“The Only Constant in Life Is Change.”- Heraclitus
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” - Charles Darwin
The history of the corporate world is full of stories of companies that rose to fame, of others that failed to survive, or some that escaped failure by surviving. Business management scholars attribute such corporate recovery cycles to continuous improvement and adaptation practices and strategies. But where do you start? Do you dive in the deep and revolutionize everything or do you keep on making small improvements and thus achieve your goals through evolution?
Every problem has a solution, but not every solution is suitable for every problem.
If intelligent evolution is part of your business strategy, then a personalized process transformation model might be just right for you. This model is essentially a starting point for change, your base for improvement, and is an important part of our SPREAD model for the successful design of organizations.
So where do you apply this? The answer is: at the core of your organization - the business processes.
Analyzing business processes is especially important if there are problems with the current situation of your organization. The examples are numerous: from frustrated customers and poor service to users being confused about the steps to follow in the process and you need to improve their user experience. The reasons? It could be that the processes are not well positioned among the various departments in your organization or that you want to transform the outdated systems and transition to digitalization and automated processes. It could be anything.
The beauty of the personalized process transformation model is that it not only allows you to understand the impact of the proposed changes before they happen but avoids the possibility of making things worse if you change them without a proper understanding of why they are done in a certain way. Process mapping allows the organization to demonstrate the return of a specific activity, and see the results achieved in addition to visually present all the activities of a process.
In a nutshell, if you are willing to improve a business process, you need to know its current state and then map the vision for the improved future state and this is repeated again and again in your business strategy for continuous improvement. This is how evolution is achieved.
The first step of the model is to take a snapshot of the as-is state. We call it diagnostics. What is your organization doing right now? At this point, the aim is to map the current picture of the organization's processes and visualize the risk areas, and process breakdowns. This stage is crucial for the next stage also because at different levels of diagnostics different people can demonstrate very good ideas for improvements and the visual form helps a lot. Then, these process maps are discussed and changed highlighting the envisioned way of doing things.
Future processes depend on great process design. What does your organization plan to do? At this stage, the proposed model can be discussed with the stakeholders who will be impacted by the changes and taken on board with their views of the outcomes of the transformation. The great process design also allows you to quantify the return of investment from the transformation.
The importance of design mapping.
Generally, business process mapping enables a greater understanding of the processes and achieves only positive outcomes:
Moving on to practice, the personalized process transformation may differ but generally consist of the following steps:
1. Define the key players.
Key players are those who have the most knowledge about the rules of a business process and carry out the process daily.
2. As Is process diagnostics
Also known as As Is survey, at this stage the current process is modeled without focussing on the improvements that should be applied. Detailing further there are five steps for mapping AS IS processes: define key users; kick-off meeting; a collection of documents; interviews and final meeting.
3. To Be process design.
At this point, the reasons and the solutions to problems are defined. Possible improvements are evaluated so as to be applied, including a new owner of the process, scope, objective, activities, rules, and roles.
4. Agreement.
The organization agrees on the modeled process and the suggested improvements that guarantee the correct progress of the process and the integrity of the data.
5. Analysis of effectiveness.
To assess the effectiveness of the process design, it is possible to conduct satisfaction surveys and use indicators for efficiency (productivity measurement in relation to generated outputs) and effectiveness (quality measurement in relation to total outputs and desired impact).
Once executed the transformation allows the processes to be seen in their entirety. Thus, it becomes much easier to find future alternatives for changes and standardization of the product.
Need help with your process transformation?
Contact us for more information.
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” - Charles Darwin
The history of the corporate world is full of stories of companies that rose to fame, of others that failed to survive, or some that escaped failure by surviving. Business management scholars attribute such corporate recovery cycles to continuous improvement and adaptation practices and strategies. But where do you start? Do you dive in the deep and revolutionize everything or do you keep on making small improvements and thus achieve your goals through evolution?
Every problem has a solution, but not every solution is suitable for every problem.
If intelligent evolution is part of your business strategy, then a personalized process transformation model might be just right for you. This model is essentially a starting point for change, your base for improvement, and is an important part of our SPREAD model for the successful design of organizations.
So where do you apply this? The answer is: at the core of your organization - the business processes.
Analyzing business processes is especially important if there are problems with the current situation of your organization. The examples are numerous: from frustrated customers and poor service to users being confused about the steps to follow in the process and you need to improve their user experience. The reasons? It could be that the processes are not well positioned among the various departments in your organization or that you want to transform the outdated systems and transition to digitalization and automated processes. It could be anything.
The beauty of the personalized process transformation model is that it not only allows you to understand the impact of the proposed changes before they happen but avoids the possibility of making things worse if you change them without a proper understanding of why they are done in a certain way. Process mapping allows the organization to demonstrate the return of a specific activity, and see the results achieved in addition to visually present all the activities of a process.
In a nutshell, if you are willing to improve a business process, you need to know its current state and then map the vision for the improved future state and this is repeated again and again in your business strategy for continuous improvement. This is how evolution is achieved.
The first step of the model is to take a snapshot of the as-is state. We call it diagnostics. What is your organization doing right now? At this point, the aim is to map the current picture of the organization's processes and visualize the risk areas, and process breakdowns. This stage is crucial for the next stage also because at different levels of diagnostics different people can demonstrate very good ideas for improvements and the visual form helps a lot. Then, these process maps are discussed and changed highlighting the envisioned way of doing things.
Future processes depend on great process design. What does your organization plan to do? At this stage, the proposed model can be discussed with the stakeholders who will be impacted by the changes and taken on board with their views of the outcomes of the transformation. The great process design also allows you to quantify the return of investment from the transformation.
The importance of design mapping.
Generally, business process mapping enables a greater understanding of the processes and achieves only positive outcomes:
- Mapping means making decision-making more efficient and less time-consuming;
- It helps visualize the trajectory of the processes (activities, elements, resources, the necessary efforts, manpower, etc.) within the organization;
- Mapping subsequently improves the quality of the delivery and obtains greater customer satisfaction. With the standardization of the process it is possible to maintain a high standard of service quality while maintaining the costs at a reasonable level;
- Mapping gives the employees greater knowledge about the organization and the processes, highlighting unseen problems to be improved.
Moving on to practice, the personalized process transformation may differ but generally consist of the following steps:
1. Define the key players.
Key players are those who have the most knowledge about the rules of a business process and carry out the process daily.
2. As Is process diagnostics
Also known as As Is survey, at this stage the current process is modeled without focussing on the improvements that should be applied. Detailing further there are five steps for mapping AS IS processes: define key users; kick-off meeting; a collection of documents; interviews and final meeting.
3. To Be process design.
At this point, the reasons and the solutions to problems are defined. Possible improvements are evaluated so as to be applied, including a new owner of the process, scope, objective, activities, rules, and roles.
4. Agreement.
The organization agrees on the modeled process and the suggested improvements that guarantee the correct progress of the process and the integrity of the data.
5. Analysis of effectiveness.
To assess the effectiveness of the process design, it is possible to conduct satisfaction surveys and use indicators for efficiency (productivity measurement in relation to generated outputs) and effectiveness (quality measurement in relation to total outputs and desired impact).
Once executed the transformation allows the processes to be seen in their entirety. Thus, it becomes much easier to find future alternatives for changes and standardization of the product.
Need help with your process transformation?
Contact us for more information.