Introduction
A business process is a collection of sequentially linked tasks designed to deliver a service or product to the customer. An organization runs multiple business processes to achieve its goals. Every business irrespective of its size or domain, incorporates business processes that are cross functional and span across teams, locations, and business areas. If designed and implemented well, these processes will result in positive outcomes like improved customer satisfaction, increased returns to all stake holders, limited business risks and increased agility to respond to changes in the business environment.
Types of Business Processes
Broadly speaking, business processes are classified as
Processes have
- Clearly defined boundaries
- Inputs and Outputs
- Activities that are ordered in time and space to achieve certain objectives, and result in well-defined outcomes
Analyze Business Processes
Business processes can become obsolete over time. Changes in business, regulations and markets, and issues in delivery call for review of business processes. Moreover, every business must constantly evaluate its processes. They must look at ways to improve them, by evaluating new technologies, changing customer preferences, and the competitive landscape. This also results in eliminating wastage, unnecessary activities, and redundant tasks.
Process complexity is based on the number of process steps, systems involved, and dependencies. Highly complex business processes are decomposed into several sub-processes. Very often, processes that contribute to achieving the overarching goal of the business are executed by teams spread across different locations. The goal of business process analysis is to improve customer value creation. Business process analysis allows organizations to study each of its processes in detail and discover and evaluate options to improve efficiency. Business process analysis allows an organization to –
- Understand process deviations.
- Unearth the reasons behind systemic delays and customer complaints, reduced productivity.
- Determine if a process should be improved or re-engineered.
- Update process documentation, including SOP’s, process flows and policy documents
- Evaluate costs, capacity, and efforts utilized in processes to determine ways to reduce them and/or get better value from them.
- Identify risks within the process.
- Uncover opportunities to optimize processes and operate at maximum potential.
- Accelerate continuous improvement, digitization, and innovation.
Invigorate your organization with improved business processes
Steps to analyze business processes
Business process analysis consists of the following steps
- Identify Goals of the analysis, based on Business strategy and needs
- Collect Process Information
- Create Process Maps
- Analyze the process and identify the potential for improvements.
Identification of Goals
Process analysis is intricately linked to business needs and strategy. Organizational initiatives like automation, digital transformation, adaption of processes to new services and products drive the goals of business process analysis. Identify goals of the exercise so that you can use them as benchmarks for results. Goals also enable organizations to identify the processes that need to be included in the scope of this activity.
Collection of Process Information
In-depth process data is critical to a better understanding of the process to perform process analysis. Collate data by –
- Conducting interviews and holding brainstorming sessions with all stakeholders involved
- Reviewing existing processes
- Using process capture tools that record process metrics, variations, and exceptions
Process Mapping
Create business process diagrams. These diagrams will have start and end points, tasks and persons responsible for them, inter-dependencies between tasks, activities and processes. This will facilitate better understanding of the processes and get multiple views of the process It also helps in communicating with stakeholders effectively. Process maps supplemented with process metrics can
Key components of the business processes
- Process inputs and outputs
- Bottlenecks and wastage’s
- Wait times
- Opportunities for improvements
- Value-generating tasks
Process Analysis & Identify improvements
Process mapping provides abundant information. This can be then analyzed to ensure that the business processes are aligned with the company’s goals and objectives. Value Stream mapping, Cause and Effect analysis, Time and Motion study, etc. are employed for process analysis. These tools help analyze the process and identify improvements after brainstorming all improvement possibilities aligned to identified goals.
At NxtWorx Technologies, we have created products & services that facilitate business process analysis automatically ensuring optimum utilization of time and money. Our process capture tools capture process metrics and activities. They map your business processes without any manual effort. Our services enable capture of in-depth process intelligence. Our team has the requisite skills to assess processes, analyze processes and discover to-be processes that align with the organization’s business strategy.
