In today's competitive business environment, efficiency and clarity are crucial to enhance productivity and drive success. When you work on any big project, dealing with a complex array of procedures, workflows, departments, and requirements is common. In such a situation, you generally need to get help from the business process to keep the business running smoothly and successfully. However, to ensure maximum utilization of such business processes, it's important to understand how these processes work across different teams and departments. This is where business process mapping comes in.
Business process mapping is a valuable tool for keeping the team on the right path and achieving important business goals. From diagrams and flowcharts to detailed documentation, it involves everything to define each step of the business process from start to finish. Whether you are aiming to optimize an existing process or implement a new one, business process mapping offers a structured approach to get your work done. In this blog, we are going to discuss the definition, steps, and important tips to help you harness the full potential of BPM and drive project success.
What is Business Process Mapping?
Business process mapping is a powerful technique for creating a visual depiction of the workflow and analyzing and improving the steps of a business process. BPM assists businesses in understanding, analyzing, and improving their workflows by giving a clear and complete picture of how different processes and activities are interconnected.
It includes a complete guide on how a process should function from start to finish with the help of diagrams, detailed descriptions, symbols, and flowcharts. These visual data provide each step, decision point, information flow, and important material in an easily understandable manner for everyone in the team.
With structured information, business managers can easily analyze and control the entire workflow and process and make improvements in case of any divergence from the plan. In a nutshell, business process mapping assists in analyzing the "what" while illuminating the "who," "why," "when," "where," and "how" of the business processes. It basically answers the important process questions, including:
- What is the purpose of the process?
- What will be its end result?
- When will it take place?
- How will it be executed?
- Which team member is responsible for which task or process?
- Where is the process going to take place?
- What resources are required for its completion?
- How much time will each activity require?
Steps to Start Business Process Mapping?
Business process mapping allows you to create a structured map of a business process by gathering information, analyzing tasks, and visually depicting the workflow. Take a look at how you can start business process mapping to effectively create process maps and streamline business operations:
Identify the Process
The first and most important step in business process mapping is to identify the process for which you want to create a map. Define its scope, objectives, and outcomes, as well as start and end points for creating a well-structured map. Prioritize the processes that are more important from a business point of view and have a considerable effect on success and growth. For example, the process of updating the company website. After that, set up the goal for a process map, such as eliminating bottlenecks, improving communication, ensuring proper organization, adjusting team bandwidth, etc.
Gather Required Information
Once you identify the process for which you want to create a business map, the next important step is gathering the required information to add to its map. To do that, first, check and analyze everything about the process and gather as much information as possible. Identify the present situation of that process, how your team is working on it, how much time it takes, what resources they need, what is the performance, etc. Besides that, make sure to get information on the steps your process may include to offer detailed information to the team members.
Assemble the Project Team
Although you can get a lot of information using existing documents, the information people involved in the process can give you is unmatchable. It is not only the information; they must also boast some exceptional suggestions and ideas to improve the processes.
To do that, interview the concerned people who are directly related to the process and write down their points. For example, if we take the same example of updating the website, you can consider taking reviews and suggestions from the web designing and digital marketing team.
The people who are working directly with the website know about the redundancies and what improvements are required for better performance. Based on the collected information, set the beginning and end of the process.
Draw the Current Process Map
After collecting the information via existing documents, interviews, and observations, create a rough version of your current process map. The current process map will include current operating information, flaws, issues, performance, etc., before making improvements. It will work as evidence of what improvements you have made and for what reasons. Later, it will allow you to understand what else needs to change and compare it after adopting the new process map.
Plan the Steps of your Process
Based on the information and feedback, break down the process into individual steps or activities. To do that, document each step in detail along with when, how, where it will be performed, and by whom. Along with that, add the information about resources a particular step requires and add login details if required. Create a general timeline, establish the boundaries of the process, and determine the inputs and outputs. To create an effective process, make sure to include the following elements:
- Current process: Draw the current process for reference.
- Workflow: Define the entire workflow of your company.
- Tasks: Write out and document each task the process requires.
- Events: Identify the triggers or gateways between each task, such as manager approval.
- Activities: Make a list of all the activities involved from beginning to end.
- Connections: Identify how the tasks and events connect to one another.
- Boundaries: Establish the boundaries of the process, including what is included and excluded.
- Resources: Details about the human and digital resources needed to complete the process.
- People: Determine the people who will be involved in the process and what their roles will be.
Draw the Business Process Map
Choose a suitable method for process mapping, like flowcharts, deployment charts, swim lane diagrams, value stream maps, symbols, process flow diagrams, etc., for mapping out the whole process. After that, add the information mentioned in the previous step via the chosen method and explain how different people are involved in it.
Arrange the steps of the business process in order they have to occur and identify the relationship between steps to ensure smooth execution and optimize workflow. Ensure that you use clear and simple language, as process maps are also used for training new team members.
Validate the Process Map
Once you create the process map, it's important to validate it with stakeholders and process owners to ensure accurate information and representation of the process. Review it with concerned people and make the necessary adjustments mentioned by them. Ensure that there are no evident mistakes, bottlenecks, redundancies, unachievable goals, or ambiguous roles that can make the map vague.
After that, communicate the new process map with the people involved in it and ensure that they have understood everything clearly. Once approved and communicated with the appropriate people, publish it in internal software for team access.
Important Tips for Business Process Mapping
Business process mapping is not a rocket science but can be difficult for first-time users. To ensure effective and successful business process mapping, you can follow the below tips:
Use for the right processes: Use business process mapping for the right and possible processes. It should be limited in steps and information and can be compared with current process. Ensure that it does not take a lot of time from your productive hours.
Involve the right people: Engage skilled and experienced people who know how to create process maps effectively. Involve stakeholders and process owners who can guide you through steps to include and provide feedback for improvement.
Be clear about the process: Understand the focus of a particular process and concentrate on it only. Avoid adding details about separate activities, as it can make the process confusing and ineffective for the team.
Consult people associated with the process: Interview and gather feedback from people involved in the process's activities and those who will carry out the tasks using process maps.
Know the symbols: Business process mapping involves using nearly 30 symbols to represent different aspects of a process. It's important to learn those symbols to avoid mistakes when making process maps.
Use clear and understandable symbols: Although there are around 30 symbols, make sure to use the ones everyone understands and can decode to get the information.
Validate your maps: Right after creating the maps, validate them with the stakeholders and process participants to ensure their accuracy and perfection.
Leverage technology: Use process mapping software to create professional, clear, and easily editable process maps. It's best to use low-code automation tools that allow you to modify and update the processes quickly and automatically.
Roles and responsibilities: Make sure to assign tasks and roles to the concerned people clearly and provide resources to perform their part of the process.
Check and improve: Treat process mapping as an ongoing activity and continuously review and refine the process as needed. Add new instructions, tasks, resources, deadlines, etc., as per the prevailing conditions of the process progress.
Conclusion
Business process mapping is an effective way to provide a clear and concise understanding of the business process and the tasks and activities required to fulfill it. It enhances efficiency, facilitates communication, and provides data and insights for informed decision-making. We have discussed the steps to create a business map along with important tips to enhance its creation and usage. So, create clear business process maps using the above steps and standardize the processes across the organization to ensure success.
