When planning an itinerary for your vacation, you tend to write down everything on your wishlist. From restaurants and local saunas to hiking points and famous beaches—you don’t want to miss adding anything that would make your trip fun and fulfilling.
Putting down everything on paper helps to ensure your vacation goes as planned and you don’t waste time and money trying to figure out where to go next.
Business process mapping is a similar concept and helps you visualise business processes to understand them better. And since processes are at the core of every business, a blueprint showing how they are done from start to finish can help improve their effectiveness.
And that’s the core of business process mapping. This guide will explore business process mapping, explain its importance, and outline the steps to creating a process map.
What Is Business Process Mapping?
Business process mapping is a visual display of the steps a business takes to complete a process, such as ordering and shipping a product, hiring employees, etc.
It’s basically a blueprint that guides users, including decision-makers, into the steps involved in completing certain critical processes. Business process mapping shows the “who,” “what,” “when,” and “how” for the steps involved in a process.
A flow chart is often used to depict the steps involved in each process. These charts typically use clearly-defined symbols to highlight key pieces of the process, such as start, stop, etc. Flow charts can move from left to right and even from top to down.
Why Do You Need Business Process Mapping?
Business process mapping offers many benefits to organisations. By creating a process map, one can answer questions that can help in the progression of operations, such as:
- What tasks are necessary to complete?
- What’s each step of the process about?
- What is the time frame for each task?
- Who is responsible for each task?
- What conditions must be met for each task to be completed?
- What aspects of the task do not add value to the customer?
Besides giving you valuable insights into critical processes, business process mapping improves employee engagement, provides a high level of customer satisfaction, increases return on investment, and reduces compliance risk.
How to Create a Process Map
To create a process map, simply follow the following steps.
1. Gather all the Relevant Parties
You need several voices of people who’ll be responsible for the process and actively involved in its creation and day-to-day activities.
2. List all the Human Tasks
Business process mapping involves a lot of human tasks that need to be defined. What responsibility will each individual have in the process? This can be done with sticky notes.
3. List all the System Tasks
Some tasks, such as data transfer, sending emails, folder creation, and more, can be done better by a machine than by a human. Identify these tasks and put them down on paper.
4. Identify Redundancies
Check and double-check all the listed tasks to see if any can be eliminated or switched to a system task.
5. Assign Roles
Most tasks will need to be done by an individual. Determine the individuals who will be responsible for these tasks.
Some tasks may need to be completed in groups, but someone should be held accountable for the progress and timely completion. Also, ensure someone is responsible for system tasks, as these are also prone to errors.
6. Set the Sequence of Tasks
Last, decide the sequence of tasks.
Here, you’ll need to figure out what needs to be done first. What tasks are dependent on others, and when tasks should be marked ‘complete.’
Conclusion
Business process mapping is a visual display of the steps needed to complete a process, such as ordering and shipping a product or hiring employees.
If done right, business process mapping helps businesses define critical processes, increase employee engagement, boost ROI, and reduce compliance risk.
Need help formulating a business process mapping that drives results? Our business process mapping services are designed to help improve your business processes and help your team focus on creating value for your customers. Get in touch with us today, or book a demo here.
