As the most critical piece of business operations, business processes show how information flows and work gets done to meet defined organizational goals. To remain successful and competitive, organizations must continuously update and improve their processes. They need to be streamlined, strong, and healthy to reduce costs, increase value, optimize speed of execution, and improve quality.
Inefficient or ineffective business processes can be incredibly frustrating for all parties involved: from ground-level employees using an inefficient process to leaders taking account of the holistic negative effects. The amount of rework or duplicated efforts takes time away from important tasks, which can ultimately affect an organization’s bottom line and employee retention.
Through process management, netlogx consultants help public and private sector organizations map, analyze, and redesign their business processes so they can operate at the highest level of efficiency. Using a team approach, we facilitate client meetings and map processes in real-time. During these meetings, our team also documents any outstanding decisions, action items, and current pain points in the process, and then follows up with the client to resolve them.
When implemented properly, process management helps an organization understand how they are executing their work currently and demonstrates how existing employees should be functioning. Documenting tasks and activities not only helps employees work toward a common goal, but it can fast-track new staff onboarding by using the created documentation in training.
Business Process Design: Starting from Scratch
From the outset of designing business processes, netlogx consultants conduct a thorough review of current As-Is processes. Some clients provide background documentation to aid our initial understanding of their processes, but often, the netlogx team starts from scratch.
When there is minimal information or when a written process does not exist, a business process can be produced through interviews, analysis and discovery. Conducting As-Is business process workshops provides organizations with a solid understanding of their current condition as well as determines their ability to achieve their To-Be processes.
When the mapping begins, we simultaneously document issues, requirements, and any other feedback regarding the process to help aid the improvements later.
Business Process Mapping: Visual Documentation
Business process mapping is the visual documentation of a process from start to finish through the identification of roles and responsibilities, system inputs and outputs, and business tasks and decisions. It identifies redundancies, bottlenecks, and other issues that contribute to process inefficiencies.
At netlogx, we begin our understanding by mapping the As-Is process, or current state. The client explains how processes are currently completed and notes any performance problems. Our consultants work with business owners and subject matter experts to break down the process piece by piece so they can identify issues and concerns within current processes and needs of future processes. By doing so, everyone in the room gets a clearer picture of how it all works and can ask important questions regarding the method.
Business process mapping exercises can often uncover opportunities that can be implemented straight away with minimal cost and time. These quick accomplishments are a great opportunity to both provide immediate value to the organization and to build momentum and enthusiasm for future initiatives. Learn more about process improvements you can implement right now.
Business Process Mapping Sessions: Promoting Communication
Business process mapping sessions are most successful when the team involved includes representatives from the ground-level staff who are completing the work. These staff members tend to best understand how the process really works, including current issues and opportunities for improvement. It’s crucial to include representation from all stakeholder groups involved in the business process.
Typically, our consultants bring together a group of staff who are involved in the business process at different points. Session attendees may not regularly work together, and the business process mapping sessions provide a new avenue for communication. It can be educational for staff as they may not always understand the downstream impacts of workarounds, bad data, etc.
It’s in these sessions that people discover a disconnect between policy and operations. Policy staff may not understand operational challenges to implementing a new policy, and operations staff may not understand the intent of the new policy.
Business process mapping sessions offer the opportunity to promote communication between different groups of stakeholders, allowing staff to identify opportunities for improvement collaboratively. The ability to provide input into the future state of the organization’s processes generates buy-in, enthusiasm, and momentum. Staff involved in business process mapping sessions often become champions of the project among their coworkers.
Business process mapping sessions hold significant value from a team-building standpoint as they spend time working together. They build and strengthen relationships among staff who will be key to implementing organizational changes.
Business Process Modeling and Optimization: Continuous Improvement
Change begets change across an organization. Altering one process never affects just those directly involved. With business process modeling, netlogx consultants can represent the full design or flow of all of the processes of an organization. Modeling outlines different process interactions, interfaces, and dependencies in order to determine potential efficiencies or impacts on external changes enacted on processes.
Business process optimization constantly reviews and adjusts a process to optimize a defined set of parameters or goals without sacrificing the intended outcome. This is usually done by increasing efficiency through optimizing a specific factor, such as eliminating process redundancies. Business process optimization is completed to validate compliance, operations, and consistency among others.
Business Process Reengineering: Updating as Needed
Business is in a constant state of flux, and processes need to be reviewed and reengineered to keep up with changes. When processes run smoothly and efficiently, the business can save money or find ways to use their resources more efficiently.
Periodically, during the lifespan of an organization, business processes should be reviewed and updated for a variety of reasons. As a business grows and workloads increase, processes may need to grow with them. Outdated processes may have been designed because of technology limitations that no longer exist. If new technology is determined to be a process improvement solution, then process review can identify opportunities for automation or even elimination of manual work steps.
Similarly, as governmental regulations change, the process affected must change to accommodate new requirements. Related policies and procedures also need to be created or updated, and training should be provided for the new process. Once the reengineered process is implemented, a post-implementation assessment is performed through observation and gathering of new metrics, which are compared with the previous metrics to determine changes in efficiency.
Our Approach
netlogx uses a team approach to process management, involving a facilitator, project coordinator, and business analyst for a holistic view of our client’s business processes. We don’t sacrifice function for the sake of speed. Our consultants help organizations gain the most value for their time and effort without compromising business objectives.
Unlike some of our competitors, netlogx is technology-neutral and strives to define the best processes first, then tailor technology to support those processes. If your applications and software are dictating your processes, often, they tend to become counterintuitive or even laborious. The ideal approach to process management means that processes will inform system implementation rather than allowing technology to drive business processes.
As our consultants are defining and optimizing an organization’s business processes, we meet face-to-face. This allows our clients to see their processes mapped in real-time and provide insight that can help discover inefficiencies and redundancies.
All throughout the process management process, netlogx defines quantifiable metrics to measure the efficiency of business processes. It’s impossible to find success if you don’t know what it looks like. These metrics also help our consultants develop a roadmap to track progress from as-is processes to their future state.
netlogx helps organizations define and design business processes that improve production, eliminate waste, lower cost, enhance processing speed, and increase quality. If your organization is interested in creating efficiencies through your business processes, request a consultation today.
