What is Business Process Mapping

Business Process Mapping is an effective way of visualising business processes and how they function. This technique helps to understand the tasks performed within a process, who performs these tasks and illustrates the flow of value through the process. 

A clear visual depiction of your processes and their interrelationships enables you to analyse, improve and manage the flow of business activity across your organisation and helps you identify waste. It enhances the understanding of how a process works, allowing you to fine-tune it and spot inefficiencies or other problems that can be solved for better customer service.

Developing process maps is also a journey in itself to help teams understand a process from end-to-end; to allow them to understand the tasks undertaken by different teams within that process; it also helps everyone understand and agree on the best version the process. Without which multiple conflicting viewpoints can clash over what should actually happen in the process.

Business process modelling helps us understand, from the customer’s perspective, which steps are value-adding and which are not and make it easier to identify waste. You can see at a glance where the delays are in your process, any restraints and excessive inventory.

Types of Business Process Mapping

When visualising your business processes, you can create different types of process maps. The most widely used ones include:

• Process Flowcharts – The simplest form of a workflow map encompassing the process steps. It can be either manually drawn or created in particular software. 
• A swimlane diagram – A cross-functional diagram visualising a process or workflow overlapping across different departments.
• Value stream diagram – A lean management tool illustrating the flow of value through the process. It helps us to understand, from the customer’s perspective, which steps are value-adding and which are not.
• SIPOC – A diagram used for illustrating the relationships between an organisation and its suppliers, customers or other business stakeholders by identifying the input, process steps and output.
  
  

How to Create a Process Map

1. Determine the process you need to map
2. Bring together project stakeholders
3. Break down the process into separate steps/ actions/ tasks
4. Create a business process map
5. Determine areas for improvements
   
   

Business Process Improvement Consulting

Business process mapping is a crucial step in business process improvement, and at Change Consulting Scotland, we use data analysis to provide you with an accurate view of your processes. Our approach uses data and AI in Sharktower (a unique platform designed for delivering complex change and transformation projects – that adopts lean principles to remove waste in the project management process).

Your current process model is the first step in working towards an ideal lean target state. We use our extensive experience in change management to find the right fit for your changes and your organisation and offer fast improvements, accurate reporting at an individual project level and a forward view for planning new projects.