Always moving forward with Business Process Improvement
Business Process Improvement (BPI) initiatives provide opportunities for companies both large and small to identify ways to improve their current business operations. Below are the steps needed to move BPI projects forward.
First, it is important to analyze the situation and understand the business need that is driving this process improvement initiative. If you don't have a sound reason for the business driver of this initiative, this step will be stalled until that need is established; and objectives clearly defined. Next, understand the importance of metrics and what you are trying to measure. Metrics should be relevant, sensitive to changes in performance, and practical in use. Lastly, understand the steps, and the key stakeholders in the process, and what their roles and responsibilities are in relationship to the goals. Understanding this step will help identify areas for improvement and allow you and your team to explore areas to apply change management to the new process.
Second, after you have analyzed the current As-Is state and determined where you are, you need to start the design phase and move the current process into the To-Be state of what is possible. This requires identifying areas for improvements, such as new steps and functions, and identifying areas where redundancies exist; and eliminating those areas. Working with your stakeholders in the process, you and your team will fine-tune the new process design through conversations and interviews, as well as mock-ups and pilots to validate the new decision flows that have changed the original process to something much better.
Third, take the output generated in the design phase and implement the solution or new process. This means, moving design into production to evaluate the solution/process and iterate to determine what is working and what needs to be changed. This step also requires reaching out to stakeholders to inform them of the change. Constantly monitoring and noting deltas along the way to continuously improve the implementation is imperative. It is also at this stage in the process when you and your team will continue to gather and evaluate data on key metrics to ensure you are measuring the right things to bring about the change you are looking to implement.
Forth, test, test, and test again. Once the solution has been implemented, it is important to continually test and check the changes made to the solution or process to evaluate how those changes are impacted in real-time. This will provide valuable input to see if you and your team need to course-correct along the way. In addition to testing, ensure updates are run to validate the solution or process; and integrate changes as needed.
Business Process Improvement initiatives are key to continually improving new processes and solutions, and should always be at the forefront of your companies strategies and objectives.
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