The Four Steps in Business Process Mapping · 2019-09-18 · Mapping (BPM), which we addressed in...

The Four Steps in Business Process Mapping

ByCSDP

Agility. Flexibility. Speed.

© 2012 Customer Service Delivery Platform Corporation

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TableofContentsIntroduction:............................................................................................................................................. 3

Step 1: Process Identification – Using a customer scorecard to keep customers at the forefront of your processes........... 3

Step 2: Information Gathering – 8 Areas of Focus ......................................................................... 4

Step 3: Interviewing and Mapping – Who and What to Ask to Get to the Root of the Process............................................................ 5

Step 4: Analysis – Use the 7Rs of Process Innovation ..................................................................... 6

Next Steps ................................................................................................................................................. 7



Introduction: In this whitepaper, we are going to expand on the four steps necessary to perform Business Process Mapping (BPM), which we addressed in our webinar, “Take Your Service Operation from OK to Very Good: Best Practices in Business Process Mapping.” During the webinar, John Ragsdale, Vice President of Technology Research with TSIA, highlighted the importance of defining processes before any technology project. We also addressed the benefits of Business Process Mapping and provided a high level overview of four steps to perform BPM. This white paper drills down into each step to provide additional insights. The first step is Process Identification: Using a customer scorecard to keep customers at the forefront of your processes. The purpose of the process identification step is to gain a full understanding of all the steps of a process. Many companies take a departmental view, but rather than using this silo’d view, a better way is to look processes from the customer’s perspective. You can start by identify your customer trigger events, which are all the interaction points your company has with its customers. Then you can develop a customer scorecard. To create this scorecard, have your team members do short interviews with customers to find out what customers need, want, and require of the processes and how the processes are currently performing. Compile the data and look for problems, trends, and things that are working well. This can help provide valuable insight on best practices as well as goals for improvement. As you look at these customer facing processes, you’ll also need to look at the visible and transparent supporting processes (the things your customer never sees). Then create a graphic presentation of the major processes, including how they interrelate and support each other. Once you’ve done this, you’ll be ready for step two, information gathering.

Step 1: Process Identification – Using a customer scorecard to keep customers at the forefront of your processes

Introduction:

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Step 2: Information Gathering – 8 Areas of Focus In this step, you need to conduct process interviews and review any existing documentation to gather information on and have a full understand of the following 8 areas in your service lifecycle management operations:

1) RESPONSIBILITIES: Identify the key responsibilities of the process area and who is responsible for those actions.

2) OBJECTIVES: Answer the question: What is being accomplished? This will help you determine the objectives and goals for the process.

3) ACTIVITIES: Here you want to look at what actions are being performed in the process (including current policies and procedures), when and where the actions are performed, and how the actions are performed (in other words what is being utilized to perform the action e.g. pencil and paper, specific software, database, etc.). Be sure to identify every task and every decision.

4) INPUTS: This is whatever enters something into the process. This can include resources (people), materials, and equipment (software). Be specific by listing out types of materials, names of reports or queries, software being used, etc.

5) OUTPUTS: This is whatever is produced as a result of this action; the key deliverables of each activity including both products and services as applicable.

6) CUSTOMERS: You should already have your customer scorecards from the previous step. Be sure you’ve captured information from all recipients of the outputs of each activity including both internal and external customers.

7) RISKS & CONTROLS: Here you need to identify what risks exist with this process (ask yourself: what can stop this process from being accomplished and what could go wrong?) and what controls can be put in place to minimize those risks. Make sure you have at least one control for each risk.

8) KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS (KPIs): These will help you define the measures of success for the process; for example, you can measure cycle times for the process. These can also be broader to include multiple processes; for example, SLA compliance and workforce utilization.

Once you’ve gathered this information, you can move on to the third step in the Business Process Mapping process: Interviewing and Mapping.

