A business process is a sequence of tasks or activities within an organization aimed at achieving specific business goals or outcomes. - ChatGPT
You'll need to think like a computer. Yes, no, left, right, if this then what? That's the simplest way to document your processes.
Follow these steps to get you started:
Identify the main areas and departments. Where do you have people performing a sequence of 5 or more steps, tasks or activities before they achieve the end result? Some common areas for businesses to analyze are:
Inventory management
Lead acquisition
Sales cycle
Order management
Invoicing
Procurement of supplies and services
Shipping
Project management
Returns and refunds
Registrations
Assembly
Quality assurance
Customer support and helpdesk
Employee onboarding
Employee offboarding
Service delivery
Select the most critical processes. Trying to document all the processes in each department can be overwhelming. Start with choosing the most critical process in five of your most active areas. You can then do a pass through these same steps for the remaining processes.
Give each process a header. For each process:
Give it a name
Identify who is the business owner (who has the final say in how it is done)
Define the end goal of the process
Identify which role(s) in your company are involved in this process
Write down the most common flow. Meet with each role individually, or all roles at once. Document what actually happens 80% of the time. Not what should, or could or sometimes happens. It will be very easy to get caught up in the exceptions, problem fixing etc. There will be time for that. Try to focus. Include the role, system and relevant documents for each step.
Write down the other scenarios. Now is the time to note any exceptions, error handling, the "sometimes", the weird cases etc. Try to understand as much as you can about these. This will be great material down the line for your process redesign efforts.
Organize your information. Lay out your information in a linear, systematic way. First this, then this, then decision - if yes, this, if no, that...
Identify your problem areas. Now that you have all your information laid out, you can flag all your problem areas. Focus on areas that bottleneck your process, that cause the most errors, or that cause the most exceptions.
You are ready to redesign!
Still not sure? You know where to find us. We can help with all or some of the steps in this process. We also have additional templates and tools to get you there!
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