Does your organization face pressure to stretch your budget, cut costs, or do more with less? Did you know you may be able to achieve these goals without using layoffs, hiring freezes and budget cuts as a first resort? How? It may be time to take a closer look at your business processes.
While definitions vary, business process engineering really comes down to getting “noise” out of systems, whether by eliminating inefficiencies, reducing errors, or enabling faster actions. It’s not necessarily about cutting people or making them redundant through automation. In fact, it can help you cut costs without letting people go, freeing up leaders to spend more time leading and giving employees the time they need to do great work instead of always putting out fires. Not only do these things save companies money – quality tends to improve as well.
Business process engineering does not have to be daunting task if you know how to tackle it. Here are some ways to get started:
Learn from frontline employees.
It’s important to involve and learn from the people who actually do the work—at every level. Sit “side by side” with employees to understand how they perform their work today. Do they have a good understanding of how data and work flows between people and teams? Are there any extra steps or duplication of effort? Document existing processes and check for accuracy to ensure you’re not fixing a problem that doesn’t exist and to guarantee everyone is on the same page about what “now” looks like.
Ensure at least two people in operations know your organization end to end.
Teams that only know their own worlds tend to build up systems to support them, not realizing similar teams are doing the same thing. Suddenly, lots of money is wasted on duplicate systems. You can mitigate this by ensuring several people have a broad view across the organization, flagging redundant efforts as they arise.
Look for where technology can help.
Your technology partners may already have a strategy to attack similar problems and may have already allocated resources for this work. Consider partnering with them to help drive the strategy—and potentially share the costs – for mutual benefit. Also look for where technology can help usher some workflows more efficiently.
Get executive support.
Business process reengineering is a change, and some people will be uncomfortable with it, at least initially. It’s crucial that you have top-down support from leaders who can help you communicate the value of this work, both to other leaders and to employees.
Need help to get started? Clarsynt helps companies grow and scale by operating more efficiently – including through business process engineering. We work with our clients to create operations and AI strategies and implement them to accomplish their goals. Get in touch with us to discuss how we can help.
