Business Process
Management
Business executives think about their company’s processes when they want to
improve the way things are done in their organizations. They either want to focus
on the whole business, by considering a wide variety of potential causes (the top-
down approach) or they want to fix a specific problem, rather limited in scope
(the bottom-up approach).
The first approach is more complex and usually involves a significant amount of
resources (people, time, and money). Sometimes, companies should undertake this
approach as it is the only way that allows them to fight against disruptions and keep them on the market. In this case, the most common methodology is business process redesign or even business process reengineering (as a radical option, when companies want to radically modify their current processes).
Mapping
We propose to manage the top-down approach in an integrated way, with the focus on generating higher performance. We address four specific areas:
- Clearly define, understand and integrate within a map all
business processes, both core (those that are generating value
for the company) and support (those that sustain the core processes
to generate value) - Have a clear understanding of the cost and value drivers for each of the mapped business processes
- Clearly define and make transparent roles, responsibilities, and
decision rights throughout the business processes - Define, measure and analyse processes’ performance by setting
up specific objectives and KPIs
The outcome is a lean structure where business processes, roles & responsibilities, and KPIs are aligned to enable the organization to focus on its strategic objectives.
For the bottom-up approach, we either use Lean, to focus on process flow problems or Six Sigma, when looking for quality or consistency problems. The methodologies that focus on bottom-up change are usually called incremental process improvement methodologies.