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Add You - Adopting a Business Process Approach to Management - 6 Critical Steps
How do you establish an effective brand? Branding--creating a distinctive corporate identity for your business--is critical to your success as an entrepreneur. You can, and must, use the process of setting up and managing your business entities to establish your own distinctive brand.The world's greatest companies have mastered this art of branding. You don't need even need to to see the name of the company to recognize the Mercedes or MacDonald's logo, so effectively have these companies imprinted their identity into the minds of the consumer.But branding is not just about a logo. It's also about making sure that you have a consistent identity, one that is reflected in your website, your stationery--all communications with the public. Individual entrepreneurs
Having determined the critical factors that drive delivery of customer and stakeholder metrics or indicators of performance must be chosen, with targets for each measure, and cascaded down to individual sub processes. A line of sight must exist between overall organisational measures and the detailed measures at process and activity level.
Our pharmaceutical company chose to measure four categories. At the top level, the chosen metrics were:
Client satisfaction starts with meeting or beating the contractual obligations of the relationship. There are also some intangibles that can help you to over deliver to a client.MeetingsIn most organizations it’s easy to deliver additional value around meetings, because statistically, most companies run meetings poorly. Capture important notes during your meetings and then deliver your neatly typed notes consistently with your client’s format. Not only will it allow you to capture the main ideas and benefit of important discussions, but it will almost always be appreciated by your client’s team members. Send this as soon after the meeting as possible.Proactively help to define the agendas and outcomes for each meeting. Help keep things on track and try to
In our previous article we emphasised the customer/stakeholder focus of the business process approach to management. The first step is therefore clearly determining who those customers and stakeholders are. Who buys or uses your product or service offering? Who makes the buying decision? What exactly are they buying in terms of benefits? Who else is affected by your activities and what are their expectations?
A small pharmaceutical manufacturer of multivitamins, antibiotics, syrups and OTC medicines for children, located in a large African city, was trying to answer these questions for their own organisation. They came up with the following.
Customer/Stakeholder and Benefits Sought
2.Determine the Value Chains that Deliver these Benefits
The information obtained from the above step should be formed into benefit clusters. Next, trace those benefits back from your products and services through to the inputs. The identified paths form your value chains or end to end core business processes.
Our pharmaceutical company took this step and concluded they had one major value chain consisting of two major processes - the new pharmaceuticals development process and the sales and production process.
All the benefits to the customers and other stakeholders are derivable from their product range, their distribution and market support and their information dissemination.
3. Decompose into Processes and Determine the Process Boundaries
The previous step yields an end-to-end view of the organisational value chains. We now need to determine the core processes and sub-processes that make up these value chains, and the support processes that enable them. The determination of process boundaries should combine top-down and down-up approaches applied iteratively.
Listing out the major processes in the value chain as we did in the previous step, is top-down. We might then take each major process identified and using the following procedure suggested by Patrick and McDermott, break them down into sub processes.
In the case of the pharmaceutical for example, we might find, after going through this sequence that the sales and production process decomposes into the customer acquisition (identify prospect, qualify prospect and establish contract) and order fulfilment (receive order, produce and assemble order, and ship order) sub-processes.
4. Select Appropriate Metrics Based on Critical Success Factors for the Identified Processes and Overall Strategy
It is well known that measurements and rewards drive behaviour. To ensure proper balance between focus on past/current performance, and the need to build capabilities that drive future success, we need metrics that track results, processes, organisational capability and the environment.
Result measures are generally lagging in that they track past performance. By the time the result is measured, it is too late to do anything about it. Process measures are generally leading and prescriptive, since they predict future performance. Acting on factors that affect these measures will impact on future results. Care must be taken that metrics which drive the desired behaviour and customer valued outcomes are selected.
Having determined the critical factors that drive delivery of customer and stakeholder metrics or indicators of performance must be chosen, with targets for each measure, and cascaded down to individual sub processes. A line of sight must exist between overall organisational measures and the detailed measures at process and activity level.
