Friday, January 30, 2015

Business Process Improvement


If you are part of an organization, you must follow dozens of processes on a daily basis.  You take the same steps to generate a report, deal with a complaint, place a service request, take care of an incident, etc.

I am sure that there have been times that you have come across an inefficient process by running into a wrong report, unhappy clients, stressed out colleagues, increased costs, missed deadlines, and these are only few of the problems that a dysfunctional process can bring about.

That's exactly why it's so vital to improve processes when they are not working optimally. A process can be formal or informal. A formal process is also known as a procedure and is documented with detailed steps.  These kinds of processes are predominantly important when there are safety-related, legal or financial reasons for following specific steps.

Informal processes are a lot likely to be the ones you have created, or have been verbally handed down, and it may not have been written down.  Both processes have one thing in common: they're designed to structure the way that you and your team work.  When they are followed properly, there are fewer delays and errors, there is less duplication of efforts and there are more happy clients and stakeholders.

One method that has worked throughout my years of experience is the incremental process change that is aimed to improve what is already in place. Here are the steps that are taken through this method:

1.     Take a look at where you are in a process and where you like to be.  What is it that needs to improve before you get there?  Document, diagram, use any tools available to see the process visually. Explore each step and phase you are mapping in detail and specify the sub-levels and steps that need to be taken.  Consult the people in the organization that use the process regularly, to avoid overlooking anything important.

2.     Analyze your document and diagrams to investigate the problems within the process.  Things like: where are the bottlenecks? What made the costs go up? Which processes are least efficient? Where do clients or employees are most frustrated? Etc… Do a Root Cause Analysis, Cause and Effect Analysis or the 5 whys to find the origins of the issue.  Talk to those who are affected by this.  What do they think is wrong? How would they improve it? This will all give you the entire informational arsenal you need to tackle the issue in a more informed and efficient way.

3.     Now it would become the time to redesign the process and get rid of the problems that you have identified. It is always best to include those who are directly involved or affected with the process.  They would be more likely to buy into new processes if they are in this with you from the early stages. Of course you need to make sure that to begin with, they understand the process and what it meant to do.  Brainstorm, and narrow down the list of your possible solutions. Make sure not to forget impact and risk analysis of the new process you are thinking of implementing, so to understand the full consequence of the proposed idea. Update your process diagrams as things change.

4.     Secure the resources you need to proceed with the implementation of the new process.

5.     It is more than likely that by improving the process, you will be applying some changes to the existing systems.  In this you may need some new-hires or new software, etc.  The rollout of the process improvement, dependent on its size could prove to be a project on its own.   

6.     After the rollout, a close monitoring of the whole thing is needed in the upcoming weeks and probably months to make sure that everything is as per expectation. This also allows for the on-the-fly tweaks that need to happen. Make sure to ask everyone involved their opinion of how this is working.

Best of luck in your endeavours.

Hire or Contract?

Right off the bat, let me tell you that I am not starting off a war on this topic…..LOL…. but just want to point out what are the thoughts and concerns as the best way to choose, if you are in the decision mode.
So in this article I am aiming to have a quick look at hiring an employee vs. a contractor. When you hire an employee, you have control over that hire – in things like: behaviour, workload, tasks, the order in which the tasks take place, etc… You also pay them a salary, so that means creating accounts and withholding taxes, CPP, EI, and filing the taxes along with benefits and the rise in those costs and so on. This actually is a costly business considering it takes time and expertise to accomplish this all, as well as money.
Contractors in general cost less. A contractor does whatever they are assigned to, issues an Invoice, and then that’s it…there are no employer tasks like taxes, benefits, sick-days, vacation, and training costs. No worries about overtime or retirement or pension costs.
So which one to choose? Well it really depends. What is your situation at hand?
  • If you have an ongoing project that needs continual work with no conclusive end date then you may need to hire an employee unless the work requires high skills, knowledge and no direction from you.
  • If you have a task list that includes what can be done remotely and if so then a contractor is the way to go for sure. This will free up valuable company funds that will not be spent on cubicles and utilities and other operational costs. Mind you, this can also be the way to go with your full-time employees, as more and more of Global Organizations are realizing and adhering to.
  • If you’ve ever had to fire or package an employee for any reason, you know how painful that can be for both the employee and the employer. When it comes to contractors you simply need to cease the workflow.
  • Although you usually have to pay more per hour, you will most likely save money overall in hiring a contractor, since it is not needed to pay them any benefits and do not need to commit to a salary.
  • You have greater tractability with an independent contractor. When you have an employee that doesn’t work out, you may need to fire or package them, which can be a dragging, long and arduous experience.
  • You can contract the right person for the task at hand, with a specialized service. They often come with many years of experience, so you don’t need to train them. Also due to the fact that they have dealt with a variety of situations, they have a shorter span of learning curve.
  • Employees have a wide array of rights under many laws, and as such, a variety of legal claims they can potentially bring against their employers for violating those rights. Because contractors are independent businesspeople, they are not protected by many of these laws. Employees can and may be able to sue their employers for wrongful termination. Contractors, however, cannot bring this type of lawsuit to the table.
Hope this has been helpful….

Business Process Management

“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” - -- Winston Churchill
Business Process Management (BPM) is about managing change to improve business processes, in which it works hand-in-hand with Organizational Change Management (OCM). BPM offers a single standard in taking care of: Process Modeling, Simulation, Workflow, Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), and Business-to-Business (B2B) integration.
Even though the terminology might sound new, all the above-mentioned processes have been around for decades. Business Process Management however, offers a standard for a complete process lifecycle in controlling and guiding the design and execution of business processes. One cannot manage a change process in an ad-hoc manner. Business modelling and execution language standards are much in need, during an organizational change.
In modelling a business process flow, we simply model the events that transpire to start a process, the processes that get executed, and the end results of the process flow. The process flow of course can contain sub-processes.
As you continue down the path of business analysis, you can identify accountabilities and responsibilities, as well as KPIs. For BPM to achieve the set KPIs, the value provided for the client/customer as to be critical and primary. Successfully using BPM usually involves a few steps to be taken:
  • Focusing and organizing the process around outcomes not tasks, so not to be derailed from the main objective.
  • Being proactive in correcting and improving processes, through deployment of Continual Service/Process Improvement, before theoretically automating them.
  • Establishing processes, as well as communication of the processes and assigning ownership to ascertain the quality and integrity of the work.
  • Standardization of all processes across the enterprise so they can be more readily understood and managed, errors reduced, and risks alleviated.
  • Enabling and encouraging continuous change so the improvements can applied over time.
  • Improving existing processes.
  • BPM and OCM are not a one-time exercise. Both should be the core of Continual Service Improvement (CSI) initiative, involved in a continuous evaluation of the processes and included in taking actions to improve the total flow and efficiency of processes.