What is Business Process Mapping?
Business Process Mapping is a technique that creates a visual depiction of business processes and procedures and help us to give top-down/lateral view of the tasks, outlining all the events that are involved from start to finish.
This is usually done with the help of-
- Flowcharts – This represents a workflow of the whole process which is easy to read and understand.
- SIPOC– Suppliers, inputs, process, outputs, customer, and the dependencies between these to understand more complex processes by breaking them into much simpler process.
- Swimlane – This map shows relationship between different processes which are interrelated and shows the dependencies of each task. This process is especially useful for teams that have job share where different people are involved and responsible for one process.
- Value Stream Mapping – This is a fairly complex process but is great for showing a lot of information in a small space.
It helps businesses to understand the whole process including the minute details such as, what are the tasks involved, when these tasks occur, who is responsible for each task and what is needed to achieve these tasks on time. This also allows business to understand what the potential issues and pitfalls at each step are and make decisions to correct these problems and make the process more efficient.
Benefits of Process Mapping:
No matter what business or industry you are in, Business Process Mapping (BPM) will benefit your organisation by achieving both employee and customer satisfaction by improving efficiency. Some of the key benefits are –
- Improve employee efficiency – Employee’s time is valuable, and BPM highlights the tasks and activities that are repeated before they complete a process. It has been stated that 15% to 20% of employee’s time is wasted either due to lack of understanding of their responsibilities or redoing the tasks that has been done wrong in the 1st place. When you have clearly defined responsibilities and have a process defined that states every single step to reach the outcome, employee will have better understanding of the expectations resulting in improved efficiency and better company culture.
- Improved customer satisfaction – Better defined process results in delivery of their product and services in timely fashion resulting in happy customers.
- Ensures Compliance – Creating process maps for risk management and quality control processes enables you to quickly check work for compliance.
- Identify improving opportunities – Process Mapping helps in evaluating how valuable each step is and identify opportunities to reduce waste/inefficiencies and increase production/efficiencies.
Benefits of Business Process Mapping are not only limited to above mentioned points, but also there are many more benefits associated with it like supporting problem solving, promotes autonomy, adds clarity. If you need any guidance on starting Business Process Mapping for your organisation, contact us today.
