The primary goal of business should be to increase or produce positive revenue. This revenue goal is often what drives the process and business development changes within an organization. There are a wide variety of mechanisms available that can be used to boost business processes by re-arranging, merging, re-engineering, widening, globalizing and standardizing. Modernizing business processes is one of the best ways to make these changes and improvements as a whole. The modernizing of these systems involves computer software, specifically, a business process management suite of tools. Information Technology will be the underlying foundation to the process improvements by utilizing business process modeling software, as well as maintenance, monitoring and management software tools.
Business process changes and improvements do not only involve technology, but greatly involve the people of the company as well. Improving the interface between person and process increases that persons productivity relating that that process or task. As an entity, that process is thereby improved. This is a simplistic view of it, but you get the idea.
Process Development can be summarized in simple terms.
* Process design
* Process modeling
* Process improvement
* Process execution
* Process monitoring and optimization
The final stage in business process implementation is a looping step. As you continue to monitor the performance of your business processes, you can measure the execution time, delays, value, output, etc. As the business grows or changes, the procedures may need to be adjusted over time as well. Many companies forget about this final step, it should never end and there should be clear responsibilities laid out in the initial design and modeling phases on what the expected performance will be. The ability to adjust business process relative to the market flow and business goals will reflect on how well the company can keep up with global and local market fluctuations.
One Response
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.
Continuing the Discussion