Business Processes are set of interrelated activities performed to give a desired business outcome. This age-old definition is widely understood and accepted globally and is against the backdrop of replacing function oriented organization with process centric organization. The jury is still out, whether such a process centric organization is a reality or a myth and if it can be implemented in different geographies & cultures. Despite this, the word ‘Process’ continues to find its place in more and more organizations’ vocabulary. However, most of the organizations continue with their functional structures and attempt to overlay the process centric organizations on top of it!!!!!
It is a known fact, which has also been pointed out by many management gurus, that the root cause of most of the business problems lie in the design & definition of an organization’s processes. In addition to it, the businesses have become extremely dynamic……….which implies that the answers to same questions continue to change rapidly. This necessitates businesses to keep evolving their organizations’ processes to keep pace with the market and customer needs. Almost all process improvement projects – small or big including transformational initiatives eventually recommend changes in business processes.
Thus, the need for effective & efficient processes has become key success driver for businesses in today’s world. Interestingly, organizations confuse this with automation or digitisation. Indeed, automation is a key for efficient processes and should be pursued with all zeal and focus. However, automation itself will not make the processes effective. The core designs of the processes need to be revisited, whether or not, one intends to automate the processes and ensure they give effective business outcomes. For example, a quote for a product to a customer needs to be reviewed and this process can be made very efficient by automation. However, even after the automation, the requirement for a review must be challenged to make the process leaner & effective.
The challenge is that most of the processes are approached in isolation thus leading to sub-optimal design. Second, and equally important element is to analyse process performance continuously, make changes in the process for improved internal / external customer satisfaction. How many times you have come across a TAT commitment of ‘X’ days from customer care organization of a service provider when the work essentially gets delivered in half of the committed time. If you analyse the performance, you would notice that about 99% of the activity gets done in half of the committed time. However, the TAT commitment level still continues to remain unchanged, just as a buffer for risks, obviously at the cost of customer experience!!!!!!!!!
We at ShilpBodh understand this dichotomy extensively, being practitioner for a long time and having demonstrated it in numerous cases. We analyse and help organizations redesign processes based on all four design principles viz., Exploitative, Explorative, Transformational and Analytical. We also ensure that the process interactions are studied in detail to ensure robust design of interfaces……….which are otherwise the weakest link. We also ensure the process measurements and outcomes are very clearly defined and aligned with Key In-process Indices.