Process optimization can generate surprising results when applied to a company and is an excellent way to leverage an organization’s productivity and efficiency. Well-defined processes, aligned with the business strategy, can increase competitiveness and consolidate a path for achieving goals.
Regardless of the product or service sold and the company’s size, processes – tasks and activities performed to achieve a purpose – make the gears turn and convert resources into value for end customers.
The result is increased productivity, a common need in any company. Improved performance results in competitive gains and increased profitability. Doing more while using the same or fewer resources is the secret to efficiency. But to achieve this, we need to know how to optimize processes.
What is process optimization?
Optimizing business processes means making them more agile and efficient based on the intelligent use of available resources. It involves understanding how to identify bottlenecks, flaws and limitations, make necessary adjustments, and organize workflows and structure steps to benefit all concerned, including customers.
A process is a set of related tasks and activities that lead to specific goals as they are completed. For a company to operate, it needs to perform different types of processes. In this way, the optimization of these organizational processes is indispensable for the company to be able to function more sustainably.
What are the benefits of process optimization?
The first benefit is the reduction of operating costs. Process optimization identifies procedural failures and prevents bottlenecks that directly or indirectly impact the company’s cash flow.
Process optimization also improves the final quality of the products or services sold by a company. As a result, customers are more satisfied and tend to stay loyal.
Team productivity is also positively impacted, with an improved alignment of expectations and clarity around each employee’s role in the processes at hand.
Optimization also allows for aligning business processes with the organization’s strategic objectives, enhancing long-term results.
Do you know what the productive capacity of your company is?
There are many ways to evaluate a company’s performance. That is why it is important to know exactly what you want to check, define how to optimize processes and identify your company’s current production capacity.
This can be done using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), which are metrics that should be established according to each company’s needs. Here are some of the ways to check the production capacity of your business:
- Productivity per employee;
- Productivity per hour worked;
- Profit;
- Profitability;
- Return on investment (ROI).
Steps that can be implemented in your company to optimize processes
1. Mapping and diagnosis
The first step to optimizing internal processes is to correctly identify them – ideally by mapping the tasks of each area. In addition to knowing exactly what the activities of each sector are, it is necessary to verify whether your collaborators are carrying them out effectively.
To do so, involve all areas to diagnose problems and generate new workflows. Remember that every process has a starting point and an end goal.
It is common for information to get lost during the transition of tasks between areas, making some activities innocuous or ineffective. Therefore, diagnosis is essential to settle on a more natural flow of activities, optimizing everyone’s time and effort.
2. Map improvements
Having identified bottlenecks and areas to be evolved, we should design new models for these tasks, defining processes to make the company work more productively and agile.
Consider which barriers that hinder the flow of tasks can be eliminated, and activities can be optimized to gain more time. Finally, redefine these processes in line with the company’s strategies.
One option involves drawing up a diagram of the flow of the action and those responsible for each task. This will make it easier to visualize and anticipate needs or problems when planning.
The final product of this stage is the elaboration of manuals, fully describing the stages of each process.
The material, which should be shared with the leaders of each sector, is essential in several situations, such as the integration of new employees who can quickly and effectively assimilate the area’s routines using these manuals.
3. Use of technologies
Overlooking modern tech and software is unheard of in process optimization. These tools facilitate workflows and ensure the agility your company needs, integration between sectors, and the best use of your company’s time and human resources.
One process automation solution involves organizing flows and improving all company management, thus saving time and resources. The solution facilitates communication between different areas, helps to organize information from different levels, and can offer real-time indicators to streamline management.
Another process optimization tool is the decision tree maker, which uses a tree model of decisions and consequences, including chance event outcomes, resource costs, utility, and more. This allows team leaders to predict scenarios and visualize results with greater ease.
4. Integrate sectors
A common problem in companies is a lack of harmony between different areas. This occurs when each sector develops its tasks without considering what is going on in the rest of the organization.
This lack of strategic focus is a management problem that results in wasted resources and a high rework rate and should not be overlooked when optimizing processes.
Integration – viewing the organization as a single and interdependent entity – should be included in reformulating each company’s processes.
5. Train employees
There is no point in implementing a broad modernization of your company’s processes if the people on the front line – the employees – are not aligned with the new reality of the organization’s operations.
That’s why it is important to involve employees as much as possible throughout all stages of the redesign and train them regarding the tasks and tools to be implemented.
As in any change process, resistance and difficulty adapting are commonplace, so it’s essential to invest in adequate communication on what is happening in the company.
Employees need to understand the benefits process optimization can bring to the organization and themselves. This will make it easier to increase the team’s engagement.
6. Flexible activities
When reformulating your company’s processes, evaluate the possibility of inserting new work models. With the proliferation of technological tools such as mobile devices and the mass use of the internet, making activities more flexible without impacting productivity is increasingly possible.
Employees working online have a large amount of information and tools at their disposal and can perform their tasks without needing to be physically present at the company. This is just one of many ways to reduce costs and optimize resources.
7. Monitor results
Having defined the changes and established the new processes, we must monitor the results. To do so, define performance indicators that must be constantly monitored to measure the effectiveness of these new processes.
Create benchmarks based on results obtained before process optimization and afterward. In this way, the company can measure sectoral and global indicators and evaluate the effectiveness of the changes.
Effective monitoring of results makes it possible to verify whether process optimization has succeeded.
Once a measure is implemented, check how it is being carried out and what results in it generating increased production, improved sales, reduced costs, etc. Quantify these gains to identify which measures were effective and which should be reviewed and improved upon.
Changes in the corporate environment are complex and may be met with resistance. Still, process optimization is an important differentiator for increasing the productivity and competitiveness of any business – and can be the key to success for your company too.
