Business Process Mapping: Improves Productivity and Customer Satisfaction 

Are your customers perturbed over late deliveries? Are you frustrated by a lack of consistency because everyone does the same tasks differently? I can help you by explaining a proven method for increasing your business efficiencies and productivity rates.

Business process mapping is a proven method for improving processes.

Basically, business process mapping is a visual method for documenting any business operation ranging from order entry to customer deliveries.

Business process mapping normally uses work-flow diagrams to identify the steps of a process. Some types of process mapping are very structured with defined steps and utilizing hard data in order to improve quality and processes. However, even a general process mapping approach can define the current state of an organization’s key processes and enable the organization to examine the inner workings of a process.

Business process mapping will help you by:

• identifying inefficiencies or redundancies, including gaps, of a process
• pointing out errors and non-value-added activities of a process
• providing a clear direction and means for correcting problems and errors, that in turn will improve the overall quality of a process
• generating the ownership and accountability initiatives of a process
• resulting in a consistently communicated and completed process

To help illustrate, I will share a recent professional experience that helped provide my client with happier and more satisfied customers:

This client had no documented customer ordering and delivery process. They were experiencing issues with customer orders and late deliveries. They were also possibly missing invoices and, of course, the customers were unhappy and dissatisfied. Since this business did not have consistent follow-up procedures, they didn’t know if deliveries would be late unless they thought to contact the vendor; or unless they were notified, after the fact, that the delivery was going to be late.

So we started documenting their ordering and receiving processes, beginning at a high level. We started with the receipt and input of the sales order, then identified the steps taken up until the time the product was received and the invoice was paid.

What we identified at that high level were: (1) the steps in the process; (2) what occurred during the process; and (3) the problematic issues relating to the current steps. This mapping also enabled us to identify gaps occurring at various points in the process. In this case, they had no established or routine follow-up to ensure that the product was received by the due date.

To improve the process, we mapped out specific follow-up steps such as initial order confirmation, vendor and customer follow-up. These actions helped close the gaps and refine the process to include appropriate actions to improve on-time delivery and customer satisfaction.

In my next Insight post, you will learn how we mapped out employee position roles, i.e., what position is responsible for doing what, etc. This mapping process works effectively because it enables participants to objectively look at the tasks and determine appropriate responsibilities, avoiding possible conflict. Documenting the process and responsibilities enhances the training of new employees or cross-training existing employees.

Are your customers perturbed over late deliveries? Are you frustrated by a lack of consistency because everyone performs the same tasks differently?