“And why your organization needs it more than you think.”
Your company’s departments are built around essential processes that help daily activities run smoothly. From Human Resources running payroll to your Customer Success team ensuring your customer onboarding process is optimal.
But what happens when these processes aren’t running smoothly? How can you identify wasted resources and unnecessary steps in these daily tasks?
The answer lies in Business Process Optimization, or BPO.
What it Means to Optimize a Business Process
» It means to take a process and look for ways to make it more efficient. To look for bottlenecks, needless backs and forth, steps that take too long, identify causes and ways to streamline it.
Business Process Optimization allows decision makers to improve efficiencies within daily operations and better meet their business goals.
» By identifying ways to eliminate redundancies, streamline workflows, improve communication and reduce time.
It is a part of Business Process Management (BPM), and often has a direct impact in productivity. If not using the right business process optimization techniques, companies are likely losing time and money.
How To Optimize Your Business Processes
Now that you know the importance of BPO, it’s time to start identifying ways to optimize your own processes. The five steps to get started are:
1- Identification
Identify which processes are creating the most issues. It’s always a good idea to start by taking a look at core business processes.
Are there bottlenecks? Where do they occur? Are customers complaining? Are employees complaining?
» In this stage you will want to gather as much information as possible from your customers and employees. They know what’s wrong and may know how to do it better.
It’s very important that you map your processes and know the goals you want to achieve.
This is how to map your processes and these are some tips to identify weaknesses in your processes.
G2 Learn Hub suggests the following questions.
2- Analysis
Once you know what processes you need to optimize, it’s time to analyze what’s going wrong. This is when you ask as many questions as come to mind to your team.
» Are you involving too many employees in order to accomplish a simple task? Are you meeting the desired goals? Who is affected by the process? Is it taking too long? Are there needless steps?
The answers to the previous step questions will guide you.
Once you map out all these questions, the answers will seem more obvious.
3- Implemention
Implementation is a key step in process optimization as this is when you’ll get to introduce tangible solutions to your issues.
» If you don’t know where to start from, ask your team. Also check for industry trends and what other companies are doing to fix the issues.
» Make sure you have well established KPIs to measure how well you are performing or what to expect.
If you are new to KPIs or just need more help this is a great guide.
For example, if you are allocating too many resources to one process or it’s taking too long, find ways to eliminate manual processes and incorporate automated solutions.
Did you know that up to 45% of work activities can be automated with current technology?
Make sure the solutions you introduce work toward Improving overall efficiencies.
4- Monitoring
» Monitor implementation regularly. Analyze impact and check for needed tweaks. If you introduce new solutions, make sure they are doing exactly what they were brought to do.
Monitor how these changes are affecting your processes and whether there’s still room for improvement. If the system you’re using offers capabilities to send notifications in real time, monitoring changes and relevant updates will be much easier.
5- Control
Make sure you control future process performance regularly and make the adjustments it needs. Some experts suggest to check your process adjustments again next quarter.
How to Know What Processes to Optimize
Fact: According to a recent survey on Business Process Management 93% of companies are engaged in multiple process improvement and optimization projects at any given time.
This showcases that managing and optimizing business processes is no longer a “nice to have,” but an imperative effort for smooth-running operations.
How to know when your process needs to be optimized?
1- You’re seeing fragmented business processes
Improving overall business processes goes hand in hand with integration, as the most effective operations don’t rely on a multitude of systems and a series of touch points.
If some of your current processes require multiple software solutions, involvement of too many teams, siloed tasks and information, optimization through automation could be the best way to increase the quality of your tasks and deliverables.
2- There many human errors
When a process is presenting continuous errors, optimization through workflow automation can be a great way to eliminate constant mistakes and improve both internal and external relationships.
3- There’s a high level of complexity
An optimized business process is straightforward and doesn’t rely on unnecessary steps, levels of approval, or conditions. If you’re getting feedback from your employees regarding how long it takes to accomplish a task, then it’s time to optimize.
Other situations:
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- You are growing fast and don’t have enough resources.
- You need more structured processes.
- Your customer satisfaction has dropped.
- You adopted Smart Working.
- You have compliance issues.
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As your organization continues to grow and evolve, your business processes need to also be reshaped, redefined and rethought.
» Follow these five simple steps to carry out your business process optimization and a continuous improvement of your processes: Identification, Analysis, Implementation, Monitoring, and Control.
» If you don’t know what processes need to be optimized, start by looking for fragmented operations, continuous errors and high levels of complexity.
How Virtus Flow can help
Through our process automation software solution you can optimize any business process.
With one single platform you can digitize and automate workflows, tasks, approvals, information delivery and storage, collaboration with internal and external users, forms and more.
