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A business comprises myriad processes across all departments and operations. Every process consumes resources and adds value to the company in return. However, how do you know your processes are agile and adding the desired value to your business?
Business process analysis (BPA) is a specialized approach to analyzing and improving your business processes.
Here’s all you need to know about process analysis.
What Is Process Analysis?
Business process analysis, or simply process analysis, is a strategic method of breaking down a large process into smaller phases. Process analysis aims to identify the key elements in a business process and analyze them to overcome bottlenecks and enhance operational efficiency.
Business process analysis is an aspect of business process management focusing on evaluating and optimizing each step in the workflow.
Importance of Process Analysis for Businesses
Analyzing business processes helps businesses reduce inefficiencies, alleviate costs, and increase profitability. Let’s look at the importance of process analysis.
Coherent Operations
Process analysis enables you to align your processes with the overall corporate strategy. You can ensure that the tasks performed by employees are in line with the larger business needs.
Improve Communication
Effective process analysis paves the way for seamless business communication. Involved team members and decision-makers can use a unified methodology and language to make sure everyone is on the same page.
Drive Consistency
The last thing you want is your employees making decisions based on guesswork. Process analysis promotes informed decision-making and drives control and consistency across the organization.
Better Resource Usage
Managers can leverage process analysis to better allocate and utilize resources. They can identify the inefficiencies and make improvements as needed. Process analysis also enables risk-free experimentation and allows businesses to test and improve their processes.
Competitive Advantage
Process analysis helps with innovation and facilitates the implementation of new technologies. As a result, companies can achieve a competitive edge and find effective ways to outperform their competitors.
Techniques Involved in Process Analysis
Several techniques are involved in process analysis. You can find the technique that best suits your business requirements. Some popular process analysis techniques are:
- Gap Analysis: Determine the gaps or missing aspects of the business process.
- Root Cause Analysis: If there’s a problem in your process, find the root cause of that problem.
- Value-Added Analysis: Determine the value each activity is adding to the process. Also, see if you can eliminate any processes that add little to no value.
- Experience Examination: Work with experienced members in your organization and use their inputs to analyze your processes and draw conclusions.
- Observation: Observe the process in action and look for any gaps or scope for improvement.
Steps Involved in Process Analysis
If you’ve never performed a process analysis before, you can follow this step-by-step process of analyzing a business process:
Identify the Process to Track
First things first, you need to define the process you need to track. The best approach is to start with critical processes that consume the most resources or directly impact revenue and profitability.
Define Your Goals
Next, you need to identify and define your goals. Work with stakeholders and other members to decide which goals you want to achieve. Do you want to reduce costs or save time? Have a clear SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound) goal in mind before starting.
Gather the Needed Information
Once you have determined the processes you want to track and the goals you want to achieve, collect the information you need. This information can come from a combination of brainstorming ideas, conducting interviews, talking to stakeholders, and more.
Map Everything Out
Process mapping is an essential part of the process analysis process. In this step, you map all aspects of a process. This step could be as simple as drawing a process on paper to as articulate as creating a full-fledged workflow diagram.
Examine the Process
Here’s when the actual process analysis begins. You can pick any process analysis technique from those discussed above and evaluate your processes for gaps, bottlenecks, and scopes for improvement.
Make Improvements
The final step is to improve your business processes based on the results obtained from process analysis. Identify the potential for improvement and take the necessary steps to upgrade your procedures as needed.
Conclusion
Companies need to continuously analyze and improve business processes. Business process analysis offers an easy-to-follow framework to optimize your operations by identifying roadblocks and facilitating innovation and change.
Process analysis can be manual and automated. It’s entirely possible to analyze processes using pen, paper, or spreadsheets. However, using a dedicated process analysis and management tool will help you generate better outcomes.
