Optimization of business processes

One of the most important aspects of the internal activity of any company is the search for opportunities to optimize the most common and repetitive business processes. This is not a new concept at all, because every successful company is constantly developing methods to improve activities related to personnel, technologies, customers, buyers, etc.

In general, optimization of business processes consists of obtaining information about performance through monitoring or modeling; identification of potential or actual difficulties and opportunities for saving resources or improvement; application of these improvements in process implementation. Deep analysis tools can help identify critical activity and trouble spots

For any company, optimization of business processes helps in various ways:

• Cut costs.
• Save time.
• Increase the efficiency of processes.
• Ensure the consistency of business process management.
• Contribute to the improvement of the company as a whole.

More specifically, about the most important internal aspects of the company’s activity:

Personnel

Almost always, the lack of knowledge and experience either leads to catastrophic consequences, or is a rather specific reason for falling behind in terms of work processes. The key solution in this case is to eliminate these shortcomings. To increase the knowledge and experience of labor resources, various means can be used: trainings, webinars, group discussions, providing access to online services that helped workers get new necessary information at a time convenient for them.

It has been repeatedly observed that the productivity of labor resources improves with periodic training, and the efficiency of the operational staff increases with maintenance planning and performance monitoring. All this clearly has a positive effect on the minimization of production losses, the cost of technical and warranty service.

In some cases, enterprises have problems due to the lack of qualified personnel who can deal with resource planning. Sometimes this happens as a result of an attempt to cut costs, when the company hires inexperienced (“cheap”) employees. This causes significant losses for the organization. Therefore, before updating or changing the resource strategy, it is necessary to carry out careful planning, which should be based on a detailed analysis of the external and internal situation.

Technologies

A business can use various technologies to make the necessary strategic decisions and perform everyday tasks. It can be off-the-shelf or custom-made software. However, regardless of the technologies used by the company, optimization affects the most basic activities of the enterprise. Technological improvement of basic processes will help to “raise the bar” of the entire enterprise.

Process

Each enterprise uses its own processes, which, however, comply with the rules and procedures specific to a particular industry. For this aspect, the most important thing is the standardization and improvement of existing business processes. Optimization can be carried out in different ways: a thorough, from beginning to end, study of a specific process or an individual business cycle; elimination of excess expenditure of time and resources without negative impact and risk for the business as a whole.

In a broader sense, process optimization can include the following sequence of actions:

• Understanding the process.
• Understanding process issues.
• Factor analysis and evaluation.
• Preparation of joint solutions and approaches.
• Implementation and execution of decisions.

Understanding the process. Any activity aimed at optimizing an important business process should begin with understanding it, identifying the best ways to implement it, and comparing it with the existing ones in the enterprise.

Understanding process issues. Understanding the problems refers to the delays found in the process or in some of its stages and is not related to the established process as a whole. The solution may be to change certain steps or tasks, abandon too costly stages or combine them for more efficient work.

Factor analysis. It is necessary to conduct systematic data collection to conduct analytics and assess current flow processes, documentation and competence of labor resources.

Preparation of joint solutions and approaches. The next stage after the analysis and assessment is the preparation of joint solutions and approaches. Sometimes the client himself points out the problem, and in such cases it is much easier to identify the problem points of the enterprise and focus on finding solutions or approaches.

Доповідь про процес оптимізації може містити:

• The main problem points.
• Solutions are available.
• Detailed description of key decisions.
• Recommended approaches and solutions.
• Action plan for implementing solutions to existing problems.

Implementation and execution of decisions. At this stage, the recommended solutions are implemented. Different types of tools are used to monitor performance. Some companies stop at this step due to various limitations (peculiarities of production technology, lack of integration into the existing business model, lack of qualified personnel, etc.).