Our pharmaceutical company chose to measure four categories. At the top level, the chosen metrics were:
High-risk merchants such as telemarketers, Internet/e-commerce businesses, merchants in the travel and cruise industries, businesses that conduct Internet auctions, and businesses offering membership clubs may face difficulty opening a merchant account.Just because you have a high-risk business it does not necessitate the fact that you cannot open any merchant account, you would be required to open a high-risk account. The banks and independent organizations that provide merchant account services will evaluate your case on the basis of certain information such as how long you've been in business, your credit history, and any previous merchant accounts you've held.In such a scenario, the length of time that your business has been operational would really make the
2.Determine the Value Chains that Deliver these Benefits
The information obtained from the above step should be formed into benefit clusters. Next, trace those benefits back from your products and services through to the inputs. The identified paths form your value chains or end to end core business processes.
Our pharmaceutical company took this step and concluded they had one major value chain consisting of two major processes - the new pharmaceuticals development process and the sales and production process.
All the benefits to the customers and other stakeholders are derivable from their product range, their distribution and market support and their information dissemination.
3. Decompose into Processes and Determine the Process Boundaries
The previous step yields an end-to-end view of the organisational value chains. We now need to determine the core processes and sub-processes that make up these value chains, and the support processes that enable them. The determination of process boundaries should combine top-down and down-up approaches applied iteratively.
Listing out the major processes in the value chain as we did in the previous step, is top-down. We might then take each major process identified and using the following procedure suggested by Patrick and McDermott, break them down into sub processes.
In the case of the pharmaceutical for example, we might find, after going through this sequence that the sales and production process decomposes into the customer acquisition (identify prospect, qualify prospect and establish contract) and order fulfilment (receive order, produce and assemble order, and ship order) sub-processes.
4. Select Appropriate Metrics Based on Critical Success Factors for the Identified Processes and Overall Strategy
It is well known that measurements and rewards drive behaviour. To ensure proper balance between focus on past/current performance, and the need to build capabilities that drive future success, we need metrics that track results, processes, organisational capability and the environment.
Result measures are generally lagging in that they track past performance. By the time the result is measured, it is too late to do anything about it. Process measures are generally leading and prescriptive, since they predict future performance. Acting on factors that affect these measures will impact on future results. Care must be taken that metrics which drive the desired behaviour and customer valued outcomes are selected.
Having determined the critical factors that drive delivery of customer and stakeholder metrics or indicators of performance must be chosen, with targets for each measure, and cascaded down to individual sub processes. A line of sight must exist between overall organisational measures and the detailed measures at process and activity level.
Our pharmaceutical company chose to measure four categories. At the top level, the chosen metrics were:
Have you ever felt like your career is going nowhere? Perhaps your job was once very fulfilling, and you had this dream that you were on your way to the top. You kept climbing the ladder and it seemed you were on the right track, and then suddenly, something pulled the ladder out from under you. You came crashing to the ground. You felt hurt, bruised, ticked off, even downright mad. You were afraid that life was going to pass you by. Now crazy thoughts fill your head. You are afraid that you may lose your house, the car; you may have to move in with the in-laws or even a van down by the river.Many people feel like it’s just not fair. You had life and career figured out, and now you are starting over. “Why me! It’s just not fair”.I wish I could help you w
3. Decompose into Processes and Determine the Process Boundaries
The previous step yields an end-to-end view of the organisational value chains. We now need to determine the core processes and sub-processes that make up these value chains, and the support processes that enable them. The determination of process boundaries should combine top-down and down-up approaches applied iteratively.
Listing out the major processes in the value chain as we did in the previous step, is top-down. We might then take each major process identified and using the following procedure suggested by Patrick and McDermott, break them down into sub processes.
In the case of the pharmaceutical for example, we might find, after going through this sequence that the sales and production process decomposes into the customer acquisition (identify prospect, qualify prospect and establish contract) and order fulfilment (receive order, produce and assemble order, and ship order) sub-processes.
4. Select Appropriate Metrics Based on Critical Success Factors for the Identified Processes and Overall Strategy
It is well known that measurements and rewards drive behaviour. To ensure proper balance between focus on past/current performance, and the need to build capabilities that drive future success, we need metrics that track results, processes, organisational capability and the environment.
