Many organizations, in order to affect better management, embark on business process improvement projects. These endeavors can be time-consuming and, if not properly conducted, can disrupt workflow in the very groups that they are intended to improve.
The majority of methodologies for process improvement are based on standardization around best practices/benchmarks and eliminating non-value added activities. Traditionally, process improvement projects have focused on three goals:
- Reduced costs
- Shortened cycle times
- Improved quality
When done right, these efforts result in processes that require less time and fewer resources to achieve the same, or better, outcomes. Taken to another level – which many companies aspire to, but few actually achieve – process improvements can actually result in competitive advantage.
Experts agree that, in traditional back office process improvement initiatives, critical advantage occurs when two companies have comparable data about customers, vendors, and financial performance–and one company is able to transform this information into knowledge, resulting in better management decisions. Consider an HR department that improves its sourcing process for new hires. With its superior intelligence, it easily places the best available people in critical company roles and outmaneuvres competitors.
Once your organization decides to take a look at HR processes, where
do you start? Where
should you start?
Over the course of dozens of such assignments, we’ve learned that the best course of action involves: (1) Taking the people out of the picture. While this sounds counter-intuitive, the point is to be objective and focus on the processes and not the people (or personalities) that carry out the critical processes. (2) Asking a number of questions to help you prioritize the scope of change that may be required – both in terms of dollars saved as well as other outcomes, including reduced processing time, greater accuracy, etc.
Here are some of the types of questions you may wish to consider:
Organizational Questions- What is the scope of responsibilities assigned to this team?
- How many people are currently assigned to each of the sub-areas within the team?
- Is the team understaffed, overstaffed or just about right? If you don’t know, how can you find out?
- How much time off (vacations as well as other absences) does the team earn? Actually take?
- What are average monthly transaction workloads?
- Is the team’s workload increasing or decreasing?
- How does the team handle spikes in the workload?
Performance Management Questions- Have critical success factors for each key area been identified?
- Does the team have documented service level objectives (SLOs)?
- If so, does the team measure and report performance against these SLOs to management and users?
- Does the team have any difficulties in achieving any SLOs? Which ones? Why?
- Has the team surveyed its internal customers regarding their level of satisfaction? If so, was any sort of gap analysis performed on the results of the survey?
- How long have the financial and management reporting systems been in place?
- Are there any issues with the comprehensiveness, accuracy or timeliness of the reporting that the team produces?
- What are the two or three biggest headaches that the team has in fulfilling its responsibilities?
- Have the team’s processes been benchmarked relative to those of other similar companies?
- In comparison to other organizations, and given this team’s workload, does it seem to have too many employees performing a given function? Too few?
IT Questions- Are the applications home grown or purchased?
- What platform do these systems run on? Is it linked to the other, most commonly used platforms in the organization?
- Is uptime, report turnaround or availability an issue?
- Has the system met all of its original goals?
- Does the team do more or less work since the system was implemented?
- Does the team resort to a la carte, off-system spreadsheets to do their work?
- Is the team running any duplicate systems?
- Does the team frequently re-key data?
Change Questions- What special projects does the team have underway or planned?
- Does your company plan to expand or reduce headcount?
- Are any of your offices or divisions moving or consolidating?
- Does your company plan to grow by internal growth or acquisition?
Process QuestionsDoes this team's work frequently fall behind schedule because of...
- Bottlenecks?
- Turnover of team members or supervisors?
- Long cycle operations?
- Excessive travel (of people or materials)?
- Frequent interruptions?
- Lack of, or inefficient, automation?
- Wasted resources (redundant databases, re-keying of data, inventory buffers, high ratio of checking and control to low value-adding tasks, rework, high error rates, exception processing)?
Our readers may find this exhaustive list–well, pretty exhausting. But, done right, a comprehensive approach to process improvement can result in significant competitive advantage, making an investment in this process a valuable exercise.