As we all continue to do our part to shelter in place to protect ourselves and others against the spread of the COVID virus, most organizations have resorted to working remotely almost overnight. It’s enlightening to see the responsiveness and creativity as to how this new way of working is evolving. Yet, without a roadmap for getting there the challenges continue.
| This post is Part 4 of Solarity’s COVID-19 Blog Series |
Solarity has developed a Remote Work Transformation Model which outlines a methodical approach (aka roadmap) to address these challenges. This model addresses 3 key, integrated components: People, Tools, and Business Processes that should be analyzed and made more efficient. We offer a brief webinar of our model. Contact us at info@solarity.com to schedule one for your organization.
What about Business Processes which need to be analyzed? To get a better understanding, let’s run a quick Q&A on the subject with Nancy Ward, EVP of Sales & Operations and Sue Knies, Practices Management Office Director.
Q: What is Business Process Analysis all about?
Nancy: Business Process Analysis involves understanding the health of different operations within a business to improve process efficiency and outcomes. It helps you identify the detrimental elements in an operation and determine how to overcome obstacles and optimize achievements.
Q: Why does this analysis matter now rather than just wait until we get through the COVID-19 crisis?
Sue: With proper analysis of your key business processes, your team will minimize the loss of time and instead focus on dealing with the things that really matter in a standardized way. In a remote environment, standardized processes become even more crucial to business success since your staff is unable to collaborate in person. They will be able to continue working aggressively and productively while operating in a remote environment.
Q: What are examples of Business Processes?
Nancy: There are 2 categories of business processes: Internal and External
Internal processes are processes that exist or occur within your organization to make your business support more efficient. Areas of Internal Processes include: Working in a Remote Environment, Corporate Policies and Procedures, Marketing, Strategy Planning, Product/Service Development, Communications and Meeting Management.
External processes are customer-centric and involve outside factors or influences that help your organization grow revenue and maintain profitability. Areas of External Processes include: Customer Sales, Product/Service Development & Delivery, Customer Relationships.
Q: How is Business Process Analysis done?
Nancy & Sue: Solarity has adapted our approach to help you identify, prioritize, and develop/adapt the processes that are most important to your business. The good news is that this can all be done remotely! Here’s how it works in adapting Solarity’s face-to-face methods to a remote working environment:
- We facilitate discovery call(s)/video conference(s) with decision makers to understand your business and identify key functional areas and business processes, resulting in a Business Process Framework (BPF). The BPF helps to identify and align the key functions for an organization and identify accountability.
- Prioritize the business processes from the BPF based on an organization’s defined ranking that can gain efficiencies and/or improve outcomes through standardization, within a remote environment and identify ‘owners’ of those processes.
- Work with the process owners to develop/adapt the processes. This is done through calls, collaboration tools, and templates that we’ve developed to capture key information about the processes. The result is a set of standardized graphical process flows which are easy to understand and navigate.
- Determine what tools or increased functionality of existing tools (if any) can be used to make the processes more efficient and productive.
- Assist with implementation or training the staff (if needed) to roll out the developed / adapted processes.
Q: How do I get started?
Sue: Give us a call! Because we’re project managers, we do this day in and day out, and the remote environment is familiar to us since we at Solarity have been operating in a remote environment for quite some time.
Nancy: We’ve adapted our Business Process Analysis model to achieve the same quality results while working in a remote setting. Our goal hasn’t changed: it’s always been to help our clients to thrive.
Want to learn more about business process analysis with Solarity? Contact us at info@solarity.com or call us at 888-272-4494.