Guide To Developing A Center For Process Excellence - Nintex

Guide to developing a center for process excellence

Creating a center for process excellence ‘Process excellence’ is a term heard a lot in the business world. It’s often used by different people to mean different things, which has diluted and warped its meaning over time. Before we can discuss the logistics of creating a center for process excellence, the first step is to clarify what is meant by the term. After that, we can outline the roles and responsibilities required in creating a center of process excellence. Nintex Guide to developing a center for process excellence 1

What is process excellence? Process excellence is a work culture that builds process improvement into everything that it does. It requires treating processes the same way you would treat any other business asset. This begins by taking ownership of processes within the business. Individuals across the organization should be involved in identifying, codifying, reviewing, and updating processes—an approach called process mapping. Traditionally, improving business processes was the remit of a small team of ‘process improvement consultants’. In an organization of 5,000 people, for instance, a team of five or six people would work in isolation on individual projects. They would create process maps to highlight which processes should be improved. With no input from the wider team, these would then be filed away and, perhaps, never seen again. There is a better approach. Process excellence does not treat process improvement as an end-goal, but as an ongoing pursuit. There’s always room to improve processes, because new technologies, new methodologies, and new ways of working are always being developed. If your business doesn’t adapt yet your competitors do, you will soon find that you’ve fallen behind the pack. Ongoing process improvement is a vital part of staying competitive in today’s ever-changing, highly disruptive world of business – and the only way to do this is to build a culture of process excellence that gets everyone involved. Nintex Guide to developing a center for process excellence 2

A center for process excellence Successful businesses are in constant pursuit of process excellence. Establishing a center of process excellence can ensure that this goal is core to your organization’s culture and its everyday running. The role of the center for process excellence is twofold: 1 To establish a framework to ensure the business is adhering to a defined standard of process excellence. 2 To make process mapping a part of everyone’s job, not just the remit of five or six process improvement consultants. Every employee at a business brings a different set of skills and/or type of intelligence. Process mapping can empower each one of them. Nintex Guide to developing a center for process excellence 3

What is process mapping? Processes underpin everything people do at work. They are the basis on which we deliver the outcomes our jobs require. However, unless we take a step back and take a long hard look at these processes, often they remain abstract. By mapping processes, an organization can shine a light on its processes – and begin to improve them. Process mapping is a way to document, manage, share, and improve existing processes. It establishes consistency and visibility over processes and, most importantly, provides a framework for improvement. Nintex Guide to developing a center for process excellence 4

Six steps to your center for process excellence To establish a center of process excellence, you need to ensure you take the following steps: 1. Leadership 2. Strategic direction 3. Process management framework 4. Resourcing 5. Communication & Engagement 6. Individual focus Nintex Nintex Effectively Guide Persuading to developing Your aLeadership center for process for IT Professionals excellence 5

1 Leadership The first step is to find a leader (or leaders) to take ownership of the center for process excellence. It is the responsibility of leaders to communicate and demonstrate the importance of process mapping to the whole organization. Assigning the role of a ‘process leader’ to workers already in leadership roles can give their decisions some added weight. You want to find those who are willing and able to set things in motion and lead from the front. Nintex Guide to developing a center for process excellence 6

2 Strategic direction To get buy-in from everyone and start the cultural shift that is required, process mapping needs to be closely aligned with the wider business strategy. This involves: Ensuring the process mapping initiative is clearly explained Highlighting how process mapping will positively impact the business Process mapping is not just about collecting knowledge about processes. It is the first step in a wider business strategy to improve productivity, reduce costs, become more agile, more competitive, and grow the business. Successful businesses create meaningful links between process excellence and the future of the organization. Nintex Guide to developing a center for process excellence 7

3 Process management framework One of the main jobs of the center for process excellence is to set out a framework for process management. It’s important to outline exactly what this entails, how it is going to work, and what it requires of people. Centralized Process mapping could be managed centrally. The business process management team could map all the processes internally and then hand them over when they’re in a good state. Company-wide A better approach is to nominate designated champions in every part of the business to take ownership over their own processes. For example, a Human Resources champion will oversee all process mapping in the HR department. In this case, the job of the center of process excellence would be to provide the tools and train the champions. Nintex Guide to developing a center for process excellence 8

