Improving processes to stay relevant is one of the most important practices in the world of business today. It is helping them serve their customers better while increasing their internal efficiency. BPM as a novel concept has now begun to proliferate throughout the world of business, irrespective of whether it is helping a large scale organisation or a small/medium-sized enterprise.
What a lot of these organisations don’t realise is that while improving processes is important, but documenting the change is equally as important. And no, documenting is not only limited to creating memos and manuals of the improved processes. It is about documenting everything that you do using a business process analysis software, including mapping, designing, data collection, and all steps of redesign of the existing processes. So how can you, as an organisation, get this right?
Here is a list of the best practices of process documentation that are followed for the best results across industries.
Best Practices of Process Documentation
-
Focus on Value Chain
Your value chain is the most important part of your processes, which is why it happens to be the first and most important point of focus in your process documentation. Your documentation must clearly reflect the value chain is a clear string of interlinked events that explicitly lead to an outcome. Remember that your documentation must not focus on the work of departments when it considers the value chain.
-
Understand Process Objectives
Understanding the objectives of a process is another important point to consider because they are the most important. Everything in the organisation, including the processes and the tasks that constitute it are leading you to the goals and objectives you have in mind, which is why, never lose sight of them. After all, if you can create value to the customer at the end, you will generate more profit.
-
Choosing The Right Metrics and Indicators
Again, documentation is useless if you have no clear idea of what you are tracking. You need the right indicators or metrics to clearly define the scope of improvement or the extent of your improvement efforts in the long run. You may end up committing to the wrong process if you choose the wrong parameters.
-
Monitor All Improvement Opportunities
For you to achieve your operational goals, you must keep track of all possible opportunities for improvement. When you maintain a record of this, you can share it with people who have the expertise to solve these issues and help you achieve organisational excellence.
-
Keep Meetings With The Right People
Documentation processes are not easy if you have to do it all on your own. This is why meeting the right people to understand their work and what is it that they do is important. Whether you are creating process maps or reports for backing your needs of improvement in a business process documentation software, keeping meetings with the right people is important. They know their processes and tools better, which means they can give you better insights.
-
Communication is Essential
A proper communication channel that reaches all affected areas is important as it will help relay the information faster. What it will also do effectively is that it will help your change and change management effort reach all departments faster and make it all go down smoothly. Keep everyone in the loop, including the HR and communications department.
-
Use The Right Tool
This cannot be emphasized enough, but using the right tool makes all the difference in how your processes will end up looking. You need a tool that was made specifically for your needs as using a piece of software that is generalised for all industries may not be enough to tackle all your needs. Do your market research before committing to any solution or tool.
So there you have it, the best practices prevalent in the market when it comes to ensuring the success of your process documentation effort. Follow these steps and watch your processes find their optimal level of operations every day, while also giving you a wider scope of improvement shall your business ever be in the need of it.
