Business Process Documentation

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Business Process Documentation is when the chain is studied, understood and represented in the form of a stream of activities which clearly illustrates the generated products and services and the processes involved in each of them. “As you monitor processes, look for specific areas that may need quality overview to improve efficiency, such as when a process moves from one person or team to another. Try to minimize unnecessary movement between departments during a process. Be on the lookout for duplicate tasks, and decide if having both is useful or inefficient. A company where there is no clear idea of the value chain ends up doing BPM work focused on work areas or departments.It is not the purpose of documentation, it must consider the value chain as a whole, showing the value gain (or failures in trying to get it) in each step of the process until the final delivery to the customer.

As potentially useful and effective a business process documentation is, often times they’re not documented or poorly planned, implemented, or communicated. Historically, organisation has under-performed in fulfilling its process  requirements due to inefficient practices and lack of a formal process. For an  effective transition, business process documentation  must be formally designed, structured, documented, and communicated. It is important to capture as much detail as possible in the process description verbally, graphically, or using both methods. By doing so, all individuals and groups using the process will be able to more easily achieve the desired results. While business process documents may contain many different sections, there are some sections common to all business documents. 

PROCESS DOCUMENTATION AS A SERVICE

Business Processes documentation as a service is an effective way to standardize organization activities, increase workforce and resource efficiencies, and perform value-added functions to meet critical needs, using resources that understands the best practise and organisation standardization to ensure an effective business process. Organisation should emphasize on having their processes documented and putting into consideration absorbing the global standard for process documentation which helps to improve seamless process integration and the organizational structure.

 In such cases, a process may result in confusion and create an even more ineffective environment than previously existed. When planning, implementing, and communicating a new business process, or an added process in an existing process, it is important to provide structure, a formal process flow, process boundaries, inputs/outputs, and control points. This will allow the organization to not only achieve improved performance, but to have a mechanism to continually improve the business process and audit their process from time to time by documenting.

Facilitate Transitions: Documentation can provide a close-up look at a given process as well as a larger context for how it fits with other business practices. This information is useful for determining how to integrate multiple processes or to make changes to an individual process. For example, if you’re switching from a manual process to automation, having a process document in place can help ease the transition.

Improve Communication: Having a process guide encourages mutual understanding across an organization, which supports planning and implementation for new projects or process changes. It can also streamline training for new employees or when outsourcing projects. The documentation process can also spark discussion among stakeholders, potentially leading to innovation and improvement.

Provide Structure: Defining the boundaries and control points for a process provides clarity about procedures and outcomes to help ensure it is being carried out efficiently.

Reduce Costs: If you can increase efficiency while improving quality, the result is likely to be a boost to your bottom line and to customer satisfaction.

WHAT NEXT

Business Analysis processes by identifying the Gaps and opportunities to design new business process flow by working with the process owners in the various departments using  expertize  to help properly analyze existing processes (“As – Is”) against new processes     (“To – Be”) . This assumes that there are existing processes, which need to be updated. Where these do not exist, we define appropriate processes that suit the business needs (that means there are no “As Is” documented processes).

“Documenting business processes”, or “business systemisation” as it’s also known, will make the difference between businesses that plods along with the organisation constantly on the verge of burnout, companies have repeatable processes fundamental to their successful operation, thus process documentation serves as a crucial guide for the organisation to reference. Process documentation is a roadmap for your organization—it helps you identify the current state of a process to know how you can improve it. Any task that is done more than once or completed by multiple people needs to be documented. Doing so provides consistency for your organization and allows you to monitor and revise processes as you go along.This helps the organisation to achieve the following

•     - Eliminate flaws
•    - Reduce time spent on tasks
•     -Decrease costs
•     -Decrease resources associated with tasks
•     -Improve efficiency
•     -Improve overall quality
•     -Increase customer and employee satisfaction

Process documentation helps others to realize the changes in behavior and attitudes needed to produce desirable results, and it provides context for processes so that others can see how a process fits into the big picture and what its overall impact is. For all the advantages of process documentation, there can also be some drawbacks. For instance, if a process is recorded incorrectly, the document will be inaccurate and potentially harmful. The person responsible for documentation should have a thorough understanding of the process or be part of a team of stakeholders that can help ensure accuracy. Having clear guidelines for process management procedures which  can provide structure and accountability for whoever is developing the document.

Process documentation  supports efficiency and expedite any changes to a process that might be needed in the future. A flexible approach allows for adjustment in process and business analytics expertise creates style guide for inclusion which Creates individual documents for different processes and procedures rather than one massive document. Keeping a local backup of the files on your desktop or in a private cloud-based system and document when the process was most recently updated.