4 Resourcing Process mapping must become part of everybody’s dayto-day responsibilities across the whole organization. It needs to be integrated into the way that people do things, and the organization needs to support that. You need to look at the current resourcing and make time for process mapping, process ownership, and, down the line, process improvement and automation. Nintex Guide to developing a center for process excellence 9

5 Communication & Engagement To make process excellence work, organizations need to have an effective communication structure. Process excellence is, above everything else, a change management initiative. One of the most important aspects of managing change is how well line of business users are informed. You need to consider: How to communicate important info How to update people when changes are made Whether you have an effective structure for this, or will you have to establish a new methodology for communication Nintex Guide to developing a center for process excellence 10

6 Individual focus It’s important to tie process mapping to individuals’ jobs and responsibilities. There are a few ways to formally introduce process mapping into your organization: Onboarding and induction New employees should be educated about the culture for process excellence, what the center for process excellence does, and inform them about their responsibilities for process mapping. Performance reviews Ultimately, to make a success of process mapping you need to measure success. Process mapping and ownership must become part of an individual employee’s performance review. Nintex Guide to developing a center for process excellence 11

Where to start? These six steps will help you prepare your organization to construct the foundations for a center of process excellence. The best place to start is to review these six points against all major business lines: finance, sales, IT, HR, etc. Once you have these in place, it’s time to roll out your center of process excellence to the departments and eventually the wider business. So far, we’ve explored the areas of organizational support needed to establish a center for process excellence. But organizations must first make sure they have the resourcing, framework, communication, leadership, strategic direction, and individual focus right so they are set up to cultivate a culture where process excellence is part of everybody’s job. Nintex Guide to developing a center for process excellence 12

Creating sustainable change with technology Just as important as the framework, Businesses have been content to deal with robust procedural communication, leadership and manuals or complex Visio diagrams to visualize information. But individual focus are the tools you we live in a world where that is no longer acceptable – especially need to facilitate this. To foster if you want to get buy-in from employees across the organization. company-wide adoption, you’ll need Workers have been trained to expect information to be delivered an easy-to-use set of tools that let a certain way – simple, concise, visual, engaging, and notification- your employees understand, map, led. Find a solution designed with these expectations in mind. All and manage processes. You shouldn’t the information that people need to understand their processes need a degree in business process should be presented in an easy-to-understand format. management or proficiency in Visio. Find a solution that is simple, intuitive, What’s more, the right tools can provide visibility over the involves no-code, and is designed to processes users own and changes that are made to processes engage people. they are involved in. This allows users to quickly and easily take action when it is required. The information is clear and engaging There are two key areas where the to leaders and staff on the ground. When change is communicated right technology can really make a big across the organization clearly, it makes change much easier. difference: To find out more establishing a center of process excellence with 1. Quality of 2. Governance information and change Nintex Promapp at your organization, get in touch with the team at Nintex. management Nintex Guide to developing a center for process excellence 13

About Nintex Nintex empowers organizations to pursue digital transformation with intelligent process management tools. With a range of end-to-end tools and support, organizations can harness the power of process management and automation. Since 2006, Nintex has been making it easy to build custom forms and workflows, and help over 8,500 organizations embrace digital transformation. The Nintex Platform includes code-free capabilities for process management and automation that integrate into the most popular business applications and systems of record. The platform includes capabilities for advanced workflows, document generation, mobile apps, modern forms, process intelligence and more. Plus, with Nintex Promapp , the process mapping and management offering, it’s easy to fully understand, map and manage enterprise-wide processes. So, regardless of your business’ IT resources, the Nintex Workflow Platform can grant you the full power of process automation. And it can get you there quicker than you think. To find out more about process automation or how to improve your existing workflows, contact us today. Learn more at www.nintex.com

A center for process excellence Successful businesses are in constant pursuit of process excellence. Establishing a center of process excellence can ensure that this goal is core to your organization's culture and its everyday running. The role of the center for process excellence is twofold: To establish a framework to ensure