Is This The Year You Master Process Management?

By Ivan Seselj, CEO, Promapp Solutions

2016 may best be remembered as a year of unparalleled upheaval. From the Brexit vote and election of Donald Trump to sharp rises (and even sharper falls) in stocks and commodities, volatility ruled the day.

The same dynamic is at work in the world of process management, where old ways of operating are being challenged as never before. The result? Companies are increasingly recognizing current approaches to managing critical process know-how are insufficient to achieve the new levels of agility and innovation required to keep up with today’s rapid pace of change.

The recently updated ISO 9001:2015 quality standards provide a good case in point. The updated standard provides a framework enabling organizations to establish processes rigid enough to drive consistency, yet flexible enough to deal with changes as they occur. Despite such efforts many businesses continue to rely on outdated approaches to manage their critical process information, storing it in formats that are neither accessible to teams across the business nor easily updated.

Where does that leave those with responsibility for process management? And, importantly, what changes should teams be making now to be ready for what could be another tumultuous year in 2017?

There are a number of things organizations should implement or improve to make sure they are prepared for the challenges awaiting them in the New Year. First, they must make process ownership real by establishing process owners and experts. Process owners should be empowered and given responsibility for the effective operation of their processes, while experts are those who work with a process daily and know it intimately.

Empowering process owners allows them to proactively improve their processes as opportunities arise. The people who are directly creating, selling, or delivering products to customers are often in the best position to spot problems or solutions, as well as make improvement suggestions. Giving the person who identifies the problem the authority to fix it will not only enhance team engagement, but also significantly improve the chances (and speed) of a successful resolution.

It is also essential to focus on creating and sustaining engagement with processes. To accomplish this, teams must be supported by tools designed to make managing their processes easy. Ideally, process information should be embedded into the tools already being used on a daily basis. Process guidance must also be easy to understand and easy to use, otherwise it will be ignored. And to ensure process improvement becomes a day-to-day priority, it’s important to establish a governance structure and schedule. Providing visible support from the leadership team and sustained communication are both vital to keeping people involved, engaged — ultimately driving innovation and change.

Finally, it is critical to establish effective change management. Agile organizations need an easy way to update processes as changes occur and then to quickly communicate those changes to impacted teams. An out-of-date process can be at best annoying or ineffective, and at worst dangerous. As a result, notifications of process changes should be issued to impacted teams and roles, and an auditable, historical record of those changes should be maintained.

While 2017 may well be the year of process disruption, it could also be the year in which businesses finally master process management. Rather than focusing solely on tools and methodologies, effective process management demands attention be shifted to empowering engaged teams to improve and succeed. To that end, teams need clear process ownership, effective change management, and process information in formats teams across the organization will actually use.

Ivan Seselj is CEO of Promapp Solutions, an industry leading provider of cloud-based process management (BPM) software for creating and storing business processes online. You can contact him at ivan.seselj@promapp.com or follow him at @Ivanseselj. You can visit Promapp at www.promapp.com.