Understanding, communicating, and continuous updates are key to improving business processes. Building process maps, encouraging communication, and using technology can help. It’s important to understand the problem and not just fix symptoms, and to continue innovating even after the problem is resolved.
Improving business processes depends on understanding, communicating, and continuous updates and innovation. A business process is a practice in which multiple inputs work together to produce an output. So a process can be anything from delivering a service to processing payroll. Building business process maps, encouraging interdepartmental communication, and using technology to provide process status updates are all ways to potentially improve the business process.
As a macro example of business process improvement, imagine a company that wants to decrease high employee turnover rates. The process that needs to be improved, therefore, is the employees’ first year of experience. The manager wants to decrease this number and increase company loyalty. To do this, he needs to understand the problem, encourage communication, and stay up-to-date on the status of the process.
In a business process, it’s important to understand the problem and not just fix the symptoms. The best decisions are often well-informed and that’s the same for business process improvement. The manager working to decrease employee turnover by correcting the symptoms can offer higher compensation packages as an incentive to employees. After six months, that manager may realize that the numbers have not significantly improved and that he wasted time and money trying to implement this strategy without understanding the true nature of the problem.
In improving business processes, communication is critical and should be open and encouraged, especially in cross-departmental processes. Using open communication, the manager can ask new hires and new hire managers what they think causes high turnover, for example. The manager may receive information indicating that new hires do not feel they are considered valuable or that their managers have focused enough on training.
Keeping the lines of communication open can be helpful in finding innovative solutions to the problem. Brainstorming sessions can suggest more training sessions and personal assessments to be scheduled with new hires. Implementing such changes can increase employee loyalty and result in less turnover, improving the business process.
Understanding the problem can make improvement strategies more effective, but process improvement is an ongoing process. Effective process managers review and innovate even after the problem has been resolved. Continuing the solutions in the example—implementing a new hiring survey and asking questions to determine concerns or areas for improvement—can help keep the manager aware of potential problems, allowing him to find solutions early.
Business process mapping can also provide a way to better understand processes while increasing communication. Process maps provide step-by-step visual representations of business processes to help streamline process management. Visual representations facilitate process conceptualization and find room for improvement. Teams building process maps often come from various stages of the process and can provide critical input from multiple perspectives to help with improvement.
Technology, when properly selected and maintained, can also improve business process management. Automating household or administrative tasks, for example, can efficiently store information, decrease human errors, and improve efficiency. Automated management systems can also help to increase control over processes and increase visibility into operations.
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