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The key steps to creating efficient business processes
Creating
efficient business processes involves these
sequential steps:
Establish
clear business priorities
Begin
with
clear vision of the priorities of the company
If
these are not are fully articulated, most
subsequent efforts will fail
Identify
the sources of inefficiency:
By
interviewing staff at all levels – and
clients/customers
It
is vital to “lift the drains”: companies who
fail in their efforts to make themselves more
efficient are commonly those who trusted their
own senior management’s judgement as to what
the ‘real malaise’ was, without taking
proper soundings
Establish
the impact of inefficiencies:
On
cost-efficiency: what re-work is often
necessary?
What duplication occurs?
What entirely superfluous activities
occur, simply because they always have?
On
customer satisfaction: what do customers say
about the efficiency of the firm – or about
the products or services they see as a result?
On
profitability: what is the impact on the bottom
line of having 1) an internal operation whose
‘gears are slipping’ or 2) a customer base
that is dissatisfied because of regularly
occurring problems?
Identify
the improved processes
List
the process changes that would address the key
faults
Prioritise
these by assessing their cost-effectiveness:
i.e. some problem processes will be too
expensive to fix, and will never repay the
investment
Creation
of
performance metrics and incentives,
cascaded down through the organisation
Establish
what should people really be doing:
create clear remits for each member of senior
staff (their individual roles and
responsibilities) – and cascade this down the
management structure where appropriate
Establish
what they be encouraged to do, and rewarded for. As a rule of thumb, people should be paid and rewarded for
doing the things that make the company money
and deliver the company’s priorities
Create
a clear sense of what the person is there,
primarily, to deliver
Gain
their agreement
Make
crystal clear their role, and the terms on which
they will be deemed to have succeeded or failed
Then
leave them alone: tinkering with the system, or
imposing stifling degrees of supervision, will
discourage staff from ‘owning’ the system
and bringing it to life
Mechanism
for ongoing feedback and tracking
There
must be an ongoing means for staff comment to be
expressed, heard – and acted upon if
this is merited
If
staff comment were encouraged at the outset, it
is extremely useful to repeat this exercise at
regular intervals in the future
It
is also essential that the new processes can be
evaluated: new processes never function
at optimal efficiency from the outset, and they
will need amending and improving over a period
of time.
Process
change is iterative: it should not be expected
that ‘the system’ will remain in place
unchanged: the best processes are in a constant,
controlled state of careful evolution
Communication
to the business:
Ensure
that the new processes are fully understood
The
individual staff members must know what the
company is trying to achieve, and what their
role is in achieving that
The
power of the grapevine in miscommunicating
process change is enormous: circumvent this by communicating
fully and regularly from the outset
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