Dive into this real-world project to see how this local government has moved beyond static diagrams and is using process mapping for achieving strategic goals.
Many organizations see process mapping as straightforward documentation. However, process mapping is a lot more than “how” work is done. Done right, it also reveals why the process works, where it fails, and how it can improve. By taking a purpose-driven approach, organizations can ensure process mapping initiatives are aligned with strategic goals.
For instance, the City of Kawartha Lakes in Ontario, Canada, has successfully showcased that process mapping is not just a technical task—it’s a strategic enabler for transformation, automation, and measurable business impact. With over 4,000+ processes identified, 256 mapped, and 72 published, the numbers tell the story of transformation. While the example is of local government, it’s applicable across industries. Here are the lessons from the city’s process mapping initiative:
1. Start with a Strategic Purpose
The city began its journey not with diagrams, but by asking what business problems and goals needed to be addressed. Its key goals included:
- Transitioning from siloed ways of working to a customer-focused model
- Improving services, staff experience, and resource use post-pandemic
- Supporting integration across public services, workplaces, and technology
Lesson: Don’t just document processes for the sake of it. Tie documentation to measurable outcomes like reduced onboarding time, service continuity, or improved compliance to ensure your mapping initiative is aligned with business transformation.
2. Build a Service Catalogue
Before mapping, the city created a service catalogue documenting:
- All services offered
- Which departments delivered them
- How they were delivered
This revealed gaps in ownership and duplication across departments.
“The service catalogue really showed us that we had services that were lacking clear ownership. This was creating inefficiencies and challenges in accountability.” — Nadine Bloomfield, Executive Assistant, Corporate Services, City of Kawartha Lakes
Lesson: Knowing what you deliver and who owns it is the foundation for efficiency and accountability.
3. Start Where Your Teams Are
A critical but often overlooked step in process-led transformation is starting with engagement, not software. The team at the City of Kawartha Lakes did exactly that.
Rather than jumping straight into tools, the team used brown paper mapping—a low-tech, high-engagement method that brought people into the room and the process.
Sticky notes, wall maps, and conversations helped staff, especially those unfamiliar with BPM tools, understand their workflows. This created shared understanding and reduced resistance.
Lesson: Engagement leads to ownership. When people contribute to mapping, they’re more likely to champion change.
4. Choose the Right Mapping Method
Teams had varying levels of tools being used, from notebooks to basic diagrams. The city tested various BPM tools and chose PRIME BPM, an AI-powered BPM solution that has advanced capabilities to meet the city’s goals of standardization, process excellence and long-term value. See PRIME BPM tool in action, watch a 5-minute demo.
Lesson: Choose a BPM tool that aligns with your organization’s requirements and is feature-packed yet intuitive to enable business and technical users to work together.
5. Build Process Libraries by Department
The city worked with all its 9 departments to create process libraries—repositories of every process in the function. The following activities were undertaken:
- Virtual workshops with frontline staff and supervisors
- Catalogued processes by division
- Ensured standard format across the organization.
Lesson: A Process Library gives a bird’s eye view of the entire function and provides a scope and directive to your mapping initiative.
6. Prioritize Using Heat Maps
With thousands of processes identified, the city needed to focus on priority processes that required urgent attention. With the BPM tool’s in-built capabilities, it generated heat maps, flagging:
- High-pain, high-volume processes (in red)
- Lower-priority processes (in green)
“Heat maps give you the color coding of what is the most painful to the least painful. So, if we’re going to process map anything, we start with the ones in red.” — Nadine Bloomfield, Executive Assistant, Corporate Services, City of Kawartha Lakes
Lesson: Use data-driven prioritization to focus mapping efforts on where ROI will be highest.
7. Capturing Current State with Attributes
The city didn’t just map workflows; it captured process attributes to turn process maps into dynamic tools for insight, improvement, decision-making and operational visibility. Process attributes included:
- SOPs and RACI charts
- Task frequency and volume
- Cycle times and dependencies
- Business rules and risks
- Systems used
Lesson: When maps are linked to attributes, they can reveal gaps in ownership, inefficiencies, and improvement opportunities, well before issues escalate.
8. Develop the Future State
At Kawartha Lakes, once processes were mapped and attributes captured (cycle times, task volumes, risks, systems used), the next step was to reimagine how those processes could work better.
This involved:
- Eliminating inefficiencies – identifying unnecessary steps and streamlining workflows
- Clarifying ownership – assigning process owners to ensure accountability in the redesigned model
- Embedding controls – linking compliance requirements, risks, and KPIs into the new process flow
- Aligning with technology – ensuring redesigned processes would be supported by ERP and system implementations
- Creating scalable models – designing processes that could withstand retirements, turnover, and growth without service disruption
Lesson: Documenting the “as-is” state gives insight, but ROI is unlocked when you deliberately create a “to-be” state that’s faster, leaner, and built for resilience.
9. Connect Mapping to ROI Drivers
At the heart of Kawartha Lakes’ approach was a focus on measurable value:
- Reduced onboarding time through published, accessible process libraries
- Service continuity via shared knowledge and process ownership
- Cross-departmental alignment by standardizing high-impact processes
- Risk reduction by making process responsibilities and handoffs explicit
- Strategic insight by tying processes to business goals
Lesson: Process mapping isn’t complete until it’s tied to outcomes—and those outcomes must be tracked, reported, and shared.
10. Standardize Shared Corporate Processes
During mapping, the team discovered many departments had their own versions of the same process (e.g., invoice payment). They consolidated these into corporate-wide shared processes.
Lesson: Standardizing high-volume, cross-department processes delivers higher ROI by eliminating duplication and errors.
11. Create a Living Knowledge Repository
The city centralized all processes in a BPM system, with:
- Super-users trained to maintain content
- Role-based access for frontline staff
- Integration with training and onboarding
- Exported PDFs for SharePoint and Council
Lesson: A living process library ensures maps are accessible, used daily, and kept current.
12. Overcome Resistance with Transparency
Two common barriers emerged: Concerns about job cuts from efficiency gains and staff scepticism about exposing inefficiencies.
The team overcame this by:
- Showing how maps proved workloads and justified new resources
- Using mapping to highlight hidden tasks and risks
- Positioning maps as employee advocacy tools, not threats.
“I showed them that the beauty of a process map is that it proves your workload—and can even justify more resources.”— Cathy Thrun, CSSYB, Strategy and Performance Specialist, Corporate Services, City of Kawartha
Lesson: Ensure staff buy-in by showcasing how process mapping is a tool to protect staff, not replace them. ROI comes from higher trust and stronger adoption.
13. Make Process Thinking Cultural
By embedding lean thinking and investing in capability (issuing over 30 white belt certifications and launching black/yellow belt cohorts), the city ensured that process improvement became embedded in how people work—not just what they document.
Paramedics and administrative staff alike began using mapped processes in onboarding and day-to-day work.
Lesson: ROI comes not just from the map, but from the mindset.
Process Mapping Project Highlights
In just over a year:
- 153 process libraries built across 9 departments
- 4,389 processes identified
- 256 processes mapped
- 72 processes published and in use
Practical Takeaways for Organizations
- Start with business problems, not just processes
- Map collaboratively—engage before you automate
- Connect process maps to SOPs, KPIs, and risks
- Standardize high-impact workflows across teams
- Use data (e.g., cycle times, task volumes) to prioritize
- Establish clear governance and ownership
- Build a library: one platform, one language, one source of truth
- Invest in the capability to embed process thinking in the organization’s culture.
Fast-Track Your Process Mapping Project
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