How to Identify When My Company Needs to Implement Business Process Optimization?
Published 09/12/2021
Published 09/12/2021
Companies will always need to continuously implement Business Process Optimization if they want to be successful. So the answer to our title question on “How to identify when my company needs to implement Business Process Optimization?” is very simple, if you have not implemented it, it is time to do so.
The goal of business process optimization is to increase efficiency by improving processes through better resource use. This practice is part of BPM, also known as business process management.
As a result, process optimization can create strategies to improve workflows, enhance communication, predict changes, and eliminate redundancies. Generally speaking, managing and optimizing processes is critical for digital transformation in all companies.
What are the benefits of business process optimization?
Without a doubt, business process optimization makes a company more competitive over time. You’ll see some of its benefits below.
Risk mitigation
Mapping activities makes it easier to standardize processes and formalize them. This reduces mistakes, repetition, and questions regarding procedures, which notably reduces risks.
Cost reduction
When processes are optimized, waste can be easily identified, which makes it possible to find errors, poorly used resources, bottlenecks that compromise productivity, and so on. This in turn helps resolve these issues and reduce expenses.
Better results
Improved internal and external processes are one of the greatest benefits since the chances are improved of delivering the quality that customers seek in a product or service provider. This is a way to achieve a prominent market position and offer greater value.
Higher efficiency
Business process optimization allows products and services to be delivered with agility and quality because with mistakes corrected and processes standardized, you can produce more in less time, and with more quality.
Optimized time management
Tasks that don’t add value can be eliminated without any negative consequences. This maximizes time and creates more agile workflows.
Better overview
You get a better general view of overall processes, which aids integration and optimization of the business as a whole.
Better problem-solving capability
With an end-to-end view, you can identify the causes of problems. This helps to fix mistakes at their source, so managers don’t need to invest resources in mitigating consequences instead of actually resolving issues.
Controlled compliance
It’s easier to stay compliant with standardized and monitored processes. Plus, in the event of an audit, transparency in processes eases the proceedings and contributes to the desired results. Based on these benefits, make sure you always pay attention to symptoms of poor process management in your company.
How can process optimization help your business in every department?
All parts of a business can benefit from process optimization. If you want to know what it’s good for, below are some practical examples.
Human Resources
Technology and process optimization can definitely determine the efficiency of an HR department. When a new employee joins a company, there’s a sequence of steps that are manually completed. So when we update this process, it can be accelerated by activating triggers that automate some actions, eliminating mistakes, and speeding up the onboarding process.
Sales
Process optimization in a sales team helps salespeople to understand customers’ status, which makes their path to conversion easier, as well as cross-selling and upselling. Moreover, it contributes to team organization, providing defined, internal, client-centered tasks. It also makes it easier to see problems in the sales process and, consequently, their solutions.
Marketing
In marketing, process optimization allows you to improve content management in social media, blogs, and websites since you streamline production, revision, and publishing content flows. It also makes tracking department metrics easier and aids in lead and customer management.
Finance
Keeping track of due dates is an advantage of process optimization in finance because it permits greater account oversight and task tracking. Moreover, it also contributes to data-based decision-making and provides greater visibility to operations.
Business Process Optimization Steps Explained
The main goal of process optimization is to reduce or eliminate time and resource wastage, unnecessary costs, bottlenecks, and mistakes while achieving the process objective. We only spend time correcting an error if the mistake exists. It is not enough to know that but to know how to accomplish that. Following are the steps to get there.
Identify
First, we need to identify what is the process optimization need that exists in your company. Think about a process in your company that is costing you more than it should, or inducing client dissatisfaction or even stress between employees.
Now, ask questions about this process, aiming to determine what is the core of the process, the unchangeable items.
- What is the final purpose of the process? What should the outcome be?
- Where does the process starts and ends?
- What activities are part of the process, passing through the stages?
- Which departments and people are involved?
- Which information travels between steps?
- At that point, we are asking what is the process, and not how to do it.
Rethink
It is time to map the process, worrying about how to execute each step, about how the process flows, about what is process optimization to this process. Ask yourself and your team these questions:
- Is there a better way to perform this process?
- How exactly is this process conducted?
- How much paper (for example) does this process use?
- How long does the process take to be finished?
- How much time is lost in rework and mistake correction?
- Where does the process stall?
Having a micro and macro vision is important. Each detail is important, since the way an email is written until the perception of what the client wants. Compare the answers to these questions to the ones in the first item, and maybe you will find out that tasks that seemed crucial are expendable.
Implement
After knowing the process in this level of detail and identifying the changes opportunities and the improvement needs, it is time to apply the process in a new manner. It is a delicate part of business process optimization. It is crucial, for the purpose of the process as well as for the purpose of the business process optimization, that everybody embraces the new process and implements the changes.
In that way, we can check for results, gather data and see if the improvements were real or not. It can happen that the process does not end how we expected, that the staff does not get used to it, that the implementation was not done correctly, so it is necessary to start the project all over again.
Automate
To insist on the same errors and expect different results is the recipe for failure. Automate the processes that are proved to work and spread them through the company to see the results in costs reduction, mistake prevention, wastage cut, and production increase.
Monitor
Through the entire process optimization, monitor, monitor, and monitor. After the automation, you will surely find new improvement points and bottlenecks. Identify them, rethink the process, implement it and automate it.
Conclusion
As with all the processes in business process management, this is a cyclical project. If done just one time, it will not offer any solution to your organization. If built into the company’s culture, it will bring client satisfaction, employees’ happiness, superior profitability, and a wastage cut never seen before. Be sure to look for reliable software when optimizing the processes of your company. The results are only going to be worth it if the process performs satisfactorily.
If you want to know about a real-life example of a Business Process Optimization in a company read Business Process Optimization Fundamentals.
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Connect 2 BPO S.A.S is a Business Process Outsourcing company established in 2016. We develop, execute and manage campaigns for businesses around the world.