Business process improvement is one of the mandatory practices organizations should implement to stay agile and competitive in rapidly changing market environments. Every business should constantly strive to improve its processes and eliminate inefficiencies to stay ahead.
Over the last couple of decades, management professionals have come up with various methodologies for business process improvement. While these methodologies have their pros and cons, they have all helped organizations develop better processes and thrive even during difficult conditions.
But what exactly is business process improvement? What does it look like in practice? And what is its role in business transformation? Let’s explore.
What is business process improvement?
Business process improvement is exactly what it sounds like — a systematic approach to examining business activities and improving them for business gains.
Business processes are the steps or activities performed to achieve a goal. Organizations define business processes for onboarding employees, calculating payrolls, making decisions, processing invoices, customer onboarding, and many other tasks. Highly defined and detailed processes ensure consistency within the organization and are important for good service delivery.
Business process improvement examines these processes, analyzes how they’re connected, checks for bottlenecks, delays, wastage, and other problems, and if they’re helping the business achieve its goals. The processes are then modified, optimized, and improved to help the organization better achieve its goals.
There are many different approaches to business process improvement. The most well-known is the Six Sigma approach developed by Motorola, which has two separate approaches for existing processes and new processes. While it was initially developed for manufacturing, the Six Sigma approach was developed over the years for more general use cases.
There is also the lean manufacturing approach, the Kaizen continuous improvement approach, the Plan Do Check Act method, and many others used for business process improvement. While the exact implementation varies, the goal of all of these approaches is to help businesses generate more revenue, avoid wastage, and improve efficiency.
What are the three ways in which business process improvement help business transformation
Business process management creates better collaboration within the organization
One of the biggest roadblocks to organizational efficiency is communication issues. Without effective communication and collaboration, organizations will struggle to execute their tasks and produce value. There will be constant delays and missed deadlines which can cause the organization to fall back in the market.
When employees are not clear on their roles or do not have the information to perform their duties, they will struggle to be productive and the organization becomes inefficient. It will create bottlenecks and delays in service delivery and can create significant costs to the organization.
Business process improvement programs can make organizational communication highly effective. They can help identify communication barriers, study their sources, and help remove them. Business process improvement can also remove data errors within organizational systems. It can ensure that the information stored is regularly updated and synced with the rest of the organization.
Business process improvement solutions like Cadynce can help organizations connect multiple disparate systems together and remove data silos and communication barriers. These solutions can also make the organization more transparent and help employees clearly define tasks for each other.
One of the most perceivable differences a business process improvement solution can make is with assigning tasks, sharing status updates, getting approvals, and moving along a service. Teammates can avoid multiple calls, messages, and follow-ups on different projects and tasks by building smooth workflows and connecting their teammates and projects to them.
Business process improvement increases customer satisfaction
Business process improvement can significantly enhance service delivery and customer satisfaction in all industries. In service-based industries, business process improvement can help keep the clients and customers in the loop during service delivery.
For example, if a business is offering product development services, it’s important to keep the client informed and updated throughout the development process. From the initial sketches to prototypes and the final design, the business should get constant feedback from the client. Else the product may not be what the client had in mind and it can lead to costly redesigns and developments.
But by getting regular inputs from the clients and putting them into the workflow, the businesses can significantly enhance customer satisfaction.
This applies to product-based industries or companies as well. By incorporating customer feedback into the organizations’ processes, businesses can create better products and more satisfied customers.
Process improvements can improve customer satisfaction by ensuring faster and on-time service delivery as well.
The idea behind BPI is to improve all metrics related to the growth of a business and by focusing on customer satisfaction rates, it can help organizations improve them as well. BPI can help identify reasons for low customer satisfaction rates and change the business processes to improve them.
Business process improvement reduces the cost of operations
Obviously, when you remove delays, wastage, and unnecessary usage of resources, and streamline a process, it’s going to bring down the associated cost. With a business improvement program in place, organizations can continuously optimize their processes and make them aligned to their goals. They can cut down on unnecessary redundancies, automate repetitive tasks, streamline manual processes, and add or remove processes as market conditions change.
Continuous business process management can also ensure that there’s little waste of material or human resources. For instance, when market conditions change, demand for a product or a service may decrease. If the processes are not changed accordingly, the resources will continue to go to delivering these services which may not be used. But with business process improvement, the activities will be constantly monitored and if they’re not delivering value, they may be modified or removed completely.
Similarly, if there are supply chain problems or if an upcoming regulation has an impact on the industry, with BPI, organizations can adapt their processes without incurring losses or stopping service delivery. BPI can also reduce operational costs by improving employee communications, enhancing collaboration, and making operations more transparent and visible.
What is the role of business process improvement in digital transformation?
Business process improvement is a key element for a successful digital transformation.
One of the main goals of digital transformation is to make the organization more agile and ready to adapt to shifting market conditions. It’s about people and processes as much as it is about technology. Successful transformation needs organizations to completely rethink their processes and activities instead of just adding more technology to it.
For this, organizations have to define their processes and use BPI methodologies to understand and eliminate inefficiencies. Wherever applicable, businesses should explore implementing automation, AI, connected devices, and other technologies to make business processes more efficient and streamlined.
The role of BPI continues throughout the digital transformation process. Even after implementing the changes, BPI offers businesses the tools to monitor their processes and iterate them continuously.
Best practices for improving business processes
Create detailed process maps for the entire organization
To improve processes, you need detailed maps showcasing the inputs, outputs, the activities involved and how they’re connected to each other, the people who are performing the tasks, and other information. Ensure that these maps show all the relevant information and that they are updated as you modify and change processes.
Create goals and metrics for all processes
Define exactly what each process is designed to achieve and the parameters for achieving them. Make sure that these goals and metrics contribute to the organization’s long-term goals.
These will help your team understand exactly what they need to do and will guide how these processes are executed. It will also help the organization modify and improve the processes as needed.
Collect information and feedback from the employees
Even if you have systems to monitor the processes and outputs, employees who are executing these processes will definitely have insights that can improve them. Create systems to collect regular feedback from employees and analyze them for common threads. Make sure the feedback reaches the stakeholders and is used to modify the processes.
Get stakeholder support
As with any other activity, stakeholder support is essential for the success of business process improvement as well. Getting their participation when setting the goals and metrics, keeping them in the loop constantly, and showcasing the results can go a long way in getting support from the executive team.
Constantly monitor all processes
Monitor all processes and check the associated metrics. If the processes are not performing as needed or if they’re not meeting the goals, evaluate the process, identify the issues, and iterate them as needed.
By leveraging the benefits of regular BPM process monitoring, businesses can streamline their operations while maintaining a competitive edge in the market. This in turn leads to improved customer experiences, increased profitability, and an overall higher quality of service.
Monitoring provides valuable insights into how a company’s processes are performing and allows them to take corrective action whenever necessary for maximum efficiency. All these factors combine to create an effective strategy for process intelligence that can help businesses achieve long-term success.
Ensure the employees are properly trained
Without proper training or access to information, employees won’t be able to perform the processes as designed and it will obviously lead to inefficiencies. Even with the best process designs, the organization won’t be able to perform efficiently without well-trained employees.
Ready to supercharge your business? Try Cadynce
Cadynce is a state-of-the-art business process improvement platform designed to streamline and accelerate processes in an enterprise. Employees can use the platform to automate their tasks and workflows and make the organization more efficient without expert training or coding experience. The platform can help companies bring together multiple digital workplace solutions, manage documents, and visualize their complex workflows.
Ready to improve your business processes? Try Cadynce now