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Step 3: Interviewing and Mapping – Who and What to Ask to Get to the Root of the Process Here you want to break down each process into the individual steps being performed (from start to finish) and document work that is actually being done from the people actually doing the work, not what is supposed to be done or what you think is happening. This can be done through observation, interviews, and/or meetings. You need to get specific about the items, tasks, steps, and decisions in the process. Being too general can mean overlooking important areas for efficiency improvements. Use the following questions as a guide to help you break down the steps in your process:

• Who performs each activity? • What generates the process/task? • What forms and reports are used? • What computer systems, specific software programs, and files are used? • How do we do it? Why do we do it? • Are there any alternatives to the activity? • What products/tools/supplies are needed? • What decisions are made in the process? • What happens next? What sequence are the activities performed in? • Who reviews it and when? • What approvals are needed? • How long does it take? • How does this affect the customer? • What is the nature, frequency and cause of errors/problems? • How are errors/problems/exceptions handled? • Where does the output go? • What rules need to be taken into consideration? • What other processes is this process liked to?

Once you’ve documented the process, verify your work with people who actually perform the process. Is anything missing or inaccurate? Could a person not familiar with the process understand the flow? Once you’ve got your current, existing processes documented, you’ll be ready to analyze and improve the processes.



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Step 4: Analysis – Use the 7Rs of Process Innovation The fourth and final step in Business Process Mapping (BPM) is Analysis. This should actually be occurring throughout the process and again when the existing processes are fully mapped. You want to look at each step in each process and evaluate it thoroughly. If a step does not add value to the process, ask yourself why it is being performed. Can it be eliminated, combined, or the effort reduced? Additional questions you should consider include: Does each step of the process support the overall business objectives? Is there any role or responsibility ambiguity? Where are the delays between steps? But these questions are just the top of the iceberg. One good way to organize your analysis is to use Stephen Shapiro’s 7Rs of Process Innovation: Rethink, Reconfigure, Reassign, Re-sequence, Relocate, Reduce, and Retool as originally described in his book 24/7 Innovation: A Blueprint for Surviving & Thriving in an Age of Change. Here are some specific suggestions questions he recommends for each step:

• Rethink o Why do it this way? What are the assumptions? o Is there a completely different way to accomplish this objective? o Is there a better, faster, cheaper way to complete the most expensive, slowest, poorest

quality steps?

• Reconfigure o How can the activity be eliminated? o Can we consolidate common activities? o How can reconciliation be reduced by putting quality at the source? o Can we eliminate handoffs and non-value adding work? o How can sharing information with suppliers and clients improve the process?

• Re-sequence

o How can predicting increase efficiency? o How can parallelism reduce time? o How can we minimize the number of interconnections and dependencies?

• Relocate

o Can the activity be moved closer to the client or the supplier? o Can an activity be moved to related activities? o How can we decrease cycle time by reducing travel time and distance?



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• Reduce o How can the frequency of the activity be reduced increased? o How would more information enable greater effectiveness? o How can critical resources be used more effectively?

• Reassign o How can the customer or suppliers/partners perform this activity? o How can the activity be outsourced? o How can cross-training integrate and compress tasks?

• Retool o How can technology transform the process? o How can the activity be automated? o How can skill-level changes improve the process?

You can view a more complete list of Stephen’s questions along with situations where the questions might apply here. Additional information can be found on Stephen’s website (including a great blog).

Next Steps There are many benefits of Business Process Mapping (BPM):

! Improving organizational efficiency & productivity ! Increasing effectiveness ! Maximizing customer interactions ! Aligning processes with your business objectives ! Providing the ability to respond more quickly to business and environmental changes ! Gaining competitive advantage ! Improving process communication

If you think it’s time to get serious about a Business Process Mapping project, you’ll need to build a business case to allocate resources to the project. Your first step is to make sure you have a clear understanding of why you want to embark on this project. A generic statement such as, “to improve our processes” isn’t enough. Whether you are trying to fix a problem or address an opportunity, you need a compelling business case. This starts with a clear understanding of the business reason(s) for the project, exactly what you are trying to improve, and why it needs to be improved including the benefits of the improvements and the consequences of not making the improvements. You’ll also want to include an analysis of risks to make a complete case. Often it helps to start with the processes that are causing the service operation the most or most immediate pain. Some typical areas are service contracts and entitlements, RMAs, vendor/supplier management, etc. Other considerations include whether the processes are manual, paper-intensive, and/or laden with inconsistency and inefficiency. If they are, they can be good candidates for a business process mapping project.



