Improving a business process

If you’re new to business process work, you may be eager to immediately focus on how you can improve a process, but resist jumping in too quickly to see what you can fix. You want to know the baseline first, so you can see if your improvements are working. To establish your baseline, start by identifying the boundaries so that you understand the beginning and end of the process, draw the map so that you have identified the activities involved, estimate how long the process takes and how much it costs, and validate that the information you have collected is correct before proceeding to the upgrade step.

Improving a business process is similar to losing weight. You know you have to change your daily routine. You can change your eating habits and eliminate dessert, add an exercise like jogging, or partner with a friend to get motivated. The same type of evaluation must occur to improve a business process.

There are many techniques you can use to look for opportunities for improvement, including:

• eliminate bureaucracy (although easier said than done, it is possible)
• evaluate value-added activities (what the customer or customer Really cares about)
• eliminate duplication and redundancy (why do things twice)
• simplifying everything (or KISS – keep it simple)
  
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• reduce cycle time (a key concern of customers or clients)
• looking at how the process can be automated

Of course, you can use any technique that is helpful to you, but these six methods have always been helpful to me. I like to apply each of the techniques one at a time and in a certain order because doing so helps to ensure that I get every last drop of improvement out of each one. So take the time to challenge the bureaucracy; determine which activities add value to your customers / clients; look for opportunities to reduce the number of employees doing the same, simplify forms, or speed up a step in the process; and set a cycle time reduction goal.

One question you have to grapple with in process improvement is technology:

Does technology drive the process?

Gold….

Does the process drive the technology?

If you have been involved in the implementation of a large system, you have probably seen how technology drives the process. I feel like you should just automate a efficient, it is not an inefficient process, so I prefer the latter.

Bill Gates is credited with saying, “The first principle for any technology you contemplate introducing into a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will simply entrench inefficiency. “.

Applying improvement techniques is the sixth step to improve the effectiveness, efficiency and adaptability of your business.

Copyright 2010 Susan Page