The Role of Process Improvement Analysis in Achieving Operational Excellence

Process improvement analysis is an important catalyst for enabling businesses to identify inefficiencies, reduce costs, and continually improve the organization. It ensures that every workflow, task and resource is used to meet the overall organizational goal, as efficiently as possible, when implementing a process improvement analysis. The vital piece of a process improvement analysis are people called business process analysts.

These trained analysts have a great depth of knowledge about business process analysis; they empower organizations to first identify (or diagnose), design better processes, and oversee the improvement implementation with the monitoring of outcomes.

Additionally, process improvement is not just about optimizing one specific process that may or may not have a product or service impact. Important to understand process improvement is relevant, in a more dynamic perspective, to be considered if one considers larger frameworks like business performance management, business impact assessment, and business impact analysis – all areas of work make process improvement analysis, working changes beneficial and measure it against long-term strategic goals.

Therefore, this article will attempt to demonstrate a discussion about process improvement analysis in action, as related to operational excellence – process improvement analysis tools and techniques are deployed to create real-world impact for the organization, clearly demonstrating the critical theme of a process improvement analysis as a fundamental building brick for 21st-century businesses.

Understanding Process Improvement Analysis

Analyzing process improvement is the systematic evaluation of current business processes in order to discover inefficiencies, bottlenecks, redundancies, and opportunities for improvement. Simply put, analyzing process improvement is about asking “How can we do this better, quicker, or cheaper as long as we do not sacrifice quality?”

The analysis of process improvement is, after all, an essential branch of the larger spectrum of business process analysis. Business process analysis the act of mapping and documenting workflows, while improvement analysis is evaluating those workflows through critique and amending changes to improve performance.

Stages, tools, and techniques consider for analysis of process improvements include:

• Flowchart/process maps: Visual representations of processes to locate waste
• Root cause analysis or RCA
• Lean/Six Sigma: Eliminating waste and variation from processes
• Value stream mapping: Identifying what areas add value and subtract value
• Benchmarking: Comparing your processes against industry standards

When organizations utilize any combination of these stages, tools, and techniques, they can create workflows that are smarter, faster and more resilient which will contribute to their overall journey towards operational excellence.

Business Process Analyst

The business process analyst plays the roles of investigator, architect, and advisor throughout the organization’s improvement journey. The principal role of the business process analyst is to assess the current processes, collect data, analyze for gaps or inefficiencies, and design a new or improved workflow.

Typical activities of a business process analyst include:

• Conducting interviews and workshops with various teams to understand the process
• Mapping “as-is” processes and “to be” processes
• Analysing data to search for failed processes
• Supporting change management aspects by rallying teams around new processes

For example, let’s say a company is experiencing a failure to fulfill orders, and this has been attributed to poor turnaround times. Identifying the cause of delays as being the manual approval process, the business process analyst can take a look at redesigning the process to do automated approvals where possible. This change can reduce turnaround times and lead to improved efficiency internally and with the customer as well.

In conclusion, a business process analyst not only identifies problems but offers recommendations which lead to effective and sustained business improvements.

Connecting Business Process Analysis to Operational Excellence

Business process analysis is essential to operational excellence because you cannot progress on improvement if you don’t understand a process fully. It’s like trying to repair the engine of a car without knowing how the engine operates.

Business process analysis is comprised of three essential components:

• Mapping: Documenting the current state of the workflow and identifying both roles and responsibilities.
• Measuring: Tracking performance metrics with awareness of where bottlenecks exist.
• Optimizing: Redesigning processes to create value for the customer and minimize waste.

When organizations are heedful to engage in process analysis as an ongoing cycle of mapping, measuring, and optimizing, they create an environment of continuous improvement. Over time, the ongoing improvement of clearly defined processes will build resiliency and agility while providing a competitive advantage — all of which contribute to operational excellence.

Business Performance Management and Its Link to Process Improvement

Business performance management (BPM) is the practice of measuring and managing an organization’s performance based on relevant key performance indicators (KPIs) such as revenue growth, cost efficiency, customer satisfaction, and employee effectiveness. Process improvement analysis and business performance management are intrinsically related:

BPM provides the baseline metrics to evaluate process effectiveness, while process improvement initiatives can have a direct impact on those metrics. Continuing with the example above, if a company considers order processing time to be one of its KPIs and it notices its order processing performance decline, the company can perform a process improvement analysis to find the sources of the decline (perhaps manual error or software disruptions), and then it can implement solutions to not just recover, but exceed its previous level of performance.

Consequently, business performance management is not merely tracking performance; it’s to use those tracking metrics to develop better, more purposefully targeted process improvement initiatives.

Business Impact Assessment and Business Impact Analysis

For process improvement to be effective, organizations must ensure that they need to conduct chambers with assessment of business impact and business impact analysis.

A business impact assessment will assess the possible impact of the change from a business perspective before it is implemented.

In the case of process improvements, both assurance processes our business assessments where we will answer the following business questions, including:
(a) Will this change help the current state of operations, or disrupt it;
(b) What risks, or dependencies should be considered;
(c) What will be its impact on customers, employees, and other stakeholders.

EXAMPLE: A company has made the decision to automate a certain aspect of their customer service chat function. After performing an business impact assessment, the company can assess if the change has a net positive impact on customer service expectations. The business impact assessment should account for whether the customer service response time from a chatbot without training the chatbot on expected responses will be faster than a human. The company would like to be made aware up front that the net impact of automating a customer service function may result in lower customer satisfaction without training, and they should post mitigation strategies such as hybrid chatbots + humans for an interim solution.

Absent the business impact assessment process, the organization could presently create new problems through their perceived process improvement which could undermine an operational excellence agenda.

Conclusion

Operational excellence is not a destination but a journey of commitment, insight, and action. Process improvement analysis is key to the journey to operational excellence because it enables organizations to manage their processes continuously, eliminate waste, and maximize value.

Business process analysts are the primary enablers of the transformation process, relying on strong business process analysis to improve workflows. Together with strong business performance management practices, each of the improvement initiatives that are identified and undertaken should deliver transparent and credible improvements through comprehensive business impact assessments and thoughtful business impact analysis.

In a climate where agility and efficiency can be the difference between success and failure, investment in process improvement analysis is no longer an option or clever business practice but an imperative to actual transformation. Those organizations that invest in their business process management maturity, will not only benefit from operational excellence, they will define excellence and their industry.

About BPX

With 12 years of consulting experience in 12 + countries, Business Process Xperts (BPX) is a global process consulting firm specializing in process optimization, automation, and digital transformation. We offer customized solutions that improve efficiency and drive business excellence for a broad range of industries.