In my last Insight, I talked about how business process mapping improves productivity and customer satisfaction. Using business process mapping is also a good way to clarify the responsibilities of each employee within your company.
After you’ve defined your business processes, you then look at who is responsible for each step, and determine if that person is the most appropriate to complete that task. When you look at the process objectively, it tends to transcend personal territories as you focus on improving the process. This makes it easier to determine who would be the most appropriate person to complete the different tasks in the process. It may not be the same person that currently does it.
Often processes evolve over time, and when you look at a documented process, it is usually easy to see opportunities to improve efficiencies – whether those efficiencies involve eliminating/consolidating steps or changing responsibilities for tasks.
Identifying What’s Missing
The next thing you’ll need to do is identify the missing steps, or gaps, in your process. After you identify any additional steps necessary to improve your process, you’ll be better able to determine which employee should be responsible for the steps you just identified, and explain why the additional step is important to the outcome of the process.
Business process maps are often used in training employees. Sometimes the high-level process map is enough, especially if the employees are familiar with the process, or if the process has a lot of variations at a more detailed level. Other times, the process map is used as a starting point, or outline, for a more detailed procedure manual.
A procedure manual is basically a guide that defines detailed procedures in a process.
Creating a Procedure Manual
You can use the high-level work flow you just created to structure your procedure manual by taking each step in the process and including details for that step, thereby creating and refining detailed procedures.
This is what my client that I mentioned in my first Insight did. After documenting the high level processes, she wrote a more detailed procedure manual. Since we had identified several different processes that needed improvement, she implemented the improvements in stages based on which process she felt would provide the most impact.
From this, she really felt more in control of the processes and was able to not only train her existing staff, but she also now had the documentation in place to ensure that new hires were brought up to speed quickly.