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Every organization is founded on its business processes. These are the recurring tasks that must be performed consistently, ranging from product shipment to the onboarding of new staff. The effectiveness of these processes can distinguish a good company from a great one. By optimizing your processes, you ensure they function at peak efficiency, thereby enhancing overall company performance.

A business process refers to a sequence of systematic and repeatable actions performed by an individual or a team to achieve a specific business objective. This is an inherent activity within every organization, regardless of whether it is executed with deliberate intent. The key distinction between a process and a task lies in the repeatability of the former; a process is characterized by its ongoing nature rather than being a singular occurrence. To illustrate this further, consider the following examples.

When integrating a new employee into the organization, it is essential to have them complete specific documentation, provide a tour of the office, and facilitate introductions to fellow staff members. This procedure is consistently followed, with slight modifications, whenever a new hire joins the team.

A task can denote either a part of a larger process or a distinct, one-off activity. For example, requiring a new employee to fill out a W2 form is a step in a continuous process, while contacting a prospective client is an isolated task that does not require any particular follow-up.

A process can both be formal or informal. The difference between the two is documentation. A formal process is called a procedure and is documented in some form (on paper, software, etc.). Informal, on the other hand, means all the processes that exist but have not been documented.

As you could have guessed, how well these processes perform will determine how well your business is doing. Efficient processes can help your business in several ways…

• Higher Profits and Productivity – The end-result of process improvement. This is achieved through lower defect rates, higher output per input, etc.
• Improved Employee Morale – By streamlining your processes, you’ll be getting rid of any steps or tasks that don’t contribute to the businesses bottom line. Meaning, your employees will be able to spend more time on work that actually helps your business grow (as opposed to waste time on useless tasks).
• Happier Customers – Through lower defects, faster delivery time and so on, your products and services will improve. This, of course, strengthens the image of your brand.

Streamlining Business Processes to Improve Efficiency

Company processes are rarely as efficient as they could be. Not a lot of companies practice continuous improvement – most are simply contempt with how they operate. They start off doing something one way and never actually consider that there might be other options.

Streamlining business processes, however, will ensure that you’re doing the very best you can be.

By definition, streamlining a business process means improving its efficiency by either removing any unnecessary steps, adopting other methodologies, or using new technology.

To streamline the process, you need to start with…

Step #1: Process Mapping

Unless you know what, exactly, the process consists of, you can’t really streamline it. Putting it down on paper makes analysis significantly easier, as it gives you a top-down view of the process. Depending on what you’re looking to improve, there are several different process mapping techniques you’d use. The list includes the flowchart, value stream map, SIPOCSIPOCand so on.

There are 3 ways to do process mapping…

Pen & Paper – The simplest option is to just grab a piece of paper and draw the process map. The fact that it’s a physical document, however, makes it harder to share, get feedback on, etc.

Flowchart Software – Dedicated software for creating online process diagrams. This can be extremely helpful if you don’t want to remember different symbols used for process mapping.

Workflow Management Software – A tool that allows you to create a process diagram and enforce it at the same time. You can use it to track work in real-time, as well as make modifications to established processes..

  Want to learn more? Check out our step-by-step guide to process mapping.

Step #2: Analysis

Unless the process being analyzed has some very obvious flaws, you might have to dig deep to find inefficiencies.

So, ask yourself…

• Are there any steps in the process that are too time-consuming? Are they taking more time that you’d consider to be reasonable?
• Does the process often result in missed deadlines or delays? What could possibly be the reason?
• Are certain processes or process steps more expensive than what would be reasonable? What could be driving the price up?
• In every process, there are key steps which determine the output. Is there any way to make such steps faster or more efficient?

To help you with the analysis, you could also use some of the business process improvement tools, such as the 5 Whys Analysis (asking “why” 5 times until you find the root cause of any problem) or the Fishbone Diagram (a graph that helps pinpoint the relations between causes and effects).

  Feel stuck with the analysis? These 10+ process improvement tools might help.

Step #3: Streamline the Process

Once you determine what the root cause is, you can focus on coming up with a solution & streamlining the process accordingly. To get this right, make sure to pick the right metrics for comparison. You’ll need something to compare benchmark your new processes with.

In most cases, one of the following 3 solutions is used to streamline processes.

• Removing Useless Steps – Are there any steps within the process that don’t contribute to the end goal or product? You can figure out a way to cut them out.
• Adopting Other Methodologies – Meaning, changing the way you do things. You could, for example, adopt
• Using New Technology – Technological developments have always been a game changer. With the right tool, you could fundamentally change the way the process works. Think, adopting CRM software rather than having an excel sheet with contact information.

  There are other ways to improve business processes than just streamlining them. Check out our article to learn 4+ different methods.

Step #4: Implement

The fact that the process works in theory doesn’t mean that it’s going to work in a real business environment. For example, your solution might increase product output, but it might also 2x the defect rates. This puts you back in square one – maybe even further back if you count the time & effort wasted.

So, during the implementation phase, it’s a better idea to start small & scale up from there. Rather than implement the solution company-wide, do it site-wide and see how the new process measures up to the old one.

Ask yourself…

• Is everything going as it should be? Are there any details within the process that weren’t accounted for during planning?
• Is the solution as effective as it was meant to be? Why or why not?
• Does it come with any problems or defects? Is there a chance that there might be some long-term?

Enforcing New Processes

If everything goes as planned, you might think it’s time for celebration. Not exactly – coming up with a more efficient process is one thing, enforcing it is another. Your employees are used to the old way of doing things, and as you probably already know, changing habit is hard.

In some cases, this will be a breeze – if you’re making their lives easier for them, for example (think, removing a time-consuming step in a process). It others, your employees might need to put a lot of work into learning the new way of doing things. So, how do you ensure that once you look away, the employees won’t go back to the older process?

The key here is adopting workflow management software. Rather than having implicit processes within the company, you document & track them with the software. You can see how the process is going in real-time, whether there are any holdups if someone’s missing a deadline, etc. To learn more about workflow management software, head over to our homepage or try Tallyfy now.

Is this post written for a search engine or for you?

Many B2B cloud software companies invest in blog posts in the hope of ranking high on search engines like Google. What they’re doing is writing articles around keywords, which are terms customers are likely to search for on Google. The posts don’t offer valuable information or make any sense.

But then if you’re reading something that doesn’t make sense, how are you supposed to make informed buying decisions?

We have a lot to say about workflow and business processes. We truly believe in continuous improvement. But it’s not really about us. We publish these articles to help you find Tallyfy, and to provide you with information that will help you make informed buying decisions.

Ready to automate your workflows? Check out Tallyfy.

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