This page presents some of the issues relevant to Business and Process Analysis and summarises services offered.

More information can be found by clicking on the relevant button under the 'Approach and Products' heading in the menu.

Issues

Given the ongoing recessionary and budgetary pressures, more organisations are turning to cost reduction as a way of balancing the books. And if these external factors are not currently relevant to you, leading organisations see continuous improvement as an ongoing and necessary activity no matter how healthy the financial position.

Analysing your business in a structured manner is key to successful cost reduction and ongoing continuous improvement - which is where process mapping and modelling comes in. Mapping is all about understanding the current position - what some people call the ’as is’. The aim of modelling is to describe the future state of the organisation, also known as the ’to be’.

When undertaking a business and process analysis assignment there are a number of pitfalls to avoid - some are listed below:

• Changing the organisational structure without any reference to processes

• Underestimating the time needed to conduct the analysis

• No standardisation of approach and/or definitions (which can lead to confusion and nugatory work)

• Moving too quickly to new ways of working before adequate analysis has been undertaken - which has to be balanced against too much analysis and not keeping things simple such that the organisation becomes paralysed by the analysis

There are also a number of generic questions that need to be asked when looking at business processes:

• To what level do you need to analyse the business?

• Which analytical techniques to use? 

• What software tool do you want to use to facilitate and capture the analysis?

• What is the scope of the work and whose perspective needs to be mapped or modelled?

• Where is value created or destroyed?

• What are the process and organisational boundaries? 

There are a range of structured techniques that can be used to map and model individual or end-to-end processes; for example:

• Value Chain Analysis.  The Value Chain was devised by Michael Porter. It describes the various stages in a business where value is added
  

• Integrated Definition - an international standard and hierarchical approach with strict rules that maps and models Inputs, Controls, Outputs and Mechanisms

• Flow Charts - which can be used in hierarchical way, but without rules can become unwieldy and can mix different levels in the same map or model thus confusing users. It is very good for detailed mapping and modelling at activity, task and workstep level

In analysing your business processes there is also a strong link with performance. In other words, the day-to-day processes and activities in an organisation are enshrined in your vision, strategic goals, performance management framework and business performance indicators. Sometimes these performance management elements will be explored as part of an assignment to analyse a business and its processes.

Services

The services offered are summarised below:

• Produce process maps and models.  

• Analysing process maps to create business performance indicators - either to monitor/baseline performance or as part of a continuous improvement exercise

• Quality assurance of existing analysis

• 'Critical Friend' advice - for example, you may need some help/advice setting up a project to do business and process analysis

• Reviewing your processes related to business performance measurement, management and reporting

• Training using a one-day 'off-the-shelf' programme

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