As much as you and your employees are used to working the same way for a long time, is it really the ideal way to grow your business? If you've ever asked yourself this question, it is probably time to start a process management.
The processes involve all the tasks you have in your organization, such as: attendance, signing contracts, document management, customer prospecting, among others that, in the end, take the business to the desired point.
To understand the concept and how to put this management model, we have written this article and invite you to continue reading until the end. Come on?
What is process management?
Organizational process management brings together a set of practices that not only involves the tasks performed by the manager, but also the mapping and continuous improvement by analyzing how each one's work is done in the company or institution so that they can improve.
In this way, you, as the owner or manager of the business, need to identify these processes and then develop, document and monitor them.
It is important to emphasize that the organizational process management it does not only involve the tasks performed by the manager, but by all members of the company. Therefore, to improve these processes, it is necessary to analyze how the work of each one is done and in what way they can improve.
For example, if you notice that your finance department takes longer than necessary to approve a condition requested by the salesperson, this is a process that harms the company as a whole and should be reviewed.
After all, customers these days expect quick responses – especially when they get in touch using tools like WhatsApp – and taking too long to approve a special purchase condition can make them give up and look for the competitor.
Therefore, when putting your business process management into practice, examine each sector well and talk to employees to make sure which points should be optimized.
How does process management work?
At the heart of process management is the idea that each business activity must be managed considering its unique characteristics. The journey of a process within a company is monitored from its initiation to completion, ensuring a holistic approach.
Essentially, this management is not restricted to isolated operations; it intertwines across different departments to achieve broader corporate objectives through the following pillars: modeling and transformation, mapping and documentation, standardization.
Modeling and transformation
This pillar focuses on graphically representing and redesigning existing processes. The company must be willing to review and adapt its workflows, promoting a culture of flexibility and openness to change. This can include incremental improvements, complete process redesigns, or even comprehensive reengineering.
Mapping and documentation
Processes must be meticulously mapped and documented, establishing a logical sequence of activities. This step is crucial to identify steps that add real value and those that can be improved or eliminated. Documentation ensures that knowledge about processes is preserved and shared among employees.
Standardization
After mapping, processes need to be standardized. This uniformity is vital to maintain consistency, predictability of results and, ultimately, the quality of the products or services offered. Standardization can be carried out through specific checklists or protocols, ensuring that each task is performed in a uniform manner.
It is important to highlight that process management is not a one-size-fits-all approach. Each company implements this management in a personalized way, adapting it to its needs and peculiarities.
Some organizations may choose to outsource certain processes, while others keep all operations in-house. In any scenario, the focus remains on optimizing and continuously improving processes.
What are the steps of process management?
Let us now see what are the necessary steps to organize project management within a business.
Planning
This is the first step, as it involves checking which are the main problems of each department of the company and what are the best ways to solve them.
In addition, it is during planning that you must identify the KPIs, that is, the performance indicators that will be used during this work.
Process analysis
In this second step, the mapping of the company is carried out. This means that each internal process must be carefully observed so that all the activities that comprise it are well described.
Therefore, it is essential to be in each department and observe how its members work, as this will give you a view of the business as a whole and the processes that support it.
They knowledge it is the starting point for the elaboration of goals that each sector must have in order for the company to reach its goals, in addition to the indicators that need to be monitored to make sure that everyone is working in the correct way to get there.
Design and simulations
Here, you start the practical part, as this step involves conducting interviews with your employees and other types of surveys in order to document which flows are currently used in the firm.
After identifying all the work methods and the flaws they have, it is necessary to design a new process flow that has the business objectives as a basis. For this, you must make a projection of what the company's scenario will be like with the applied process improvement to have a perception of how it can actually occur.
Execution
Before initiating process changes, the necessary resources need to be gathered. What tools should company members use? What software? Will you need to make changes to the teams? All these questions are answered in the execution phase.
It is common for employees to be resistant to implementing changes within a company. Therefore, you, as a manager, need to emphasize the importance of this execution as something positive that will improve the way they work so that the company can grow and they can be part of that growth.
Execution can be either systemic - that is, involving the use and training of new software - or non-systemic - in which programs are not presented, but this does not mean that attention to new procedures should be less.
Real Time
Once the new processes have been implemented, you must monitor them to make sure that all company members are following them to the letter and within the developed performance indicators.
To analyze these KPIs, consider elements such as:
- execution time of tasks;
- costs involved;
- productive capacity of the processes;
- level customer service of each process.
