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Once you have your current state model, what do you do with it? How do you share it with the Process Owner and Executive Sponsor and spark their interest? My experience is that executives looking at a model that is 30 to 60 steps long are impressed and say something like, “Wow, that process is complex. I can see it has a lot of steps which could take a long time.” But they are not interested in reviewing every single step and getting into the details.
The 3E model below provides an approach for any company to think about how their organization can start, grow, and make process improvement durable. With this approach the company improves customer satisfaction, operational efficiency, and execution excellence.
The 3E Model
EXPERIMENT – Keep It Small and Simple
Do you experience these challenges in trying to create a current state process model?
Here are two techniques that will really help you out and make life much easier.
Start with a Single Process Instance
Begin by selecting a single process instance that the team will follow. Capturing one instance of a real completed process makes it easy to complete the model in 90 minutes or less, and it won’t have the spaghetti look of a process model showing all the exceptions.
For optimum results, pick an instance to start with…
There are many ways to ‘do’ business process improvement projects. It’s best if the company has a methodology from BPM, Lean, Six Sigma, Reengineering or some other methodology. Here’s the one I use, starting with selecting the project and ending with monitoring and sustaining the project; ‘doing’ the process improvement project means completing the section in the middle from Chartering and Staffing to Implementation Plan.
Companies use a number of methods to conduct the BPM project from using a Six Sigma Black Belt as an expert, to having a Business Analyst do interviews with subject matter experts and developing the as is model and to be map, to using different half day workshops for different phases of the process with the appropriate stakeholders. The one I highly recommend and have used with over 100 different processes is a team-based method.
Operational Excellence focuses on providing the best execution of service and process for the benefit of the customer and the organization. It is not a proprietary program or methodology; rather, the term usually represents a conglomeration of process methods and techniques to improve operational discipline, its performance metrics, and customer satisfaction.
Operational Excellence is an enterprise approach. Companies want to address more end-to-end processes, going beyond earlier smaller process improvement projects in one department. For end-to- end processes to be successful organizations need to have consistent execution aligned with organizational purpose, leadership accountability that spans organizational boundaries, and employee skills and behaviors that see the flow of work across the organization and make results happen for the customer.
Traditional metrics have historically focused on financial and operating factors. What is newer is organizational process metrics or metrics that measure how a process works from the company point of view and the customer point of view. How is the company doing at meeting a customer needs (such as accuracy, responsiveness, service, speed, completeness) and how is the process doing being efficient and effective so the company can be competitive in the market place at a good price?
This article lists five key pitfalls that organizations face as they start an Organizational Process Metrics initiative and implement it across the company.
Pitfall #1 – Where’s the Decision and Action?
So often I see organizational change management as a part of the implementation plan for putting the recommendations and new design of a Business Process Improvement project (BPI) into operation in a company. It should be there, but it needs to start sooo much earlier. In fact it needs to start with the first phase of a BPI project- namely in developing the charter and doing Process Discovery and Modeling.
In Part 1, I discussed how one BPM Center of Excellence (COE) started as a centralized organization and then after 2 years moved some of the BPM Practitioners into specific operational units and disbanded the centralized group. Part 2 continues with the life cycle of this use case in its second stage, ‘decentralization’ and then continues to a third stage.
The number of companies that have a BPM Center of Excellence (COE) has not grown over the last eight years (It’s stable at about 34% according to a BPTrends survey.). In trying to guesstimate why that might be happening, I have been asking these questions:
1. When do companies start a COE and why?
2. What do COE employees do?
3. How do COE’s change and what causes these changes?
This article focuses on the last question, but responds to the first two in the specific examples.
STARTING:
GROWING:
Have you been doing process improvement projects for more than a year? Now…
DYING:
Everyone starts here.
You're looking for a way to improve your process improvement skills, but you're not sure where to start.
Earning your Business Process Management Specialist (BPMS) Certificate will give you the competitive advantage you need in today's world. Our courses help you deliver faster and makes projects easier.
Your skills will include building hierarchical process models, using tools to analyze and assess process performance, defining critical process metrics, using best practice principles to redesign processes, developing process improvement project plans, building a center of excellence, and establishing process governance.
The BPMS Certificate is the perfect way to show employers that you are serious about business process management. With in-depth knowledge of process improvement and management, you'll be able to take your business career to the next level.
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