How to Balance Quick Wins and Long-Term Gains in Process Improvement

Striking a balance between demonstrating rapid improvement and executing a sustainable process improvement strategy is a challenge most organisations grapple with. On one end, teams are expected to showcase visible progress in weeks—sometimes even days. On the other hand, leadership is rightly focused on long-term scalability, performance, and competitiveness.

This tension begs the question: Can organisations really have both speed and sustainability? Can you chase quick wins in business without losing sight of long-term gains?

The short answer: yes—but only with clarity, discipline, and the right tools.

In this blog, we’ll explore how organisations can rethink their process improvement approach to avoid short-sighted solutions and build a roadmap that delivers immediate value and future resilience.

What Are Quick Wins—and Why Do We Chase Them So Hard?

Quick wins refer to small-scale process improvements that can be implemented rapidly and show visible results with minimal effort or investment. These are low-hanging fruits: eliminating redundant steps, digitising a paper form, automating a recurring task, or bypassing a bottleneck temporarily.

The reason organisations love quick wins is simple:

• Speed of Execution: Quick wins can be implemented in days or weeks, no need to wait for months.
• Stakeholder Satisfaction: Fast results boost morale and demonstrate action.
• Early ROI: They offer early returns and validate the larger BPM initiative.
• Change Momentum: Early success builds confidence in change efforts.

Why Quick Wins in Process Improvement May Not Be Sustainable

When we chase quick wins, we end up doing spot fixing. This emerges from a mindset of urgency over sustainability. While they can produce short-term relief, they often introduce invisible costs—and when overused, they become a strategic liability.

Here’s why:

1. Inadequate Root Cause Analysis
Quick fixes often address symptoms, not causes. Without proper root cause analysis, teams risk solving the wrong problem—leading to recurring inefficiencies.

2. Lack of Process Documentation
Most quick fixes happen informally—an email changes a workflow, or a team builds a workaround in Excel. These undocumented tweaks make improvements hard to replicate, measure, or audit.

3. Misalignment with Organisational Strategy
A fix may work for one team but may be at odds with the company’s long-term digital transformation goals. For example, manually shifting tasks between departments may speed things up temporarily, but blocks system-wide automation.

4. Stakeholder Friction
Even small, uncoordinated changes can trigger friction among teams who feel excluded or disrupted. When stakeholders aren’t involved in the process improvement strategy, it can erode trust and diminish support.

5. Breakdown in Standardisation
Spot fixes are often implemented locally and informally. Without process standardisation, different teams might end up solving the same problem in different ways—leading to inconsistency.

6. Incomplete Data, Faulty Assumptions
Many quick fixes are based on anecdotal observations or assumptions rather than data. This guesswork leads to suboptimal decisions.

7. Increased Operational Risk
Unverified shortcuts may result in missed steps, compliance breaches, or quality issues. For instance, bypassing a verification process to save time may create downstream issues.

8. Technical and Process Debt
Temporary fixes often become permanent by default. These shortcuts accumulate into technical debt or fragmented processes that later require a massive overhaul.

The Sustainable Path: How Quick Wins Can (and Should) Lead to Long-Term Gains

Quick wins aren’t the problem—in fact, when used wisely, they can lay the foundation for long-term success. The key is to treat them not as final solutions, but as starting points for bigger, lasting change.

1. Always Connect Quick Wins to Strategic Objectives

Before implementing any fix, ask: How does this change help us meet our long-term business or transformation goals?

For example, if the organisation is moving towards digital-first operations, a quick win should contribute to this direction, such as introducing a digital form that can later feed into an integrated automation platform.

2. Document Every Change

No matter how small the fix, it should be documented in your process maps. This ensures transparency, enables monitoring, and keeps the process improvement journey trackable. Documenting also helps new teams understand the evolution of processes and prevents duplication of effort.

3. Evaluate System-Wide Impact

Look beyond the local benefit. Ask: How will this fix affect upstream and downstream processes?

For example, digitising a form may seem beneficial, but if downstream teams rely on the old format, it may introduce friction instead of relief.

4. Use Quick Wins as Pilot Projects

A well-executed quick win can act as a prototype for broader improvement. Use it to gather data, get feedback, and refine the model before scaling it organisation-wide.

For instance, automating one step in a workflow can be a test case before automating the full process.

5. Monitor Performance and Embed Learnings

Track the performance of every quick win. Did it reduce time? Improve accuracy? Save money? These insights can fuel long-term initiatives and provide evidence for future investments.

Real Example: What Balance Looks Like in Practice

A Regional Council in Victoria, managing over 300 staff and serving 30,000+ residents, needed to address process inefficiencies, unclear workflows, and service delays. Rather than opting for temporary fixes, it adopted a balanced approach—using short-term wins to drive broader, strategic transformation.

Quick Wins That Delivered Immediate Results

Using PRIME BPM, the council mapped processes and quickly identified priority areas for immediate improvement, which resulted in measurable results:

• Supplier Validation: Process overhaul saved 490 hours annually—$22,000+ in savings.
• Debt Collection: Improved flow resulted in 173 hours saved, reducing costs by $7,800.
• Customer Refunds: Reduced average turnaround from 4 weeks to 1–10 days; transaction cost dropped from $110.50 to $10—$35,000 saved yearly.

These improvements freed up resources and showcased the value of process change early in the journey.

Strategic Gains Through Long-Term Focus

The council didn’t stop at quick fixes. It built on early momentum by:

• Standardising business processes and roles
• Improving customer experience
• Using data to inform automation decisions
• Embedding a culture of continuous improvement through BPM training/course and collaboration

By mapping 70% of key processes and training staff on PRIME BPM, it created a sustainable, agile process framework.

The Bottom Line

Quick wins weren’t seen as the finish line—they were launchpads. The process improvement approach for council demonstrates that when early gains are part of a bigger strategy, organisations achieve both immediate impact and lasting transformation.

Think Big, Start Smart, Scale Wisely

Process improvement is about aligning the speed and sustainability. The goal is to ensure they align with your bigger picture—building momentum without compromising the foundation.

This is where PRIME BPM empowers organisations to think big while starting smart. With its robust AI-powered process mapping and analysis tools, you gain a clear understanding of your current state and can confidently identify improvement opportunities that serve both short-term efficiency and long-term growth. Features like cost and time analysis, role clarity, and process simulation ensure that every quick win is not just reactive but forward-thinking.

As your organisation scales its improvement efforts, PRIME BPM provides the structure and support needed to maintain alignment, consistency, and measurable impact. By bringing together data, people, and strategy in one powerful platform, PRIME BPM turns every small improvement into a building block for lasting transformation.

Explore our BPM platform to see how your organisation can align speed with sustainability—and turn momentum into measurable value.

FAQ’s

1. What role does BPM software play in converting quick wins into long-term gains?

BPM software acts as the backbone for sustainable transformation by:

• Mapping and modelling current processes
• Tracking ROI and performance metrics
• Simulating workflows before full implementation
• Enabling transparency and documentation
• Supporting BPM training/course integration to build internal capability

Tools like PRIME BPM help organisations embed quick wins within a strategic improvement roadmap.

2. When should quick wins be avoided?

Quick wins should be avoided when they create long-term risk, conflict with strategic goals, or bypass stakeholder input. If a fix is not scalable or causes friction in other processes, it’s better to take a more comprehensive approach.

3. What skills are needed to execute a successful process improvement strategy?

Teams need skills in process mapping, data analysis, change management, and BPM tool usage. Understanding how to align process changes with business goals is key—and these skills can be developed through experience or structured BPM training.