In their pursuit to be agile, cost-effective, efficient and sustainable, more and more organisations realise that Business process improvement is no longer an option but a necessity. Hence, organisations continue to jump on the business process improvement bandwagon. However, not every organisation gets similar results. As per research by McKinsey and Company, as many as 70% of large-scale change programs fail to achieve their goals.
Failure of a business process improvement initiative not only results in a loss of time, resources and cost but also a loss of opportunity to gain an edge over the competition. A failed business improvement project discourages organisations from attempting other process improvement projects for a long time, giving leverage to competitors.
Several roadblocks can impede the success of business process improvement initiatives. In this blog, we will explore five common roadblocks organisations face during their process improvement endeavours and discuss effective strategies to overcome them.
5 Obstacles to Business Process Improvement Success
- Inconsistent language and depth of process maps: Process maps are at the heart of any process improvement initiative. Inconsistent process maps with varied standards, terminology and level of detail hamper process analysis results. It is important to define common standards, notations, and methodology to be used for organisation-wide process mapping initiatives. This will also ensure easy understanding and adherence to documented processes. Further, it’s important that process maps capture details related to process attributes to elevate it from a basic flowchart and give an in-depth understanding of the process.At a minimum, a process map needs to contain four distinct components, i.e. Tasks, Roles, Documents, and Applications.
- Tasks: Breaking down a process into several tasks gives a detailed view of all the process activities. It offers more efficient analysis and improvement opportunities through splitting, merging and reordering of tasks.
- Roles: Defining the responsibilities of the people involved in the process not only increases efficiency but also helps ensure effective resource allocation.
- Documents: Adding the documents used throughout the execution of a process in the process map ensures consistency and proper data transfer across the organisation.
- Applications: Mentioning all utilised applications in the process map highlights the possibility of using the application for other tasks in the process.
Appropriate checks need to be in place to ensure the quality and consistency of documentation and process maps across the organisation.
- Inadequate business process analysis: Many times, organisations make the mistake of spending time and effort on the process mapping stage but quickly moving past the analysis stage. However, without an in-depth view into the current state process and what’s working and what’s not working, organisations may be unable to decide the most impactful areas of improvement.
Organisations need to understand processes from the cost, value, time and efficiency perspective to identify waste and bottlenecks in a process. These insights give a fair idea of what needs to be improved in a process and prove valuable in creating the future state of the process.
- Not balancing dedicated and collaborative efforts: A dedicated improvement team is highly effective in sustaining the momentum of process improvement initiatives. However, solely relying on the efforts of a dedicated team to map, analyse, improve and monitor the processes will not do the trick. Process improvement is a collaborative effort, and all the layers within the organisation, from team leaders, managers to front-end employees and a dedicated team, must come together to drive the results. All these layers must work collaboratively to ensure alignment with corporate goals and that mapped and improved processes are also being followed.
- Not focusing on the right-fit tool: Lack of attention to the appropriate tool poses a major risk to your goal of process improvement. Empowering the teams with a right-fit tool is the only way to ensure different business units are on the same page and mapping, analysing and improving consistently. A tool drives the behaviour automatically and ensures consistency across improvement initiatives for thousands of business processes.
While different organisations have different needs, some functionalities are a must-have. A tool with an in-built methodology and worldwide accepted standards ensures process documentation remains consistent and accurate across various business units. It’s also important to ensure the tool can manage end-to-end improvement right from accurate mapping and analysis to collaboration, adherence and continual monitoring of the process.
- Not focusing on continuous improvement: Setting and forgetting the processes is the biggest mistake. As long as there are processes, there is a scope to improve and streamline them. Hence, continuous improvement is key to process improvement success. Defining key performance indicators (KPIs), monitoring process performance against set targets and establishing feedback loops are crucial to ensure process improvement success.
Maximise Your Process Improvement Output
With a holistic approach, businesses can navigate these roadblocks and move towards sustained success. If you are looking for the right tool to power your process improvement journey, then consider the capabilities of PRIME BPM software.
With the powerful features of PRIME BPM software, including in-built methodology and BPMN 2.0 for standardised process documentation; one-click analysis on process value, time, and efficiency; collaboration features, etc., you can drive end-to-end improvement. The software also includes rapid process mapping and one-click process prioritisation features to accelerate your process improvement journey.
PRIME BPM has helped many leading organisations achieve their process improvement goals. Check out some success stories.
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