Business process mapping, a method to a better control

Have you ever thought about cut costs, save money and expand the management ability of your company?

The best way of doing this is to understand and apply the process mapping in your business, gaining more control over you management and a more assertive way of measuring results.

What is a process anyway?

A process is a group of activities produced in a progressed sequence, resulting in a good or service.

The process can also be defined as a union of actions that possesses a beginning, middle, and end.

However, it is important to highlight that this beginning does not necessarily has to be a tangible item, but a piece of information, for example. It is through the processes that a company carries out its role, conquers its goals and manages its activities, all this in an efficient way.

Which are the risks of not using process mapping? How to avoid them?

It turns out that, when the business processes are poorly structured, all the efficiency and efficacy of an organization are compromised.

The damages that can happen with a company are many, among them the lack of organization, drop in productivity, employees demotivation and task’s repetition, all this resulting in loss of money and time.

To keep the business process well structured, systematized and functioning correctly, we must have a strategical planning, that is put into practice by a management professional.

The business process mapping methods provide a knowledge of the relationships diagrams, internal and external. They use graphic representations indicating the operational flow and the relation between different processes inside a company.

Using a business process mapping methodology allow your company to organize and, above all, clearly define what it does, how it proceeds and who is responsible for what.

Below you can see an example of process documentation on HEFLO:

Besides, adopting methods to map business process will cut costs in many areas, for example in raw material, since with that method the executive avoids unnecessary costs, better controlling the activities, time and resources.

That is why we use process mapping. The first and most important stage in a quality management is the accurate study of the business processes that then are mapped in detail.

In that way, the manager will have an extensive, reliable and current vision of the potentialities and weaknesses of the company.

With this data, he will elaborate an assertive and effective action plan, guiding him accurately through each step to be taken aiming the improvement of business performance.

How to identify the processes?

Now that we understand what a process is, we can analyze how to organize them.

We are going to divide them into primary processes and support processes.

The first type is based on the core business and includes everything from the first contact with the client to the delivery of the final product or service. Example: Order to delivery.

The second group of processes helps the organization to execute the primary processes. Most of the times they are departmental, but sometimes it can cross many teams such as a Hiring process.

Also, to fully comprehend the business process mapping method we need to understand and list a group of people, equipment, information, procedures, and data related to the activities.

Doing this will allow us to identify each process, who executes it and the way it is done, with observation, understanding and improvement purposes.

If you want a complete guide to process mapping techniques, continue here!

Checklist: how to develop your business process mapping methodology

To begin your mapping go through the list above and answer the presented questions. This way you will come up with the primary goals and metrics to analyze and take action.

  1. What are the events that lead off each process?
  2. What is the objective at the end of each process?
  3. Who is involved?
  4. Which departments are part of the process?
  5. Who is responsible for the process?
  6. What are the cases of administrative exceptions?
  7. What are the process’ goals?
  8. What are the key performance indicators (KPIs)?
  9. Which metrics to use?
  10. What are the resources needed to execute the process?
  11. Will documents be attached? Which ones?
  12. What are the main activities that are going to happen?
  13. Who is going to perform them?
  14. What are the key interfaces with other processes?
  15. What are the computerized systems or applications that support the process?
  16. What are the business’ rules?
  17. What is the volume/ amount/ frequency of the process execution?
  18. Will there be restrictions?
  19. What are the risks?
  20. What is the process type, business or support?

See also: Business Process Mapping Software | Create your Free Account.

Want to know a mapping technique?

If you want to know the steps to map out a business process read the article Process Mapping Techniques – The 7 steps in a project.

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