Why are clear processes important?

If you look at the evolution of business process digitization over the last 15 years, one topic has been neglected again and again - that is, process documentation, which is the basis for every business process.

When I dealt with the topic of digitization in 2006, many companies saw digitization as something that was only for corporate groups or banks and that did not need to be dealt with. Freely based on the motto "Will be fine". But this was already a fallacy at the time. Only two years later, the whole business changed and even medium-sized companies started to deal with the digitalization of business processes, but the documentation of these processes was not enough, because there were hardly any possibilities to bring them in line with the process.

Often knowledge was or is still stored and processed in Word documents, Excel sheets or Visio processes. Why is this a problem? This can be answered quite simply. In the first step, the process is always brought up to date and only then the corresponding documentation. Unfortunately, the last step is often forgotten, as this is rather seen as an annoying problem and you want to get rid of it as soon as possible. This is quite normal, as this is a very time-consuming task that ties up valuable resources that a company would like to use much more effectively elsewhere.

12 years later, the issue is unfortunately still not where it should be. Why is this so? It is very hard to say now that this is a mix of solution and approach for optimal process management. Whereby I do not mean that there are bad solutions on the market, but rather that in most cases they can only be applied by process specialists and such persons are not available in many companies.

Do you absolutely need a process specialist and a complex process management solution that offers me as a company everything I need for the mapping and documentation of processes? I clearly say no! This can also be explained quite simply.

For many employees, complex process maps are "Bohemian villages" and this is not meant disrespectfully.

The fact is that process participants do not understand the process language behind it because they have never learned it and that is the crux of the matter.

Processes must be understood by every employee and must be easy to handle, like google, youtube, facebook, linkedin etc. Why are these mentioned solutions so successful? Very simple, each solution is intuitive to use, not overloaded with functions and the products can even interact with each other, e.g. share a YouTube video on facebook.

Are there solutions that offer this simplicity and what do I as a company have to consider when optimizing processes?

Here I can give you a very simple answer "Yes". In the following, I will show you how process documentation and the corresponding process maps can be easily displayed with our Nintex Promapp solution and which methods you should use for process optimization.

Let's first turn to the methodologies. If you are dealing with process optimization, you cannot avoid the topics Lean Management and Six Sigma. Now you are probably asking yourself, but these are methodologies that certainly require a specialist. No, this is not so. You should only pay attention to a few points, or rather internalize them as a company, then the application of these methodologies is a piece of cake.

For example, if you follow the ten steps from the Six Sigma cycle DMAIC "Define", "measure", "Analysis", "Improve" and "Control", then you lay the foundation for optimal process management.

What do the individual DMAIC steps mean for me as a company? *

1.    establish process optimization as a corporate culture

2.    define responsibilities

3.    identify and prioritise core processes

4.    recording the core processes

5.    visualization

• a.           Measurement of process throughput times
• b.           Definition of goals
• c.           Process improvements (optimization)

6.    training

7.    control

*In my next blog I will go into more detail about the 10 steps of the Six Simga cycle DMAIC.

Furthermore you can also use Six-Sigma in combination with the Continuous Improvement from the Lean Management methodology.

As with Six Sigma, the prerequisite for a successful application of the continuous improvment is that this is applied by the company management and that the necessary resources are available. But what exactly is behind the individual points Plan, Do, Check and Act?

Plan = How should it be

Do = What do we do and how?

Check = What was achieved

Act = What remains to be done?

In one of the next blogs I will go into this topic in more detail.

If you pay attention to the points from both methodologies, I can promise you, you will be able to implement your processes and their documentation easily and uncomplicated.

The following example shows how you can optimize processes or procedures to create value:

Exactly such processes are difficult to combine with process documentation. If so, then it is only possible to use another solution for documentation. Likewise, such (here still in a very simple form) process maps are not understandable by everyone involved in the process, and here too it is important that processes are understood by everyone. In the following example I show you an example which was optimized according to Six-Sigma and Lean-Management.

Is this an understandable process from your point of view? If you can answer this question with yes, then I can confirm this. Now everyone involved in the process can understand this process and even new employees know right away which process steps are necessary for invoice verification in your company.

With Nintex Promapp, you can not only display process maps, but also combine process with the associated documentation for each individual process step.

This combination of simple process maps and documentation makes it possible for every employee to track processes and optimize them as needed.

I hope that I could give you a brief insight into why it is so important to understand processes and how to optimize processes according to Six Sigma and Lean Management. In the next few blogs I will go into more detail on individual points of process optimization.