Process Improvement: Move from Mundane to World Class by Ojiugo Ajunwa (Guest Blogger)

October 25, 2020
Adanna Austin
business goals, Sales Strategy, Uncategorized

It happened again! A client needed process improvement! The client requested a rework on their website. We see scenarios like these often, especially in organizations where their business processes need improvement. The fault may not be from your teammates, it may just be a process flaw. Faulty processes mean loss of time, loss of revenue, loss of clients and so much more. To be a top-notch organization or business, watch out for those details needed for process improvements.

Operational excellence is a real deal and it’s a strong strategy that can grow any business.

Processes are everywhere in your business. A process is a set of activities that transition inputs to outputs. Clarity is so important when defining your business processes.

Process improvement flow — Process Document Flow

According to Edward Deming – “if you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you are doing.”

As business owners, the principle of MBWA (Management by Walking Around) must be applied to your business processes. Just documenting what your team should do is no alternative to observing the process.

Making 1% improvements consistently to your business processes yields a load of results such as:

Good reputation

2. Happier clients

3. More projects

4. Better products and services that are fit for the market

In this blog post, my focus is to help you understand that your processes must be optimized for the best performance. Companies like Apple, Google, Ferrari, MacDonald’s, Disney, etc apply this concept of ensuring they work in operational excellence that’s why they are market leaders. By gathering your team members to visualize processes on post-it- notes you can start getting rid of the inefficiencies in your business.

In a recent survey we conducted, I asked my clients why they signed up for our services instead of with our competitors. All pointed to a process that was optimized to respond at least within 1 minute to 24 hours.

Optimizing your process should be done consistently, minimally every other quarter.

WHERE DO YOU START?

Some questions to start with

What can we do faster?

2. What can we do better?

3. What can we do cheaper?

4. What can we delegate?

5. What can we outsource?

6. What can we automate?

If I skipped away from my desk for 1 month, are my processes optimized to run without me? This is an ideal place to get to. But before, I do, making tiny incremental charges can and does, always add up.

By comparing the ‘AS IS’ against the ‘IDEAL’ process diagram, we can identify opportunities for improvement. Such as simplification of complex processes or eliminating the non-value operations you and your team may be carrying out.

A process map depicts the sequence of steps that a product or service navigate to produce the deliverable or end product. It can be used to identify those areas where defects are likely to occur and points where you can collect data to analyze further. It should also be DATED. When your process is laid out in the form of a flow chart, the steps it takes includes,

A. Identify your process boundaries

B. List out your inputs and outputs for the process

C. Identify all the steps in the process

D. Verifying the process by having others outside the process check the steps identified.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR

When reviewing your process, look for the processes that take up a large chunk of time to finish. Look for the processes with the largest percentage of total defects for continuous improvements.

The end goal for your process improvement is identifying these gaps and improving them. This can easily be done with post-it-notes. Your team can also be shown your S.O.P [Standard Operating Procedures] from these processes and they follow the improved process as part of their work culture.

TOOLS THAT CAN HELP

Automated tools you can research further to help with drawing your flow charts include:

Google drawings

Lucid chart

Microsoft Visio

In conclusion, process improvement should be part of the work culture if you want a high performing team!