Business Processes
Business processes and their relations Checklists and Decision Charts have been around since the beginning of commercial and administrative activity. In the past they were often handed down by word of mouth as the employee slowly progressed up the organisation’s hierarchy, with each move involving learning a simple sequence of steps, then more steps and finally links to a greater range of related and probably equally informal processes and systems. This informality is no longer tenable in even the most forgiving of organisational environments.
What has changed?
Work study and clerical work improvement schemes came into their own in the years after the Second World War. The vast expansion of non-military industrial and commercial activity together with the profound changes in social norms meant that hitherto traditional practices had to be more formally recorded to improve productivity and legal protection. The mechanistic work study analyses techniques of MTM (Measured Time & Movement) and CWIP (Clerical Work Improvement Programme) were effective in establishing norms to bring every process into the range of standard performance. They had a negative impact engendering opposition to a “big brother” managerial intrusion. Typified years earlier by Charlie Chaplin’s epic “Modern Times” film made in 1936 on factory processes.
Evolution continued and BPR (Business Process Re-engineering) techniques of critical analysis became preferred, although in many cases the “re” was a misnomer because there was not much information on the record of what the processes were. However, it did begin to focus minds on the essential outputs required of the process and sometimes produced major changes of business direction, as described in books such as Hammer & Champy - Reengineering the Corporation in 1993.
This understanding, when allied to the powers of IT & the INTERNET, created disruptive innovations that revolutionised many business sectors. The above book is full of examples. Ryan Air and Amazon owe their existence and success to being able to innovate on how traditional activities such as buying an airline seat, or a book were done.
My experience reflects this historical understanding but is firmly focused on the needs of modern business to embrace efficiency and to comply with quality and HSE regulation. Much of my work has been around processes needed by engineering as the main or supporting activity of a business.
Business Process once documented, facilitate staff training, and increase the efficiency whilst ensuring the desired quality of output. They specify the required Procedure or Instruction to be used at each step in the workflow. Supporting computer systems can then be developed to lock in these management and team decisions.
The BPR Practitioner needs to be involved with the staff that use the process as much as possible. They have considerable implicit knowledge, and they must be able to accept the final result as their own. But lack of availability of key staff and ingrained, zero value-added practices often need to be overcome by developing a “straw man” and then, managing the debate that it creates. This I have done frequently. So, the final documented processes have to be: -
- Acceptable to the staff,
- Meet the efficiency increase required by management,
- Quality required by customers and any regulatory framework that applies.
Documentation requiring to be produced will be procedures, forms, work instructions, some illustrative process maps, and data screen entry masks for configurable software.