How to STANDARDISE your PROCESSES

In my previous article I explained why you should standardise and this time I will address how to standardize your processes. The first step is to create a clear view on who would own the processes and how the responsibility will be put to; map, design, standardize, maintain and continuous improve the processes. Think through how decisions will be made in these activities and who has the authority to force a decision when there are conflicting interests. And there will be conflicts because what one function wants to optimise can have negative impact on other areas. 

In my experience there are 4 major building blocks in setting this up:

1. A Business Process Owner (BPO) & Expert (BPE) network, which is a group of people in the organisation which really understands their process domain and can think end to end also how they connect to others. These people own the overall content of the process designs and are the drivers for the standardisation.
2. Subject Matter Experts, these are the people in the business that are responsible for the day to day execution of the processes in the organsation. They will be the ones that should help implement the standards and continuous improve them.
3. Design Authority, this is a body where the various BPOs come together, with architects and other discipline owners. Also business leadership could have a seat at this table, since here the designs will be approved and decisions made in case of e.g. conflicting interests.
4. Process repository, there should be one place where all the processes should be stored and maintained for use in the company. This can be called for instance a process center of excellence, where you can bring in people to process the updates and keep the standards clean and usable.

The responsibility and accountability of the people in the building blocks can vary. There are for instance companies that give full ownership not only to create the standards, but also give the responsibility to execute them to the Business Process Owners. Other companies still have a functional ownership which is responsible for the process execution, whilst the BPOs focus on effective and efficient design of the processes. These are fundamental choices which you should make in the context of what best fits your business and how you want to run your teams.

 When you have figured out how to construct and staff the building blocks to run the process standardization, the next step is how to approach the work itself, Also here there are various ways to go about this.

 First on a very high level you should get a view on what your main process domains are. Here you can leverage universally used frameworks such as the one published by the American Productivity and Quality Center (APQC), where you can find a generic list for both Operating Processes (e.g. Deliver Services) as well as Management Support Processes (e.g. Manage Information Technology). Based on this list you can construct a version that is relevant for your organisation and this list will also help you determine how to construct your BPO and BPE organisation. Also it will be the overall umbrella for your process framework - on the role and buildup of business process frameworks I will publish a separate article. 

Let me continue here by explaining the different approaches you can take to get to the content for creating these standard processes.

• Leverage the above mentioned standard frameworks since they often already have quite of content collected in these frameworks from the various companies that are using them.
• Copy processes from companies that run similar business models as you do. When they are not in competition with you there can be very useful interchanges and sharing of process information.
• Look at the current processes that are executed in the business and pick the one that is running best and is most universally applicable as the standard, describe and deploy these.
• Build new processes from scratch, to have a fresh start can be an opportunity to create new future proof solutions, but also is a significant task, since you will have to collect the requirements, discuss and agree to the new standards which means often significant change in the organisation.

When you have agreed on the content for the standard designs, leverage the design authority to approve them and the process repository to document them. The next phase is about implementing them. 

Important is to understand the impact the change to the new processes will have on the organisation. This change impact assessment determines as well the approach which needs to be taken and the effort it will cost to implement the change. Especially when the new processes are embedded in IT systems, this can lead to several projects to deliver the new standard. The benefit from embedding this in IT solutions is that here you can very tightly control the flexibility people have in the execution and also implement controls to see how people are using the processes and what the related performance is of these processes.

When the impact is relative small, training and coaching might be sufficient, but when new systems and organisational changes are required to bring a unit on to the new processes, a significant effort will be required. Impact can be that the organisational setup and changes in people roles and jobs need to be prepared, where people need to get complete new job and work instructions. Processes can become more automated and the impact of data going into the system needs to be different and of higher quality, which requires preparation. Also new standards can be more rigid in certain areas and provide more options in other areas. People need to understand why this is and how to leverage the opportunities provided by the new processes. 

All this will require significant communication, change management planning and learning support, but by doing this well you create a solid basis to adhere to the new standard, sustain the performance and create a platform to drive continuous improvement. Since everybody is operating the same standard it also becomes much easier to share improvements and move people across the organisation. Hence investing in standardisation will pay off in many different ways.

In my next articles on process management, I will talk more about how to structure process frameworks and how you can simplify them using business models. I hope you enjoyed reading this seventeenth #transformation #tip and I look forward to your feedback, either here, or even better; join the group I have created at https://www.dhirubhai.net/groups/8618774 on #End2End #Digital transformation to host content and discussions on this exciting topic. Already >245 professionals joined this community, do not hesitate - join to learn and share your knowledge/ideas!