Assuming that the purpose of mapping business processes is to improve then we suggest there are three primary stages.

1. Process Discovery and Scoping - Discovery of all the process steps, and with each, their inputs, outputs, outcomes, roles, responsibilities, accountabilities, and associated operations manuals, if any.

2. Process Mapping - Mapping the business objects, associated business rules, and processes, and current controls.

3. Process Analysis - Analysing the process maps and walking through the process as if a customer.

By using this process you will learn the importance of mapping processes and how each step in a process is directed related to connecting value to a customer.

1. Process Discovery and Scoping

The first step is process discovery. Where do you start in discovering process? The answer is scoping as per your brief, i.e. desired outcomes of process mapping.  In an enterprise there may be many subsidiaries, divisions, each with many departments, some using shared services across the organisation, some maybe outsourced, and all having multiple teams, ongoing projects and such forth. In some of these areas they will be no defined processes.  Staff will be doing work their way.   Other areas there will be processes, however staff not following them.  Some other areas the reality is that "what you think is happening" is "not necessarily what is actually happening".  When mapping any business processes it is important to focus on what is actually being done compared to what is supposed to being done.

Will you start top down and identify your processes used to determine the company's business model, business strategy, business vision, mission or lower such as sales and marketing strategy definitions or lower still on shop floors etc.  You know your problems best so you should have an idea where you need to start.

We suggest you decide at this point at what level you will map processes.  Will you want to map high level strategy processes that drill down to lower level processed with finite detail or will you just want to track at higher levels.  We can answer this for you right now.  Both, if you want value out of this continuous exercise you will need to track at all levels.  Without the finite detail you cannot know what is going on within your organisation, let alone take advantage more automation.

Use your company accounts, customer feedback and inside knowledge to determine where the most likely gains are to be had so as to get off to a successful start.

2. Process Mapping

In each of the areas you have decide to map business processes, you will need to capture all process triggers and events that start processes, the end points, all the inputs and outputs to each process step, the "when this process step can and cannot be performed" and by whom.  When you understand the outcome of the process steps document how this outcome adds value to the customer and the associated risks.  If operation manuals exist then link their associated pages, chapters and references to the individual process steps.

The choice of business process management notations to use matters and depends on the project objectives and desired outcomes. If you seek to improve manual processes and deliver upgraded and more advanced forms of operational procedure manuals then the   Business Process Management Notation (BPMN) is probably not the notation to use.  A more simple approach would be better and we suggest it is determined on the areas chosen to map, i.e. manual or automated processes and the people skills performing the process mapping.  Lean or Six Sigma specialists may have they own preferences, business people themselves maybe familiar with Visio or standard workflow notations.  It is easy to see why Diamonds Studio chose to offer many notations and the option to create your own.

For each process step, data is needed to be collected such as flow or volume of work through process step, how much, how many, what costs, what resources, what machines are used, are there any limiting factors etc.  The one measurement that must be present are the ones that facilitate the measurement of the value for the customer.

3. Process Analysis

If this is the first pass through your business processes it is not unusual to discover many blatantly obvious opportunities for improvement there are.  Depending on the value offered by these improvement opportunities it is worth considering whether to implement these changes immediately or wait until the full analysis has been completed.

They are many formal ways of analysing processes.  To remove waste you can use Lean, to improve quality use Six Sigma etc. but the principle is to use what is appropriate to your skill set and to the objectives of the project.  Importantly, look at these processes from the view point of customers, for it is the value that each and every process step delivers that counts. Everything else is typically waste.

Much of the rest depends on your objectives and whether you are striving towards removing waste, improving quality, achieving compliancy, improve sales, reduce overheads or generally want to embark on continuous improvement across the enter enterprise.

Summary

In summary, mapping business processes is a worthwhile project to start.  They are highly likely to deliver results that will save and avoid costs and well as generate more revenue through improve processes in quality, marketing, sales and services.  Start now.

A quick plug for Diamonds Studio: We have purposely designed this so that you can view processes in a variety of ways.  Each may show different and yet obvious opportunities for improvement that otherwise would be missed.  Visualisation of process helps speed up results and the longer term collection of evidence helping to the continuous improvements. Measurements should also tie back to business goals, business strategy and any other KPI the business may have.

The other benefit of using Diamonds Studio is that with the information mapped above, Diamonds Studio can dynamically create the workflows, web forms and the applications layer needed to enable unstructured processing and case management solutions.  Even if you than manually enhance these workflows, webforms or applications Diamonds Studio still stored no code, so if you change the process over and over again these enhancements will remain.

Here to help

Jeff