Running an organization can be a hard nut to crack at times. Entrepreneurs carry out various processes to streamline their business in the right way to avoid wastage of valuable resources, such as manpower, time, and money.
To keep up with the market competition, businesses are taking different approaches to enhance their efficiency and execute critical business processes successfully. The more efficient your processes are, the more productive your employees will be. For example, if a device or system is faulty, it will hamper your entire workflow, affecting your business.
To explain how business processes work, let’s discuss the basics of Business Process Transformation and Business Process Optimization.
Key Definitions
Business Process Transformation refers to the process by which businesses change certain elements of their processes radically to meet new goals. It often involves the implementation of new digital processes. Businesses use this method to modernize their processes, integrate core systems better, incorporate new technologies, and optimize costs.
The steps involved in Business Process Transformation include:
- Identifying the transformation goals
- Establishing baseline metrics
- Involving all the stakeholders
- Mapping out the best workflow path
- Creating mock processes to test real-life operations
- Implementing the changes and monitoring the situation closely.
Business Process Optimization, on the other hand, is the method by which businesses can make better use of their available resources to enhance their workforce for carrying out day-to-day tasks more productively. It is a part of Business Process.
Management and can be divided into the following significant steps:
- Identifying the problem
- Using existing resources to get the work done
- Implementing necessary changes
- Monitoring the impact or benefits gained.
Some examples of business process optimization include:
- Improving communication
- Eliminating redundancies
- Streamlining workflows
- Anticipating changes and implementing the necessary ones
Why is Business Process Optimization Important?
Business Process Optimization is a rewarding methodology for your business in ways more than one. You can create a competitive edge for yourself and face the threats received from your competitors. Moreover, you can respond more efficiently to the changing norms and market changes, as well as disruptive technologies.
The benefits of optimizing your business processes are manifold, including:
- Streamlines operations
- Market compliance
- Reduced risks
- Consistency
- Greater end-to-end visibility
- Increased productivity
- Assured quality
- Efficient utilization of resources
In short, business process optimization can help you survive dynamic market changes and competition.
Examples of Business Process Transformation
According to ZDNet, 70% of the companies have either implemented a digital transformation strategy at the workplace or are working on it to digitize their workflows for greater business success. By transforming certain processes, businesses can boost capability, success, and innovation.
Here are examples of some industries who implemented business process transformation effectively:
- An insurance company revises its data strategies and practices automated DevOps deployment to boost business growth.
- 63% of businesses believe that business transformation is the leading factor that drives their cloud engagement. It has helped large corporations to migrate extensive data (both unstructured and structured) securely to the cloud.
- A leading global bank combines data modeling and integration to improve coherence. This methodology has also helped the company predict the timescale of various operations and perform more accurate audits.
Business Process Optimization Strategies
We can break down business process optimization into three significant steps, which are
1. Analyzing & Optimizing
The first and foremost step is to identify your processes after you have mapped them and recognize which of them would be best for optimization. You can use several tools to do a thorough analysis of your crucial business processes and focus on the ones that are worth your future optimization efforts.
The process analysis method can be qualitative, in which you get deeper insights into the process, or quantitative, in which you can predict and test how each process will perform or behave in the coming days. Identify the key components of a process by asking yourself these questions:
- What would be the desired outcome of the process?
- What activities would push the process forward?
- When and how does the process begin, and where is its end?
- What data is being transferred between each step taken?
- Which employees or teams are allotted to it?
Further, you can use the simulation method to analyze different alternative paths associated with a process using vital data like cost and time. You can conduct test run simulations to monitor how your processes would perform in real-world situations. Also, simulation allows you to think more concretely and receive quantifiable figures, helping you to improve and optimize your processes.
2. Implementing & Changing
After you have established the ideal process design, you can start the process change project, the scope of which can expand across various layers like
- Making technical changes or upgradation to the tools and applications that are compatible with the new process.
- Implementing organizational or operational changes to align various roles and responsibilities with the updated process.
- Training the existing teams and their roles for the new process.
- Changing management-level activities to facilitate a smooth transition into the new process.
The idea is to floor and work on an agreed and jointly approved optimization method, thus ensuring proper alignment of the design with the entire process change project. It further allows teams to work collaboratively on the change project and reach a more cohesive goal while striving to fulfill the common process design target.
3. Evaluating & Control
The evaluation and control stage can be divided into two phases
- Checking whether the process adheres to the desired outcomes.
- Monitoring and analyzing whether the new process is aligning with the end-goals.
The step also includes the automation of several tasks to speed up the method. For example, automating repetitive tasks, workflows, tactics, and other business operations can save your resources, including time, money, and employees.
Next, you must access the performance and behavior of the implemented changes and check whether they are executed by the employees at every stage of the project, whenever possible. For this, you might also need an appropriate review model and efficient governance.
Further, analyze whether the updated process is delivering the desired outcomes and is helping the business grow. An effective monitoring procedure also involves reviewing and executing both the new and other well-established processes from time to time.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, now that you have learned about business process optimization in detail, try to implement the above strategies for promoting an enhanced BPM practice. Businesses should empower their core teams and make sure that their critical projects are accomplished effectively.
