What do you do if your business processes are not yielding desired results?

Opportunities and threats are the source of BA work in any organisation. Analysing AS-IS processes thoroughly helps pin-point opportunities to enhance them for efficiency. When I was a BA in the Homewares/Consumer Products industry, it was recognised that there was a huge bottleneck in fulfilling orders. After I had a closer look at the problem, we recognised that the warehouse business process of handling orders was the cause of this issue. There were a lot of unnecessary steps that hindered efficiency. So, I came up with a TO-BE business process to solve this problem of the warehouse operations bottleneck. Gap analysis is the first step for Business Processes Improvement.

To tackle underperforming business processes effectively, initiate a comprehensive gap analysis, which entails scrutinizing current performance against desired outcomes to unveil any disparities. By meticulously assessing each process step and aligning them with performance expectations, you can uncover inefficiencies or bottlenecks impeding operational efficiency. Once identified, these gaps pave the way for devising a strategic plan to address them, potentially entailing process redesign or resource optimization to optimize overall performance and productivity.

In my experience, it is very important to get aligned in terms of the vision of that particular process - What is its intent? Once this is cleared out, there might be multiple reason why the process is failing - Waste in the process - Bottlenecks - Too many things in progress, and not enough getting done One of the ways I usually use to identify the cause is through a Value stream mapping. Get everyone involved in the process to map it out, get a common understanding, identify the pain points and any wastes/non value work in the process and come up with ways to eliminate or reduce these. Second thing is to make the work visible through the use of a Kanban board and make nimble improvements as we go.

After the initial gap analysis, it is important to collaborate with stakeholders to validate that our problem recognition and solution proposal is accurate. After my initial gap analysis, I went to the warehouse to job shadow the personnel. This helped me recognise some vital on-the-ground process overheads. Each order underwent multiple clicks before they were picked, packed, and processed for delivery, causing delay. This enabled me to come up with a better TO-BE process and also ensured that the warehouse personnel were aligned to the changes. With this, I realised that collaboration with the working team is vital to recognise the nitty gritty of operations. How things are imagined on paper can be different from on-the-ground work.

Engaging your employees in the problem-solving process can yield invaluable insights and foster a sense of ownership. Conduct discussions with teams across different organizational levels to gather diverse perspectives and identify practical solutions. This collaborative approach not only taps into frontline expertise but also cultivates buy-in for necessary changes. By involving your teams, you not only enhance problem-solving effectiveness but also nurture a culture of continuous improvement within your organization.

When addressing process issues be sure to involve employees from different teams in the same sessions. Often a team has no idea of how their actions impact on other teams. Just having them in the same meeting looking at things from a different angle can start to resolve that disconnect. A shared perspective means that people will sometimes freely offer resolutions that they would have otherwise found difficult to accept.

Harnessing data is paramount for diagnosing and enhancing business processes effectively. Gather comprehensive data from all relevant areas and scrutinize it for patterns and anomalies. Employ advanced business analysis tools to extract actionable insights from this data, enabling informed decision-making. Embracing a data-driven approach empowers organizations to make more reliable decisions, grounded in empirical evidence rather than subjective intuition or assumptions.

With a thorough understanding of the issue and clear conception of the solution, we can start the business process modelling. After the initial gap analysis and collaboration with stakeholders, I designed a new process using the BPMN. This enabled the technical team and the end users to have a clear understanding of the proposed solution. Visual models always help understand problems and solutions much better than any other forms of communication.

After accumulating the essential data, the next step involves redesigning the flawed processes. This overhaul doesn't always require a complete overhaul; sometimes, minor tweaks can yield substantial improvements. Explore diverse process enhancement methodologies such as Lean or Six Sigma to eliminate inefficiencies and boost productivity. It's imperative to craft a redesign that is not only adaptable to future business shifts but also in alignment with the overarching business strategy, ensuring sustained success and relevance.

Once the technical team and the end users are clear about the changes to the system, it is important to define timelines and expectations to both parties. This helps us be on the same page with the tech team as to when the changes can be rolled out while we plan change strategies to train the end users. As a BA, it is important to create training documentation for the end users so that they are aware of how to use the new system. This document also helps them understand when they can expect this change. These steps make sure the change transition is smooth without further affecting the business processes.

In the realm of business analysis, adapting and refining processes is a continuous journey. From my experience leading tech projects, setting dynamic KPIs is crucial for real-time feedback. However, beyond metrics, engaging frontline teams in the conversation offers invaluable insights often missed by data alone. For instance, a shift in our development approach only showed its true value when team members voiced the improved ease of collaboration and reduced stress levels, which KPIs initially overlooked. This blend of quantitative and qualitative feedback ensures our strategies are not just effective but also sustainable and team-oriented.

Once the new system is rolled out, a good BA would monitor the progress and help the end users learn the new process thoroughly. In a previous role where I redesigned the warehouse operations business process, analysing some KPIs and Metrics helped me understand if the new system is actually working better. KPIs - Is the warehouse operations bottleneck solved? Are orders being delivered on time? Are the warehouse staff more efficient with time after the new system implementation? Metrics - Number of orders processed per hour, time taken to dispatch an order, number of customer complaints received due to delays, and number of orders that missed the two-business-day delivery.

- Review the KPI if need be (SMART goals) - Continuous Improvement :Review, Re-question, re-assess the current state ( E.g re-run the 6 Sigma DMAIC) - the aim is to get closer to the Statement of Intent and fall within agreed KPI

No matter how beautifully a Workflow is depicted to represent a process, or how well it's explained to the people who execute it, if the workflow isn't aligned with the Business Rules, it will invariably fail.