Business Processes

Processes are what make organizations tick. If you think about it, what is an organization but a set of processes and the people who implement them? Some processes are very horizontal – they apply to many different types of organizations. For example, just about any business that sells a product or service has some sort of lead management process to keep track of prospective customers. Customer support, employee performance reviews, and order fulfillment are other common processes that span many different types of industries. Other processes are more vertical (industry-specific) in nature. For example, companies that ship physical products generally have return merchandise authorization (RMA) processes. Not for profits often have fund-raising processes. Universities have enrollment processes. The list goes on and on.

In most cases, how well an organization implements its key processes plays a huge role in determining its overall success. Unfortunately, even well-run organizations often implement important processes informally, mainly relying on knowledgeable employees to make sure things run smoothly. For example, Tina in HR sends out a weekly e-mail reminding managers which employees are coming up for annual reviews. Fritz runs a team in Finance responsible for processing orders that come in by fax. Gabrielle in Marketing manages the team charged with handling calls, e-mails, and Web contacts from prospective customers and mailing them literature. If organizations are lucky, these key processes are at least documented so that everyone knows what to do if Tina, Fritz, or Gabrielle is hit by a bus. Although various process automation tools have been around for years, few organizations have the time or money it takes to use them. Instead, they rely on various combinations of spreadsheets, Word documents, and three-ring binders to get the job done. The incongruity is obvious. How can we reconcile the importance of these processes, the potential for saving money, and the lack of effort to streamline or even automate them? The answer – it’s just too hard. Yes, it would be possible to hire a huge consulting company to come in, interview the key players, design a system, develop it, deploy it, and train everyone to use it. But how much would that cost? How much time would it take? How long before changing business conditions would render the whole thing obsolete? Horror stories abound regarding ambitious automation projects that were cancelled after hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars were wasted. That’s why the spreadsheet remains the most common basis for business processes today. It’s cheap. It’s simple. And it works – up to a point. However the inefficiency this more or less manual approach to process implementation leads to can become a drag on profitability. As the organization grows and must handle more leads, orders, returns, reviews, etc. – more people are required in order to run the processes. And as more people are layered on, the potential for expensive mistakes increases. Perhaps even worse, processes take a long time and even then are unpredictable at best. What if Fritz takes a few days off? In many cases, his work just stacks up, wasting time and untold amounts of money. So what is a business to do?