What is the point of process management?
Posted by Angela Alberts on March 11, 2022
Understanding the point of process management is crucial for any business striving for efficiency and growth. Every business has its way of doing things, from opening the office in the morning to onboarding new staff or clients. What are the steps for taking an order or sending out an invoice? What’s the protocol for responding to a customer complaint? How do you manage staff absences?
Business processes
Each task is a business process. Together, they make up the bulk of what you and your team do each day. Processes are so embedded in your business that you follow most without thinking about them. This is where problems can emerge. If your processes are inefficient or poorly designed, with double-handling, too many steps, and bottlenecks at certain points, your people will waste time and energy. Consequently, your business won’t work to its full potential. Understanding the benefits of process management can help overcome these challenges.
How process management helps
Process management defines every process in your business, clearly maps the key steps, and looks for weak points. It’s a tool designed for continual improvement and sustainable business success.
Define, refine, improve
Process management starts with a deep dive into your existing processes. You can’t improve what you don’t understand. You and your team spend time examining the way you do things and recording step-by-step instructions using process management software or another system. Refining and tightening processes happen alongside mapping. As you clarify how each core task works, you’ll naturally spot inefficiencies and start moving toward a cleaner, clearer process.
When all your processes are clearly mapped, they can be accessed by staff, sent to new team members during onboarding, and adjusted as your business needs change.
Small changes, huge impacts
Changing minor day-to-day processes can seem like a waste of time and energy. However, small process changes can add up to major improvements over time.
For example, if your accounts team always chases staff for invoices, changing the process so invoices are completed online and uploaded automatically could save hours of work every week. This adds up to thousands of hours over a year. Adding a final check to your dispatch process could reduce the number of errors and returns significantly. This means less wasted time and money, and happier customers.
Benefits of process management
When you first start, it’s easy to get things done. If you’re working alone or with a small team, you just work things out as you go along, and adjust your workflow as business needs change. But this way of working isn’t always compatible with growth.
As you expand into different teams or departments, miscommunications and mismatched processes can lead to delays and frustration. It can also be a precarious way of storing critical business knowledge. If long-time team members leave, they may take their process information with them, leaving remaining staff to relearn or rework key processes.
Business growth
Process management sets you up for business growth by making sure all your people are working from the same playbook. The tasks of each person or team line up with the next, with no bottlenecks. Everyone has access to accurate process information. This way, there’s no room for error and no way for key knowledge to walk out the door.
Faster staff onboarding
Hiring new people is one of the most expensive, time-consuming parts of running a business. Some studies suggest it can take as long as two years before new employees are fully productive. Anything you can do to help get them up to speed faster will pay dividends.
That’s where process management comes in. Clearly defined and accessible processes are a dream come true for onboarding. Rather than spending weeks in one-on-one training followed by months of practice and clarification, new team members are simply given access to the processes they need to do their jobs. If they need help recalling a specific process, they can find it in your process management system. It’s a simpler, less time-intensive way to bring new people on board.
Better service, satisfied customers
Process management is at the heart of excellent customer service. It makes it possible to offer a consistent experience across all touchpoints, regardless of the team member in charge. Since your processes will be constantly refined, your service will only get faster, more cost-effective, and consistently positive for the customer.
Building a reputation for consistency and a high standard of service means you’re more likely to win new business and keep your current customers long-term.
A happier, more productive team
Poorly designed processes can be incredibly frustrating for your people. Constantly waiting for others to follow through, fixing errors, apologizing to unhappy customers, and double-handling tasks will leave even the most enthusiastic employee disheartened and unmotivated.
Process management
Process management takes much of that frustration off the table. Making processes clear and accessible, streamlining workflows, and aligning tasks between departments reduces the potential for errors and minimizes frustrating admin tasks. That means less time spent on disgruntled customers and tedious paperwork, and more time to focus on satisfying, business-building work.
Profit-boosting process improvement
It’s a simple equation: better processes mean less wasted time and money, which leads to increased profits. By improving processes in small ways across the business, you save little bits of time and money in multiple areas. These incremental savings can add up to serious improvements in your margins.
It’s not a glamorous project or a multi-million dollar contract, but it’s a sure-fire way to set your business up for sustainable growth and profitability.
Angela Alberts
My name is Angela and I am the QA for ProcessPro. I work alongside our development team to identify, develop and drive the testing activities to ensure the delivery of a high-quality product. I also work closely with the support team to improve documentation and help material. Our collaboration ensures that customers receive a quality, user-friendly product to help them improve their organizations’ productivity.
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