Introduction to Business Process Mapping
Reflecting back on the numerous companies I have worked for over the last 30 years, by far the majority of them have not invested the time to create a comprehensive library of their business processes. With this Post, I am going to try to shed some light on why this may be and to consider the benefits of doing so. In 2 further articles, I will take a deeper look at how to achieve that set of processes and how to maintain them so that maximum value is created.
Firstly, what is a “comprehensive library of business processes”? To some, it may represent an historical archive of the processes written as Standard Operating Procedures. Documents that are held in some filing system, difficult to access and only rolled out when the auditors wish to see them. Ideally it should be something much more useful and accessible than that. It can be described as “an on-line tool that contains all business processes in a graphical format that enables employees to accurately follow the processes and process owners to continuously improve them”. In the second article, I will dive deeper into the more powerful functions of the mapping tools available.
Across most businesses, the work that is done across the variety of departments falls into one of two types of processes: transactional and non-transactional. Examples of transactional activities are those that are repeated multiple times each day – processing invoices, manufacturing products, taking customer orders, month end reconciliation etc. Generally, these activities, once known by the staff are easy to memorise and can be repeated effectively time after time. Issues may arise are when there are changes in staff and training is insufficient, otherwise they tend to work smoothly. What I have observed is that many companies have problems with the non-transactional activities. These are the processes that are no less important but less frequently followed. Examples are approval of a new supplier, development of a new product, changing a major IT system (CRM, ERP) etc. The consequence of not having the processes clarified is inefficiency – major inefficiency that slows everything down.
Addressing the question as to why almost all companies don’t invest time to capture their processes, I believe that it stems from the way businesses evolve. During those heady days of a new start-up, the priority is to develop a product or service and to introduce it to the market. Resources are scarce, employees multi-task, funds are limited, and all eyes are on securing the launch and acquiring customers. The second stage of business evolution is where departments are created, the organisation chart starts to fill out and the product / services are beginning to mature. Again, resources are short, funds still tight and investing in mapping the processes would not feature on the CEO’s priority list. The third stage is where market expansions occur, the product/service starts to evolve for new markets and regulatory and quality compliance become essentials to expand. It becomes easy to see that during this 5 to 15-year journey for a new company, they have not had time to invest in their processes. Invariably, business process mapping has been limited to much larger companies where efficiency of all their processes is critical, often linked with LEAN or 6-sigma programs in operations. At this stage there are often hundreds of staff involved and the training and roll-out of a new system becomes a large project. When is the right time to make a start and map those processes? There’s a strong argument to do it during Stage 2; capture the processes as the organisation is growing and use them to as precursors for any systems that will require audits, for example the Quality Management System (QMS).
Now to bust a large myth: how much time is required to map out a set of business processes? The exercise is not as costly as many would believe and the benefits by far out weigh the investment. The benefits for a company are on 3 levels:
· the Executive get to see where processes are running well and where they need support or redesign,
· middle-management generally own the processes and can use the tool to ensure that changes can be implemented efficiently and
· all employees get a cool-tool that shows them how to do stuff.
Finishing with an anecdote from a few years ago: the company I was working for had 2 significant projects – one to introduce a new ERP system and the other was to achieve ISO9000 certification. Senior management supported the simultaneous mapping of the processes as a precursor for going live for the 2 main projects. This reduced the time taken to implement both projects and the ISO9000 auditor was able to complete the audit in almost a day less than expected.
The next article will take a deeper dive into the process to capture those business processes.