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What are some of the areas of focus as a company begins to look at Process Improvement?

Home » Entrepreneurship » Process Improvement » What are some of the areas of focus as a company begins to look at Process Improvement?

  • Focus on outcomes not routines: Process improvement is organized around outcomes, not the definitive tasks required to achieve the outcome. Organizations using process improvement are looking to eliminate the attention given to routines that may not work well in an ever-changing business environment.
  • Focus on the customer: Once routine sets in, many organizations fail to concentrate on the customer. Resources within the organization begin to be allocated based on political needs rather than business or policy needs. In the meantime, customer needs may have changed to the point that the organization may no longer effectively serve the customer.
  • Focus on process first, not automation first: Although process improvement may use automated planning tools, automation or information processing is not meant to be a substitute for process improvement. An automated but inefficient system does not sufficiently meet the customer need.
  • Benchmark regularly: Any organization using process improvement must continually and frequently decide if the costs of accomplishing a business process outweigh the benefits. Therefore organizations must establish benchmarks, or a set of standards, against which the process is to be measured. The benchmarks themselves must be measurable, attainable, and realistic.
  • Focus on building control points into the process: There should be frequent points where the business determines whether the process is meeting current benchmarks and what should be the next steps in the process. This may include halting the process if it fails to meet realistic benchmarks.
  • Focus on standardizing similar processes: Many organizations rely on a temporary or different approach to each business process. They make them up as they go along and change them without deliberate planning. A standardized system of preparing processes saves time, effort, staff hours, and money.
  • Focus on using the right measures: Don't waste time taking process measurements if you are not going to use them for process improvement. The process slogan is worth remembering: "No process without measurement, no measurement without analysis, no analysis without action.”



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