By mapping your business processes, you can effectively identify opportunities for improvement and move forward with concrete measures for increased digitalisation and efficiency. Read more about why it's good to do a process mapping here.
Meta Bytes has helped countless companies map their business processes, and has learned a thing or two along the way. We have therefore produced this guide where we share our best tips.
Start by clarifying the purpose and goals of mapping the business process.
Is the purpose to find a new system, integrate existing systems or automate the process? Of course, there can be several purposes, but make sure that all purposes are identified and documented as stated purposes.
The same applies to the goals. Do you have multiple goals for your automation that each need to be woven into the mapping process? For example, combining the goals of saving time, money, and providing a better customer experience may all need to be incorporated in different ways. Keep in mind that the goals should preferably follow the SMART model, i.e. they should be:
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Realistic
Time-bound
When purpose and goal are formulated it is time to go ahead and frame the process by defining the start and end point.
Example: Mapping of order process
Purpose and goal: We want to map our order process with the purposeful aim of automating it as far as possible. The goal is to save 40 working hours per month and reduce the number of error cases in order handling to 30 per month by Q4 2022 at the latest.
Framing: The order process begins with an incoming order from a customer and ends with the right item being delivered to the right customer at the right time.
To map the business process, a project team and a project manager are needed to keep the project together and drive it forward. The project manager informs the entire project team about the framing of the process and the purpose and goal of the mapping, according to step 1.
It is important that the right people are part of the project team – feel free to involve as many people as possible who are involved in the process. You never know who is sitting on valuable information or who has innovative ideas for how the process can be improved. Those who are part of the project team can also act as ambassadors for future change work, which can be a great advantage.
Another thing that is often a great advantage throughout this process is to have a person from the management team in the project team. This makes the process of moving forward much easier when you need approval from senior leadership during the project.
Now it's time to gather information on what the process looks like today. In this step, you should document all the information related to the process mapping in a single collaboration tool. Feel free to choose a tool that you already use within the organisation and that the project team is used to.
It is always better to collect too much information than too little in this phase.
Examples of how you can collect information:
Conduct interviews with as many people as possible who are in some way involved in the process. Focus the interview on how the process looks from their perspective, and how it could work better.
Event storming is a workshop format that is well suited for exploring complex activities. The method is effective when it comes to breaking down silos within an organisation, identifying activities that create or destroy value, and finding potential bottlenecks. Event storming often creates a new level of understanding of the process. You can either carry out a workshop by yourself or hire a consultant who can act as a facilitator. Read more about Event Storming here.
Put together a process map to get an overview of how the process works today. This isn't about how you want it to work, but how it actually functions and be sure to also include any flaws and bottlenecks in the process. The process map of the current situation should be as accurate as possible for what the process looks like today and should contain the following:
There are many good digital tools you can use to create a process map – Google it! :)
When you have a true picture of the current state of the process, it is time to analyse it and find opportunities for improvement. You have probably learned a lot from your solid information gathering in step 3 – and will probably find even more with the help of the process map!
Always strive to find the root cause of a particular bottleneck or something that does not work optimally. This way, you can more easily find a solution that lasts over time.
Finally, it's time to move on to implementing the improvements you have identified. Feel free to test a change on a small scale first before the change is used broadly. Once you have done that, you are ready to proceed with the actual purpose of the process mapping that you identified in step 1, for example automation of the process.
Our experience is that those who do a thorough preparation are also the ones who succeed best with the subsequent implementation – regardless of whether it is about system integration, automation, system change or something else.
We hope that these steps can be helpful and do not hesitate to contact us if you have questions or if you need help during or after your process mapping.
Good luck!
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