Since the industrial revolution and the advent of manufactories, business automation has been in leaps and bounds in every industry, direction and task. Mechanisms and push-button controls instead of manual work, forms for filling in documents and telephone communication are all for the sake of progress.
The concept of automation was introduced with a completely different meaning than it was 100 years ago. Globalization and virtual platforms, available even from a mobile phone, as Worksection has turned “production mechanization” into “digital enterprise management”. How so?
What is a business process and what is it all about
Here’s the most obvious option. There is a company, its product and client. The algorithm of the company’s actions to provide the product to the client is the process itself. Such an algorithm is easy to repeat, provides growth and profit.
Other cycles in the work, not directly related to the client, but bringing cost savings or profit growth are also BP (business processes).
The quality of execution depends on simplicity of set tasks, correctness of their regulation.
Only in time updating, supplementing or reducing sequence of actions you influence competitiveness in the market of the company.
A good example of a business process is renting out cars.
- buy a second-hand car, issue a bank account and FLP/FLP (starting capital)
- Do maintenance and refuel (provision of resources)
- advertise (marketing, advertising)
- meet with the client, sign the contract and make payment (implementation)
- Give the keys and a power of attorney for the car, agree on the method of return (delivery and maintenance of the goods)
- pick up the car, the keys and close the contract (end the session) within the agreed period of time.
Paragraphs 3-6 are the cyclic algorithm that gives a profit.
Each stage we modernize: to carry out tuning and put a new acoustics, spoilers and power steering, increasing the cost of renting a car; place ads not on the poles of the neighborhood, and on a virtual bulletin board with the indication of the city;
choose one proven meeting place, where you will be with a kum-lawyer, and a friend-barista will give you a 20% discount on custard coffee.
More complex examples of business processes are divided into:
- The main ones give the result for the client: production, processing and packaging of oil for the oil producing holding company;
- Auxiliary, resource and supply distribution: materials, labor, repair of equipment at the plant of industrial radioelectronics;
- Managers are allocated to the controlled object: sales control, solving logistics problems and developing a development strategy for 5 years, interaction with shareholders.
There’s a deeper division:
- accompanying, create additional earnings of the company in addition to the profile: in addition to the sale of cars official dealer can rent Volkswagen embassies for the needs of diplomats;
- auxiliary, directly repair and maintenance of manufacture, the basic processes;
- providing, as support of accountancy, lawyers, system administrators, hr and the maintenance of offices;
- Managers;
- Developing, both for the goods or service, and internal technologies, the equipment and working methods of the company.
No BP can be inside one department. The point of dividing into processes is to find connections between departments and improve them to increase speed, productivity and profit.
Conservative directors define the structure of the company hierarchically, divided into divisions and departments: legal department, accounting and call center, programmers, designers with testers. Division by job functions is practical as a database, but it is inconvenient to understand the interrelations of colleagues within each individual task.
Let’s consider the company from the side of the work flow, projects and results. It appears that segmentation on processes shows as a negative of a photographic film an initial position of things: who and with whom contacts constantly; what command and why does not meet in terms, detaining other divisions; to whom and why it is necessary to modernise equipment in the near future.
What are the benefits of switching to BP
Introducing business process management instead of the usual office division of labor is costly in man-hours, requires experience and often only works with a business consultant. Why bother?
In the long term, qualitative modernization of the enterprise is useful because the owner will consciously and systematically reduce costs and increase revenue. Balance labor costs and expected results in a systematic manner.
In addition, the company will be able to pass certification to ISO 9001 quality standard. Thus, the director confirms that his business is sufficiently developed for the European and American markets, and the analysis of the quality of goods and services allows him to be responsible for the result to the buyer.
In the next quarter, the result will be a clear change in the motivation and productivity of subordinates.
When there is a dedicated process of “vip-client Varkirashyan” and 4 people from three different departments are responsible for it, each employee personally important result – a satisfied client.
We will take the customer service managers’ department and the support team: none of these departments is entirely important for the comprehensive customer service of Varkirashyan. And now he needs to solve 3 issues, but the third one is not in the competence of technical support. The goal of an ordinary manager is to “turn over the client to another department”.
Make each vip client by simply transforming the management: attach the responsible executives to the tasks.