Improvements and optimization
Once the new processes are implemented and executed, nothing more needs to be done in terms of improvement, as all the resources necessary for this optimization have already been applied, right? Wrong.
Process improvements must be continuous. After all, once you monitor and analyze the work, you will notice other points that need to be optimized, in addition to discovering new tools that help you and your collaborators to do this.
Therefore, each time a monitoring is completed, the cycle starts again. It is important to make this clear to company members from the first moment so that everyone is aware that procedural changes will be constant from the moment that means are identified that make the work even better.
What is the difference between process and process management?
First, let's try to understand what it is. process management to then explain what is different between them.
What is process management?
Management by processes consists of putting aside the old management models based on departments in functions and giving way to a type that is done from the perspective of the processes and the value they deliver to the company., its employees, partners and customers in a sequel that Michael Porter, in his book "Competitive Advantage", called the value chain.
By adopting process management, the sectors in the company become independent in the sense that the tasks are not the sole responsibility of one area, as they are not the responsibility of the head of the department, but the person who leads the process, who does not necessarily need to be someone in a managerial position within the firm.
What is the difference between the two?
Now that we've seen the concept of process management, we will explain what are the differences between it and process management.
First, it must be made clear that process management is part of process management, although it can also be done independently. After all, process management works on an organizational structure, which is not always the case in process management.
Furthermore, as we explained at the beginning of this article, mapping, standardizing, monitoring and seeking better and better results is part of the set of process management steps. On the other hand, process management is integrated and aims to satisfy the customer and all the people involved in each process.
How important is process management?
By adopting process management, you get to know your business better, which is essential to integrate and improve the sectors that are part of the company.
The value chain makes you build a diagram in which all the company's activities are seen homogeneously so that all employees do their jobs well in order to achieve the corporate objective.
It's common for employees to focus only on what got them on their payroll: working to get paid after the end of the month. However, reconciling this with the company's objective will give more incentive to carry out tasks and give meaning to professional growth.
Also because the processes, after going through this curatorship of your management, become clearer and more agile so that everyone knows what to do within their functions.
For example: if the signing of a contract is time-consuming because it requires all parties to do so in the physical document, the adoption of a electronic signature makes the operation faster.
After all, this is a process that favors both the sales sector that needs agility and the financial sector that is assured by knowing that Electronic signatures have legal validity.
In addition, this adoption means that all members have greater synergy in terms of work from the moment they understand that one needs the other, which creates a sense of responsibility and better engagement.
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How does process management work in practice?
Now let's see how this management can be done in the field.
Process architecture
The process architecture has the value chain as its focal point, as it shows both the company's processes and the interactions they have.
This can be seen from the responsibility matrix that shows the role of people within each process. In this way, everyone is aware of the roles and responsibilities they need to fulfill.
The practice of process architecture reinforces the fact that a business is not composed of loose elements, but of actions that talk to each other for the benefits of all involved.
Process mapping
Process mapping is about identifying the activities that are part of a process.
For this to happen, the first step is to identify the objective of the process and who are its participants in order to assign specific responsibilities to each one.
Then, check the material and financial resources needed for the process and the expected results that will need to be monitored frequently.
Standardization of processes
By standardizing processes, you organize them and develop standards that all members of the company must follow.
In addition, you also ensure that the work is carried out efficiently, as it prevents processes from going through many variations that end up hindering their execution.
Standardization also helps employees understand what their specific roles are within the processes and the duties they need to have as such.
Process modeling
Also called BPM (Business Process Modeling), process modeling brings the representation of all company processes in order to transform and automate processes.
In practical terms, modeling works with the diagramming of activities in order to simplify how the work should be done. This graphical representation helps those involved to know at which stages the process begins, develops and ends.
Process transformation
We call process transformation the actions aimed at procedural changes that aim to simplify and improve the way of working.
One of the ways to do this is through BPI (acronym for Business Process Improvement) whose process optimizations are made from small adjustments so that the work gets gradually better.
Another way is to redesign the processes, considering the results of the process instead of the departments involved. That is, the tasks are made taking into account a broader view of the process.
If there is a need to radically change organizational processes, you can adopt BPR (Business Process Reengineering) where the mapping is done again from scratch.
Process control
Finally, processes need to be measured from indicators and controlled so that performance continues to increase.
If the work performed is not meeting the established goals, it will be necessary to transform the process so that it is in accordance with the work reality and can lead the company to achieve its goals. In the image below we see an example.
