An Overview of Process Improvement

​Process improvement makes existing practices more efficient, more effective, and more accurate. Also known as business process improvement (BPI), it’s a continual endeavor where an organization analyzes existing processes looking for challenges and opportunities for improvement.

Done well, BPI can cut costs, save time, and reduce waste. Done incorrectly, it can worsen things, wasting time and resources. Long-term implications of failed process improvement include competitive disadvantage and lost opportunities to innovate or scale.

The first step to successful process involvement is uncovering what processes might need improving. Without unearthing inefficiencies, process improvement proceeds without a plan, meaning there’s no way to measure results.

Process mapping should precede all BPI efforts. A comprehensive business process mapping captures all the activities and steps in current processes. It should also reveal redundancies and other pain points. From there, a root cause analysis should be conducted.

Organizations that skip root cause analysis risk focusing on symptoms rather than the problem, another common BPI mistake. Symptoms are simply pointers to underlying issues. Take low sales, for instance. A slow sales cycle can be a symptom of many factors, meaning an obvious apparent fix, such as boosting incentives of the sales team, might not make a difference.

Individuals should always try to find the deeper “whys” behind surface-level problems. Asking the right questions and going beyond simple explanations will better reveal deep-seated challenges. This helps avoid focusing on the wrong areas and wasting resources.

Many BPI plans fail due to not involving the right people. For example, instead of asking top-level management about the details of a system, the people who use it every day should be queried. Focusing on only management's buy-in is another mistake. Junior employees' input and support can be critical for the successful implementation of the new processes.

The key to getting frontline support and buy-in is a comprehensive stakeholder analysis. It reveals who the stakeholders are and their interests and expectations. The more input an organization generates, the more likely it is to unearth pain points and actionable solutions. Sidestepping frontline stakeholders invites resistance to change.

Process improvement seeks to improve a system as a whole over time by focusing on individual processes. Unfortunately, many organizations overly focus on individual processes, forgetting the big picture. Too narrow an approach to BPI can create inefficiencies in other parts of a system, thus disrupting interdependent processes. It also leads to partial solutions.

Processes tend to be interconnected, working together to achieve a common goal. As such, any process improvement should be implemented with the overarching goal in mind. To do that, one should prioritize context over details. A complete picture of the entire system - what comes before and after and how the parts relate to one another - helps ensure individual process improvements align with the overall goal.

Another prevalent BPI mistake is the overreliance on technology. There is a place for technology in process improvement, such as documentation, data analysis, and automation, but technology is not the solution to all problems. Overreliance on it can shut out other low-cost, more efficient, or more effective solutions.

All too often many BPI projects get off to a promising start, only to lose momentum and grind to a halt. Some fail at the implementation stage. Perhaps the project ran into resistance due to a lack of funds or stakeholder buy-in. Other times it’s a case of misaligned goals or objectives. The key to success is to get the right people on board, start out with a well defined plan, and follow it step by step through to change implementation.

Jacob Boisvert Nashua NH

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