The answer to the question ‘what is process management’ goes far beyond the concept of merely mapping activities that take place in the corporate operational routine.
You should have heard about Business Process Management; but what is process management exactly, what does it mean to run a business by processes? Well, to answer this question it will be necessary to explain the steps of a process mapping project.
So what is process management?
People understand that processes are activities performed by a particular department. This is wrong; processes are not confined to the walls that divide the rooms of a company, rather they permeate through various departments. We call this the ‘end-to-end.’ That is, an end-to-end process considers the mainstreaming of different areas and different positions of managers of an organizational structure.
The larger the cross-cutting, the more likely a case is end-to-end. This range allows the concept of end-to-end process to be characterized by any process that has the direct or indirect impact on the organization, be it actual or potential, frequent or seasonal to any interested party.
Companies design their processes through interviews with the heads of each department, who disclose all activities under their responsibility and their subordinates. After drawing all streams, it is necessary to unify the flow of each department. With the unified flow, now we can talk about processes because until then, the designed flows were just mere activities of departments.
Process management: who is responsible for each process
Now that we know the organization’s processes, what do we do with them? To be able to have process management it is necessary to define who is responsible for each of them, also known as the process owner. The Manager is responsible for process improvement, has the accountability to ensure the effectiveness of the process and values the need to protect processes. In general, process owners manage how the work will be done, but not necessarily the people who carry out the work.
A project mapping process aims to ‘Topple’ the Organizations Management, allowing it to be process-oriented (horizontal), and not vertical. It’s very common to find that companies are increasingly mapping their processes and then not knowing what to do with them. In fact, these companies fall into a management category still functioning with their background processes.
To change the management of a company to functional horizontal is not a simple task nor quick. To do this ‘toppling’ we need, in addition to the process owners, to define key performance indicators (KPIs) to monitor the performance of each process.
Usually, about 40% of the information necessary for monitoring KPI’s are not in the company, having it would enable an organization to create new controls, customize systems and even create new processes.
Another essential point for real Business Process Management is the adoption of work procedures based on the activities represented in the Company’s processes, standardizing the ‘How To‘, helping people assimilate to new complex tasks quickly and effectively.
At this point, I believe we have moved to Procedural Management with a functional background. To achieve management with horizontal processes, we must assign appropriate responsibilities to process owners and create committee processes.
Objective of the Process Committee when mapping activities
- Identify and resolve inter-process integration problems, conflicts between process and functional leaders, resource allocation and process alignment vs. strategy
- Oversee the portfolio of a Company’s processes and align, prioritize, and allow transformation efforts (action plans).
- Prioritization and Allocation of resources needed to achieve the objectives of the process.
- Tracking and reporting metrics (indicators) of process performance of process owners.
- Conduct and maintain Business work procedures and manuals.
- The Process Committee is made up of a coordinator and members (all interested parties, focusing on the Board and first line management, as well as other guests they deem appropriate).
Another important factor that we must not forget is the change of culture in the organization, people are used to hierarchically answering their work, and management by processes these professionals respond to the process owners.
It is only after this work is done, along with the maturity of processes and people and their cultural changes that you can say that your company has a process-oriented management.
Does your company already know the answer to what is process management? BPM tools are some of the key instruments to create this reality for your business!