Establishing a business process correctly helps you achieve your objectives.
In this article, we teach you more about this concept, its advantages and how to improve the processes defined in your organization.
What is a business process?
A business process is a set of interrelated tasks that ends with the delivery of a service or product to a customer. Business process has also been defined as a set of activities and tasks that, once completed, will fulfill one of the organization’s objectives.
The process is described in the form of activities. These are the different stages of the process, which are called activities. Each activity can be defined as a set of tasks. A task is a more detailed step than an activity.
A procedure guarantees an identical mode of operation throughout the organization and a constant result for a given operation. Define and assign responsibilities for specific tasks. In short, it must answer the question: who does what?
What should a business process be like for it to work?
There are 4 essential attributes that constitute an ideal business process:
- A good business process has a well-defined starting point and end point. It also has a finite number of steps.
- A good business process can be executed an indefinite number of times.
- Ultimately, your goal is to translate value creation into executable tasks and you don’t have any steps in the process just for the sake of it. In other words, if any step in the process does not add value, it should not exist.
- A business process must be flexible to change and not rigid. When some room for improvement is identified, the process allows the change to be absorbed within itself without affecting the interested parties as much from an operational point of view.
Importance of establishing business processes
The need and benefits of a business process are quite evident. A process forms the lifeline of any company and helps it streamline individual activities, ensuring that resources are used optimally.
These are some of the key reasons to have well-defined business processes:
- Identify which tasks are important to your broader business goals
- Improve the eficiency
- Streamline communication between people/functions/departments
- Establish approvals to ensure accountability and optimal use of resources
- Avoid chaos in daily operations
- Standardize a set of procedures to perform the tasks that really matter to your company.
Business process example
As an example, let’s consider the hiring process of an HR department. From publishing the job offer to onboarding the employee, the process consists of several steps. Although this may vary from organization to organization, a simple workflow could be as follows:
- The Human Resources team publishes the job offer
- Several candidates are running
- The most optimal candidates are filtered
- Selected candidates are called for the following stages of recruitment
- The right candidate is chosen in the last phase of recruitment
- Salaries and policies are negotiated
- The offer is sent and the candidate accepts
- Next, a lengthy employee onboarding process takes place.
Steps to carry out a business process
These are some general steps you can follow to establish a process in your company:
- Step 1: Define the objectives: What is the objective of the process? Why has it been created? How will you know if it is successful?
- Step 2: Plan and trace your process : What are the necessary strategies to achieve the objectives? This is the general roadmap of the process.
- Step 3: Establish actions and assign stakeholders : Identify the individual tasks your teams must perform to execute the plan.
- Step 4: Test the process: Run the process on a small scale to see how it works. Observe deficiencies and make adjustments as necessary.
- Step 5: Implement the process: Start running the process in a real environment. Communicate and adequately train all interested parties.
- Step 6: Monitor results : Review the process and analyze your guidelines. Document the history of the process.
- Step 7: Repeat : If the process is capable of achieving the set objectives, repeat it for future processes.