Chances are good that your company has embarked on efforts to document processes and procedures at the departmental level, creating a collection of swim lanes and flow charts that might soon reside forgotten on servers and hard drives. If previous efforts to get your arms around company processes have fallen short, one probable cause is that they do not connect to each other, or to the strategic business goals of the company.
An enterprise process architecture provides the context and cross-functional glue within which the work that has already been done can be leveraged to gain efficiencies and contribute to the bottom line.
There are as many formats and tools for an integrated approach to process architecture as there are companies, and the choice of what software, method, and approach is used depends largely on the size of the company, the complexity of their process, and the available budget. BPM software can make the journey easier, but remember it won’t do the hard work for you. Documenting the “as is”, designing a “should be”, and finding the path between them are some of the work you’ll need to do. No matter what method you choose, these seven elements are essential to any enterprise level process architecture.
Connect to the organization’s strategic goals.
Processes don’t live in a vacuum, and every process is – or should be – in the service of the company’s business priorities. At the highest level, processes describing core product or service delivery for the company must connect directly to short-, medium-, and long-term strategic goals. Cascading down the chain from the big picture, create processes at lower levels that flow from the level above it.
Create a communications plan.
The initial effort to create an EPA needs to be communicated as it is being rolled out. After that, the company needs an effective forum for discussing and disseminating new and changed process, shifts in the company’s strategic imperatives, and a repeatable method for continuous improvement.
Assign process owners.
Departmental managers manage employees who execute processes, but each value chain needs an owner who is responsible for the service level of the process, watching the metrics, thinking about and implementing process improvements, and taking the call when someone wants to report that the process is broken. Yes processes break. And the most common cause is change…
Institute a Process Change Management mechanism.
Any change can break a process. Log and communicate changes to upstream, downstream, higher level, and lower level processes, organizations, or company priorities. The process diagrams will visually depict the intersections between the processes above, below, and beside the changed element. Use a Change Management mechanism to assess the impact of planned or unplanned changes and to mitigate the change.
Resource the work.
Discovering an existing process, creating the ideal process, and analyzing the gap between them doesn’t come free, and expecting line managers to do this work is unrealistic; they don’t have the time, and most don’t have the expertise. If you want to hire consultants to help your people through the initial process, that’s fine for the initial phase of discovery and documentation. For ongoing process maintenance, find some of those process geeks that are undoubtedly lurking in your ranks and assign them to the effort. Consider establishing an enterprise wide process architecture department.
Establish process governance.
Process owners take care of the day to day process improvement and maintenance, but what happens when process owners have different ideas about how to go about things? A committee, council, or executive review process will provide leadership. This is also the level providing oversight to the process owners, facilitating adherence to established process SLAs, and connecting to enterprise strategies.
Measure your process.
Process metrics are deserving of their own article. Meanwhile, it’s important to remember that process metrics are not productivity measures, though there is a strong correlation between processes that improve their metrics, and the company’s productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness. Process metrics include:
- cycle time measures the sum of time taken for each task in a process, not including wait time or time spent on other tasks;
- elapsed time measures the total time for the entire process, including all wait time and including non-business (non-productive) hours;
- number of exceptions counts the number of times the process did not take the happy path – where rework, escalation, or expediting occurred;
- rework measures the time taken for any repeated steps
Use consistent samples. Measure the low, mean, and high for each metric. Use these to measure the health of your processes, and to diagnose possible bottlenecks and issues.
Implementing an enterprise process architecture requires a strong commitment at the executive level, but will result in a culture of improvement, efficiency, and effectiveness. The rewards are well worth the hard work and focus it will need at the outset.