Result measures are generally lagging in that they track past performance. By the time the result is measured, it is too late to do anything about it. Process measures are generally leading and prescriptive, since they predict future performance. Acting on factors that affect these measures will impact on future results. Care must be taken that metrics which drive the desired behaviour and customer valued outcomes are selected.
Having determined the critical factors that drive delivery of customer and stakeholder metrics or indicators of performance must be chosen, with targets for each measure, and cascaded down to individual sub processes. A line of sight must exist between overall organisational measures and the detailed measures at process and activity level.
Our pharmaceutical company chose to measure four categories. At the top level, the chosen metrics were:
There has been an unedifying politicised debate in Australia about Australian values. It is a debate about who has them, who does not and seeks to ostracise those who are considered not to have them.It is a debate where the majority of the participants have demonstrated the values of ignorance, intolerance, opportunism and political wilfulness whilst claiming to support values of fairness, mateship and egalitarianism.That's the problem with values. They are demonstrated by what we do, not by what we say.No matter which community we belong to, whether it is our family, our school, our club or our employing organisation, we cannot escape demonstrating our values each day.Our values come from our beliefs which form generally at an early age dependent
In the case of the pharmaceutical for example, we might find, after going through this sequence that the sales and production process decomposes into the customer acquisition (identify prospect, qualify prospect and establish contract) and order fulfilment (receive order, produce and assemble order, and ship order) sub-processes.
4. Select Appropriate Metrics Based on Critical Success Factors for the Identified Processes and Overall Strategy
It is well known that measurements and rewards drive behaviour. To ensure proper balance between focus on past/current performance, and the need to build capabilities that drive future success, we need metrics that track results, processes, organisational capability and the environment.
Result measures are generally lagging in that they track past performance. By the time the result is measured, it is too late to do anything about it. Process measures are generally leading and prescriptive, since they predict future performance. Acting on factors that affect these measures will impact on future results. Care must be taken that metrics which drive the desired behaviour and customer valued outcomes are selected.
Having determined the critical factors that drive delivery of customer and stakeholder metrics or indicators of performance must be chosen, with targets for each measure, and cascaded down to individual sub processes. A line of sight must exist between overall organisational measures and the detailed measures at process and activity level.
Our pharmaceutical company chose to measure four categories. At the top level, the chosen metrics were:
When was the last time you got out from behind your desk and just wandered around your department or organization with no particular agenda in mind other than to just talk with the members of your department or organization? It is called MBWA.Ever heard the term? Management by walking around.Don't have time? Too busy? Too much on your plate? Excuses, excuses! I will guarantee you that the benefits of getting to know your people and letting them know you care about them will go a long way in improving morale, communication and employee performance and this time spent with them will have dramatic indirect positive rewards for you as a manager.If you are stuck every day in meetings, conferences, research whatever I will guarantee stuff is falling through
Having determined the critical factors that drive delivery of customer and stakeholder metrics or indicators of performance must be chosen, with targets for each measure, and cascaded down to individual sub processes. A line of sight must exist between overall organisational measures and the detailed measures at process and activity level.
Our pharmaceutical company chose to measure four categories. At the top level, the chosen metrics were:
5. Appoint Process Owners for Each Core Process
A major flaw of the functional orientation is that there is no one within the organisation that has a complete view of the process as experienced by the customers and stakeholders. The appointment of process owners overcomes this flaw.
The job of process owner is to manage the processes in the critical areas of improvement, boundary management, metrics, collaboration and advocacy. The process owner coordinates the functions and activities at all levels of the process, and has the authority and ability to makes changes to the process. He is responsible and accountable for its outcome.
6. Begin a Never Ending Cycle of Business Process Improvement
With your core processes defined and documented, appropriate metrics selected and process owner appointed, the next step is to begin an improvement cycle.
Using process diagrams, value stream maps and metrics, determine the current capabilities of your core processes. Identify and quantify areas of greatest opportunity using information from customer surveys, comparison of your process performance with a similar ideal process, etc.
Continuous business process improvement is the subject of our next article. Be sure to watch out for it.
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