BUSINESS PROCESS TRANSFORMATION

What Is The Business Process?

Business processes are the foundation of any organisation, from the smallest to the largest. They help optimise its resources and create standard operating procedures for daily tasks. Most companies follow a series of steps that define how a business is conducted day in and day out and make it possible to identify areas for improvement. They are listed in the order in which they are performed as part of the workflow and usually contain a number of tasks, each of which may have several different outcomes.

Organisations need to transform their business processes to have a better flow of information and coordination between the departments to perform effectively. They should be flexible enough to accommodate any changes that may crop up in the future.

 

Three Types of Business Process

When you redesign and optimise your processes, it can be useful to categorise them and then design or transform them within each category:

1.     Operational Processes

Operational processes are processes that produce either products or services in the production, marketing, and logistics stages. This category of business processes brings direct value to clients and the company itself. It utilises resources in order to create a product or deliver a service to a customer for which the firm receives revenues.

2.     Supporting Processes

Business processes rarely operate in isolation. Sustaining processes support the execution of operational processes according to the plan. This process occurs in such departments as business analysis, accounting, customer support, technical support, sales, and HR management.

 3.     Management Processes

Management processes are designed to manage the rest of the processes within an organisation, the primary functions of which are to maintain order, power, and control over your organisation. It involves overseeing, controlling, and directing the processes used in an organisation. Its purpose is to ensure that an organisation runs efficiently with as little waste as possible.

 

What Is Business Process Transformation?

Business processes make up the structure of an organisation and therefore have a significant impact on its overall performance. So if there is a problem with any of your processes, it can lead to inefficiencies and bottlenecks at strategic, tactical, and operational levels.

Business Process Transformation is the systematic and structured re-engineering of work practices and the development of a new business model based on a company’s vision. This approach involves radical changes that help enhance productivity, quality, service, and labour productivity by eliminating unnecessary steps and wasted time. You can manage your business more efficiently and productively by improving the way you carry out activities.

Transforming your workflow will help you streamline every part of your company, from administration to customer service. By doing this, you can take steps to make sure that all errors are reduced, your customers are getting better service, staff have fewer repetitive tasks, cycle times are decreased, and your business grows. It helps you save money, improve performance and manage risks.

 

Steps in Business Process Transformation

 

1.     Development of a Data-Based Case for Change

Analyse all data to track and measure performance and identify areas that need improvement. Properly identify the major changes required to take your business to the next level and determine areas for improvement to make your front and back-office operations more efficient and productive.

2.     Creating and Initiating a Change Program

Build awareness of the need for change among team members and present a systematic action plan to achieve organisational change goals. Change visions should be simple, clear, and compelling. They should be easy for everyone on the team to understand, including lower-level employees and international colleagues.

3.     Identifying Internal Champions for Change

Involve representatives from across your organisation at every stage of a business process transformation. It allows everyone to prove themselves and you to identify new leaders in your company. Involving your employees in a change process and listening to everyone’s ideas will help you identify challenges, plan improvements, and create buy-in making it easier to implement change and sustain progress over time.

4.     Mapping Workflow

Visualise business processes and their interrelationships to analyse, improve and manage the flow of business activity across your organisation. It helps to understand, from the customer’s perspective, which steps are adding value and which aren’t and it makes it easier to identify waste. You can see any restraints and excessive inventory or where the delays are in your process at a glance.

5.     Development of a Pilot Project

Before plunging headlong into a new business process transformation project, develop and implement changes, new technologies, and workflows in a test environment to see how it works with your employees and data. A pilot survey can help determine whether your project has the potential to be successful. Based on the study’s results, you can make improvements to increase the performance of the full-scale project.

 6.     Embedding the Change

Implement innovations one at a time and manage them carefully, monitoring each change. You should be able to determine whether or not it adds value to your process. If things have improved, leave this change and move on to implement the next one;  if not, replace it with another until you see the results.

 

Benefits of Implementing Business Process Transformation

Knowing how to improve your business processes can positively benefit your company. You will be able to get a swift return on investment and ensure that your management team has the ability to deliver major projects on time and within budget.

·       Do More With Less

By eliminating unnecessary process steps and reducing repetitive tasks, your company can deliver more products or services with fewer resources and less time. When you do more with less, you will be able to improve your bottom line while increasing customer satisfaction.

·       Work More Effectively

Your employees will be able to spend more time on activities that add value to your company. For example, they will concentrate more on sales and customer service and less on mundane tasks that do not add value to your business.

 ·       Improve Profitability

You will have a better understanding of how work is carried out within your company. It means you can see where improvements can be made or change introduced to ensure you are working in the most productive way possible.

·       Increase Process Efficiency

Any steps in a process that do not add value to the final product and customers or are determined to be wasteful are removed or replaced, thereby saving time and focusing on value-added activities.

·       Reduce Employee Frustrations

Employees are a crucial component of any business. So if you want to foster a productive office environment, it’s essential to communicate your vision clearly and work as a team. Empowering employees to make decisions and changes is key to ensuring a process continually evolves and improves.

·       Simplify Processes

Once you identify and eliminate all waste and weaknesses in your processes, you will get an improved workflow that is easier to manage.

 

Implementing changes without expert guidance can be challenging. A business process transformation consultant will give you a precise guide on how to significantly improve processes and help align the entire team around your company’s business goals. You will be able to run the projects with less rework and complexity, deliver even better results for your clients and free up time for your team to focus only on important tasks.