Successful Strategic Execution Business Processes Must Be Addressed to Achieve Desired Results

Business processes exist in every business from paying invoices to delivering the products or services. However identifying, documenting and enforcing these sequential step by step course of actions appear to be the last concern for many firms and is the biggest productivity drainer not to mention the loss to the bottom line.

The word process has Latin origins from the word proceed which means "to go forward." Process is often used interchangeably with the word system; however they do not mean the same thing. "System" from its Greek roots means to set together. From an organizational perspective, the system is the plan while the process is the action necessary to make the plan work.

One way to determine if such actions are truly moving forward is to listen for one of these two frequently made remarks:

1. "This is how we have always done it."
2. If it ain't broke, why fix it?"

When I hear these words, I usually know that:

• The process has not been recently been reviewed
• There is probably no documentation of the actions
• Change and innovation are not on the immediate landscape

Another area where there is failure is within performance appraisals. A lot of organizations say they are performance driven, but when you look at the job descriptions to the actual performance appraisal process there exists numerous gaps. When gaps happen, there is backward movement happening. The result continues the drain on productivity not to mention profits.

With some small business owners looking to the future and possibly selling their enterprises, the lack of process documentation is a real deal breaker to making the sale. What I share with my clients is that when you open your business you should plan on selling you business. Document all of your daily operations actions from billing to following all sales leads. Challenge how you have done it (whatever actions you take on a daily basis) to make sure your processes are both efficient (doing things right) and effective (doing the right thing). Business training coaching tip: Succession leadership planning is a must for any organization from the micro to the macro.

Business processes or would you prefer the phrase Systems Operations are continually evolving because change is happening at whirlwind speed. How you move forward today will potentially change in the next 6 months to 2 to 5 years. Again, you must be ahead of the flow instead of being in the flow if you wish to not only to survive, but also to thrive.

Business Process Reengineering When to Use It

As companies grow and establish themselves, over time they will have developed a set of processes that are specific to their core business. This set of processes is what defines the company and how it runs their operations. It becomes almost predictable. These processes may be very well suited to run every day activities, and may even be sufficient to cope with changes in the markets they are operating in, however eventually the pace of their competitors and the markets will outrun them. That is, if they do not adapt accordingly and swiftly to these ever present and continuous changes. They will start to notice that they are no longer performing as efficiently as they were doing when they founded the organization.

For an organization to remain competitive or even lead in the markets in which they operate, it is vital to analyze if the foundation on which it was built and as it was once laid out, is still a good match to the current landscape they are in. The methods which have been developed and most likely extended during their existence may need to be reviewed, analyzed and re-built, as they lose efficiency.

This is where Business Process Reengineering - many times abbreviated to BPR - steps in. It is an analytic thinking which helps to understand and view how one can optimize the processes on which the company is built. In other words, optimizing them to today's market conditions, and clearly also to those of tomorrow. Although sometimes people tend to refer to this endeavor as improvement of business processes, for it to be really effective, reengineering is a technique that is way more dramatic than just improving existing processes; it is a complete redesign. This extensive and impactive exercise recognizes and analyzes the core processes, the goals it is trying to achieve, the services and products, and the customers and stakeholders. It will then re-align the business processes to these areas of focus.

The analysis is generally carried out on a broad and wide range of processes, ideally all processes of the enterprise. The reason for doing so is because the intention of the exercise is to make major improvements in the company's presence by incorporating changes that will strip inefficiency from the entire set of processes, i.e. in its totality. This will lead to results with more impact than when assuming an approach of parallel processes being analyzed and optimizing each of them separately and independently. The real and major benefit of the entire undertaking is that by applying a broader and more holistic view, the changes will be bigger than optimizing each process on its own.