A Process-Managed Enterprise

Everything your business does, its routine day-to-day operations, is quite simply the result of a following a process, whether it be manufacturing, ordering, payment, invoicing, timesheets, new account setup, status reports, and everything else that makes the business tick. Some processes, often called "value streams", touch your customers directly; many support these core processes internally. Poor processes mean your business is under-performing, with lower efficiency leading to higher costs and poor customer service, which ‘dents’ your ‘bottom line’.

Every company's processes are unique. As companies grow they tend to end up with a mish-mash of paper forms, email templates, desktop spreadsheets and databases, shared document directories, and ad hoc knowledge necessary to handle day-to-day business. Disorganization results in problems such as lost paperwork, missed deadlines, missing or incorrect information, and long completion times. This is what is often called "red tape". In the end, red tape hurts the customer, and then your bottom line suffers. Does this sound familiar?

In a world-class organisation this disorganisation is banished by focussing on processes and managing them effectively - by systematising - taking tacit knowledge (what people know how to do but can't explain) and turning it into systems and explicit knowledge that others can use. You get big benefits by systemising and you carry big risks that key knowledge will be lost, if you don't. Fail to systemise and you become trapped in your business which becomes a regular under-performer.

The characteristics of an enterprise that operates to a system with world-class process management captured in a "Book of Knowledge" are:

• All processes are identified, mapped and fully documented
• Each process step has:
  o resources – who does what across the organisation
  o supporting procedures, guidelines, checklists
  o relevant KPIs
• All maps are easily accessible to the workforce
• All workers collaborate on process improvement initiatives
• All workers can input process change suggestions
• All workers share best practices for process deployment
• All processes are under change control, authorised and kept up to date
• All process owners:
  o have full management authority & control over their maps
  o can dynamically and rapidly evaluate ‘what if’ scenarios
  o can cost out processes
  o can complete Full Time Equivalent (FTE) analysis

Click here to learn about building a "Book of Knowledge" that captures your processes in this way...