What are the benefits of process management?
We list below the main advantages of process management in an organization.
Faster decision making
Once you have full control of the procedural performance, it is easier to make concrete decisions, as they are based on the information extracted from the analysis made on top of the processes.
This will make the employees work in the right direction and they will also feel confident knowing that leadership decisions are not made based on guesswork but for the sake of constant improvement.
Cost reduction
When you analyze your company's current scenario (that is, before applying an optimized process management), you may be scared to see the amount of unnecessary expenses that the company has.
Don't worry, this happens even in the best deals. The most important thing is to identify this problem as soon as possible, as high costs are usually linked to poor management of the whole, which makes it necessary to apply process management.
Time optimization
As we said throughout the article, by understanding the steps of each process, you can improve them, which allows you and your employees to optimize your greatest asset: time.
When we do not manage work processes, we end up carrying out many tasks, some of which are not necessary and others can be done more quickly.
For example, if consulting documents and contracts is part of your work routine, it is more convenient for them to be available online so that access is more dynamic than having them in cabinets and drawers that take longer to search.
Greater customer satisfaction
As process management aims to improve the company's results, one of the biases to make this possible is to deliver an increasingly better value to customers.
After all, if your company's business scope is to offer a product or service, having fluid processes is important to provide customers with a great experience from the first service (which, in these times, has been done online) until the closing of the contract.
transparent processes
Another advantage of adopting process management is making them more understandable for everyone.
Employees of companies in general get used to performing tasks without understanding why. However, in efficient process management, they come to understand why they are in your firm and the importance that their work has in a general context.
The transparency of the processes is also beneficial for shareholders and investors to have a clear knowledge of all the actions that are being carried out and how they are making the business grow.
Standardization of processes
When someone joins the company, they need to receive training to do the job properly. However, if it is done in a disorganized way, the new employee will replicate it and this will be harmful to the business.
For this reason, it is necessary to have a standard to be followed in terms of processes, both for new employees and for those who are experienced and must follow the guidelines indicated in their documentation.
Resource distribution
When the company's processes are well structured, it becomes clearer to understand in which actions the resources should be applied. For example: if the objective is to prospect more customers, more resources should be invested in the commercial. On the other hand, if the intention is to retain customers, service should gain more attention.
This does not mean that the other sectors do not receive the application of resources, but that the management of processes indicates which departments are more prioritized.
Process automation
There are tools on the market aimed at automating work tasks. For example: if you frequently send the same email templates (eg newsletter, welcome message, billing message, etc.), it is recommended that you have a email marketing automation to make these shots.
Therefore, we leave this point as the last of the benefits to remember that, before making any hiring, you must know what changes are necessary to raise what types of programs to buy.
How to implement process management
Finally, let's now see what are the main points of implementation of process management.
Identify the maturity level of the company
Before implementing process management in your company, it is necessary to know what stage of maturity it is in to receive this change.
If you already work with internal processes, you will have to analyze them in order to identify which are the good points and those that should be improved.
On the other hand, if you don't have any processes being done by your management, you will need to find out which ones are the most appropriate to make the organization achieve its goals.
Have process governance
Process governance allows you to take an approach that allows you to control processes and coordinate planned changes.
The purpose of this application is to make sure that everyone is doing the job properly, starting with strictly following the standards created for the good practice of executing processes.
To do this, document these standards and make them available to all members of the company so they can consult whenever they have any questions.
Mapping organizational processes
At this point, you must map the processes through the value chain, breaking it down into several levels.
In this way, it becomes easier to know where the process begins and ends, in addition to making it clear what the responsibilities of each person involved in this path are.
Mapping also helps to prioritize the most important actions that need to be prioritized for processes to be carried out well.
Transform the processes
As we said earlier, defining processes is not enough. To continue getting good results, it is necessary to analyze the processes and transform them whenever necessary.
There are two ways you can apply these changes. The first is called AS-IS, it deals with the mapping of the process that must be transformed. The other is called TO-BE and focuses on optimizing the processes that are running.
Monitor process results
This step is aimed at monitoring the performance of the processes and checking if they are meeting expectations. This is very important so that you know what is working and what needs to be changed to improve performance.
Now that we have reached the end of the article and you know how process management works, you can understand that each element of this management needs to be done efficiently, which includes the organization of company documents.
Therefore, we recommend the use of GED (Electronic Document Management). If you don't know how to adopt it, stay with us and read this article we wrote on the subject!
