When it comes to optimizing the performance of your organization, strategy execution and processes are inseparable. Inefficient processes can create obstacles that impede operations, increase costs, cause missed deadlines and incomplete tasks, and slow an organization's response to market fluctuations. To guarantee that your organization is running as efficiently as possible, it is essential to identify and improve processes that are outdated, inefficient, or unclear. At the Virginia Research Institute in Boston, the answers were read aloud and published in the first column of a visual process improvement whiteboard on the wall.
The institute's first change consisted of eliminating three cases of digitizing a document, making a form that could be signed electronically and consolidating the process from three departments to two, among other improvements. Document processing time was reduced by more than two weeks, and more staff members said they better understood the process and their role in completing it. To start improving processes in your organization, assign responsibility for the change effort. Write down your current steps within that process and visually map the business process using BPM (Business Process Modeling) methods that have become popular in recent decades.
These tools can provide a standardized and easy-to-understand way of defining how a current process flows through different departments, the different steps of the process, and the components of processes that are executed sequentially or in parallel. For the first process, make your work visual by drawing a map of the entire process, from start to finish, on a white board. This will help you identify areas where you can reduce errors, shorten process completion times, improve workloads, identify waste, eliminate duplication, and increase overall business performance. Business process modeling software can help measure the impact and provide recommendations on where the process can be improved while it is still in the pilot phase.
A 12-month program focused on applying the tools of modern data science, optimization and machine learning to solve real-world business problems can also be beneficial. This 20-month MBA program empowers experienced executives to improve their impact on their organizations and on the world. To maximize performance in your organization through improved processes, it is important to have a clear understanding of how each step works together to achieve success. By utilizing BPM tools to map out processes visually and leveraging data science techniques to measure impact and identify areas for improvement, you can ensure that your organization is running as efficiently as possible.
