Business Processes are made up of sequence of tasks performed by a particular role in the organisation.. It is important for management to check if these tasks are clear performer and if these tasks are still relevant to the process based on its objectives
Task value analysis is a simple but effective method to quickly find problems in the process and ensure that the process is executed with customer in mind.
Value analysis segregates tasks in three different categories:
Customer Value-Adding (CVA)
Business Value-Adding (BVA)
Non-Value-Adding (NVA)
Customer Value-Adding (CVA)
Customer Value-Adding (CVA)
Customer value-adding tasks are tasks that can directly or indirectly affect the service/product given to the customers. Direct CVA tasks are those which directly contributes to satisfying a customer’s expectation. One task example is engaging to the customer as soon as they approach the store. This adds value to the customer as it leaves an impression that they are being attended and valued by the company. Indirect CVA tasks are those tasks that are not felt or seen by the customer directly but still gives them an excellent service like training the employees. Having a well-trained employee attend a potential customer will add value to the service that they offer. Customer Value-adding tasks are tasks which customers will be willing to pay for because it adds value to the product or service that they are receiving.
Business Value-Adding (BVA)
Business Value-adding tasks are essential in conducting a business. Examples of these tasks within a process are tasks that enable compliance to laws, policies and regulation. These tasks add value to the business.
Non-Value-Adding (NVA)
The previous two categories are both value-adding while the last one is Non-Value Adding (NVA) . The tasks under this category neither add value to the customers nor needed for conducting a business. These are the tasks that are considered as waste as they can and should be eliminated from the process. Tasks can become non-valuable when there are changes being implemented in the system that affected roles and responsibilities negatively and left the tasks with no use at all. Some examples of these are transcribing information, rework or gaining approval.
Identifying and Assessing the tasks
Assessing the tasks is important for management to be informed on the extent of waste present in the process. Leaders assigned for monitoring these tasks should decrease the NVAs and increase CVAs to emphasise customer focus and deliver higher value to the customers.
So what should be done to NVAs? NVAs open doors for process improvement and the best process should not have any or limited non-value adding tasks. This may look like a highly-automated process , process with lesser NVAs means more tasks are dedicated and focused on adding value to the customer directly or indirectly. An increase in customer focus in your processes means a potential increase in revenue.
The elimination of NVA tasks requires certain process change and improvement. Pain points and bottlenecks should be identified and then solved. The solution to NVAs should be able to save time or effort or any other input to create value to either the business or to the customers. Let’s review a task where the person is seeking approval manually for a certain document . The person will print a file and then identify a person who will approve this file. Then the person will physically leave this file on the desk of the individual to gain approval. This non value adding activity can be either eliminated or enhanced with introduction of email or automated approval through an IT system. This will create extra capacity for the individual who was seeking approval manually before and now can redirect his/er efforts to more customer value adding activities. .
Operational as well as managerial staff members should always be on look out for these non value adding tasks. As eliminating these tasks can improve the workplace efficiency significantly without having to invest heavy efforts in the change. This will open an opportunity to provide optimal and superior customer service.
Identifying and assessing tasks can improve business processes in the long run and managers should be on the lookout for certain non-value-adding tasks because they are making the organisation work inefficiently, wasting too much resources on tasks that projects little to no help in providing optimal and superior customer quality service.