What is Business Process Improvement?
BPI made simple… primarily it means change
Do you find yourself asking, “What is Business Process Improvement and how does it apply to me and my business”?
Does the generally accepted idea of business process improvement make your head spin? Same here.
It never did make sense for me either. It always seemed too technical to be human…
So let’s see if my journey can help you.
When I started in this field, I was completely overwhelmed by all the material that was being churned out by experts on business process improvement
- methodologies,
- rationale,
- philosophies, and
- promised outcomes.
Is that how it is for you as well? Is that why you’re here?
You Cannot Change what You Cannot See
Elsewhere on this site we speak of business processes as being the technical infrastructure of an organisation. And how they lend themselves to mapping. Just like the earth…
Sound a bit esoteric? It’s actually the very basis of why we draw maps.
Maps help us to understand where we are, or where we’ve been.
But to do so, you must use a robust framework, or your methodology will collapse.
That’s why we’ve blended epistemology into the mix. Use the wrong framework, and your maps are worse than useless. Because they tell the wrong stories…
Business Process Improvement Begins…
with drawing maps … but certainly doesn’t end there
Staying with the technical infrastructure, process improvement starts with identifying your processes, then drawing them.
The methodology you use will show that business processes are much, much more complicated than a few rectangles on a piece of paper. And that they’re not IT processes.
Business processes are a detailed description of how the people in your organisaton contribute to satisfying a customer’s, or stakeholder’s, request. That’s it.
That’s all? Yes, that’s all.
But creating the maps that show that is not quite as simple. Which is where the robust methodology becomes a necessity.
First you have to work out what your processes are… (incidentally, who’s best placed to identify them for you?) A hint. They’re not part of your organisation…
Then describe them. Then improve them. All in the interests of keeping it simple…
…and Ends
with Change.
Anyone who tries to tell you that you can run a process improvement project without involving the people who do the work is being a little liberal with the truth.
