Four Steps for Effectively Managing Business Processes

All organizations, regardless of their vertical, size, and structure, work with multiple processes on a daily basis. Different processes may have different goals, frequency, owners, and timelines; but in order for any business to be successful, the operational and supporting processes must be managed effectively.

During our discovery stage, most business owners share that their processes do not provide the desired results, or the results generated can be optimized further. Today, I would like to share our recommended steps that can help most organizations to effectively manage their processes, and optimize desired results.

1. DOCUMENT what you EXPECT from your process.

Though many businesses have daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or annual processes, that they have been doing for years; not all of them have these processes documented well enough. When asked why, some clients respond that they know it very well, and do not need to document it; while some have it documented but have not been updated in a long time (sometimes YEARS!)

Our first recommendation for effectively managing any business process is to document it, in detail, based on your expectations. If you do not document it, there is a possibility of missing key process goals, requirements, or steps that might be crucial for its success.

2. COMMUNICATE what you EXPECT from your process.

Once you have documented the process, it is necessary to share it with teams that are responsible to carry out these processes. It is important that each task owner/champion understands their role, the desired results, timeline, and overall dependencies that can help them be successful.

If there are questions that arise during this stage, it must be answered and buy-in must be established from all stakeholders in the process.

3. INSPECT what you EXPECT from your process.

Inspection of a process helps you further identify issues that hamper the overall results. There might be various factors that may affect the results in a process. Sometimes technology is outdated or personnel do not have the right skill set, the training is inadequate or the right tools are unavailable to team members. This step helps you determine those obstacles and address them.

4. ACCEPT only what you EXPECT from your process.

While this step seems to be pretty obvious, this is something that most business owners do not enforce when managing business processes. We had a client who had their key team members come late to work on a regular basis. When asked about it, the response was: "They always come 15 minutes late, because of XYZ reasons."

While it is OKAY to have an instance of deviation from the process, do not normalize such deviations or they become part of the process. If your "documented" process requires your team member to report to work at a certain time, do not compromise on it. If you approve of certain deviations in process, they must be documented too.

Conclusion

Each business, organization, and team is different and has a unique culture. The above process management steps were designed to keep that uniqueness intact and still help business owners to optimize their results.

Feel free to share your thoughts on how your organization manages process optimization across its functions.

Until next time - SK!