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Once you’ve determined what processes to focus on, you need a clear description of the problem. To do this, you can start by developing a baseline of the current state. Make sure you understand the basic who, what, when, where, why and how: who is performing the activities, what are they doing, when and where are they doing it, why and how is it being done. This will help you identify the problem or problems. You might even uncover some of the root causes of the problems. Next, you need to define benefits and the impact the BPM project will have on the organization. To assess the impact, you might need to describe the impact to the business if the problem is NOT solved. This could include threats like loss of market share, lower profits, over or under-delivering on service, etc. Benefits will be directly linked to the problems you identified. When you think about benefits like increasing customer satisfaction, try to get more specific with things like faster problem resolution, increased first time resolution, increased customer self-service, etc. Increasing efficiencies could be described more specifically as reduced rework, avoiding unnecessary inventory investments, better scheduling of field technicians, etc. Since you can’t improve what you can’t measure, it’s important to include performance metrics and success criteria. Start by looking at your corporate objectives. Do the target processes influence any corporate objectives? Tying process improvements directly to overall corporate objectives will help build value for the project. Whatever the goals are, make sure they are SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely). One note of caution: you should be thinking about continue process improvement and not just one time fixes. So be sure your success is not based on a completion date but rather on milestones and measurable goals. Finally, make sure you have an executive or department to sponsor and champion the project. You’ll need resources (people and money) to make a BPM project a reality. Getting an executive to sponsor your project will help you get those resources. Take the time to personalize the business case toward your sponsor. Everyone wants to minimize risk so your business case needs to not only show the overall benefits of the project but also how it will benefit your sponsor specifically. In the Technology Services Industry Association’s (TSIA) report, Process Is the Key to Technology Project Success, John Ragsdale addresses the top two reasons why poor processes lead to technology project failures. So if one of the reasons you are embarking on a business process mapping project is the need for updated technology, this is a report you should read. If you’re looking to hire a BPM consultant to help with your BPM project, the report discusses several benefits of this approach: “Professional services consultants can provide different perspectives based on industry best practices and can move projects along more quickly. Consultants can also help when you’re too focused on the details to see the bigger picture and can suggest alternatives that your team may not think of. When looking for a consulting firm, make sure they have real world expertise in the area of services that you are trying to fix and transform. Not all consulting firms have this expertise.”



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Case Study

Productivity

About CSDP

CSDP is a services-led software company with solutions that can automate the entire post-sale service delivery and customer service process. We offer:

• An On-Demand Work Flow solution allowing you to make changes ‘on the fly’ and instantly respond to business and environmental changes as they happen

• Flexible solutions that are tailored to your unique business requirements, instead of trying to force fit out-of the-box solutions

• A single, unified view of all customer and service delivery operations • Implementation in weeks - not months

Our clients have realized improved customer satisfaction by up to 15 points, increases in service profitability exceeding 10%, decreased average cost per repair of 50% and increases in first call resolution greater than 20%. We not only help our clients drive down operating and service delivery costs, but enable them to drive up customer satisfaction and increase service revenue and market share. The Service Relationship Management (SRM)© product suite addresses the complete end-to-end service delivery lifecycle including Contact Center, Dispatch/Mobile, Depot Repair, Inventory Control & Management, Knowledge Management, Marketing and Quote Generation, Warranty Entitlement, Training, Contracts/Billing, Reports, Scheduling, and Time Tracking. Our software is fully customized to fit your company's needs and easily integrates with your existing infrastructure so that it implements quickly and begins generating ROI immediately. CSDP's SRM© software solution has been delivered to some of the world’s foremost Fortune 500 companies to include IBM, Xerox, Fujitsu, Whirlpool, Rockwell and PSE&G just to name a few. To learn more about CSDP, visit our website, follow our blog and join the Service Relationship Management Group on LinkedIn. Contact us at 888-741-2737 X 107 or E-mail us at [email protected]. CSDP Corporation 15615 Alton Parkway, Suite 310 Irvine, CA 92618 Agility. Flexibility. Speed.


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The Four Steps in Business Process Mapping · 2019-09-18 · Mapping (BPM), which we addressed in...

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