Jacques van Iperen and Tirza Prummel (Portaal): Good process management is a prerequisite for good service delivery

Results

One system, one premise

By properly documenting processes, you can provide your tenants with the best possible service. With this vision, housing association Portaal continuously improves its processes. What are the challenges involved, and how best to inform employees about how and what exactly they need to do? CorporatieGids.nl spoke about this with Process Management advisors Jacques van Iperen and Tirza Prummel.

Portaal started in 2013 with an initial professionalization wave of its process management, Jacques begins the conversation: “We had just chosen a new primary system back then. This system was somewhat flexible in terms of configuration, which allowed us—where possible—to have the system align with the processes as they were structured at Portaal. To achieve this, it was important that we properly documented the configuration of processes and agreed with each other that these were the correct and most optimal processes. In a short period of time, we then described a large part of our primary and supporting processes and subsequently established the governance for process management to manage and continuously improve processes. For example, we work with process owners, experts, and advisors.”

Efficient, unambiguous and customer-oriented

According to Tirza, the core of good process management is that the various processes are designed to be as efficient, unambiguous, and customer-oriented as possible. “With the ultimate goal: offering the tenant the best possible service. In this context, it is important that all employees within Portaal know and experience that—in order to provide that service—they need knowledge not only of their own process, but also of the processes that come before and after it. That there is insight into the dependencies with other processes or departments, that these are well-designed, and that they connect with one another. Our goal as Portaal is to work smarter and better all the time. This insight is essential for that.”

Importance of process management

The distributed nature of Portaal – which operates in the Utrecht, Amersfoort, Arnhem, Nijmegen and Leiden regions – makes good process management, according to Jacques, all the more important: “Every region has its own character and dynamics. In addition, the number of different departments, employees and various stakeholders is larger than at other housing associations. If we want to offer tenants good services in a uniform and efficient way, good process management is a prerequisite. Within that, there must be sufficient freedom to – within set frameworks – give it your own interpretation. We do this by defining processes, assigning ownership and continuously improving.”

More Than Just Process Flows

When asked what Portaal's main challenges are in terms of process management, Tirza mentions properly assigning roles within the organization. “Think of chain and process owners, process experts, and process advisors. Who is responsible for what, and how do these roles relate to the line organization? In addition, time is another challenge. It takes time to set up your processes, monitor performance, make adjustments if necessary, and possibly improve them. Since most of these are roles rather than full-time positions, people do this alongside their regular work. However, good process management takes time, and attention must be paid to that.”

Jacques nods and continues: “It is also important to continuously communicate the added value of process management. Process management is more than just process flows and work instructions; it is truly its own way of working and thinking. It is also about having the right conversations to see how we can serve the tenant better and more smartly, to what extent new policy impacts processes, or how we can better map out and organize the coherence between processes.”

One reality

From the start of the professionalization drive, Portaal has been using Sensus BPM Online. Jacques: “With that platform we have mapped out our processes and recorded almost all processes within it. The advantage of this is that everyone is looking at the same information. In Sensus BPM Online, it is stated per process who has which task, in which system you must perform this task, and what you need to do. Where possible and convenient, we have also linked our policy documents, applications, work instructions, and other documents in it. In this way, we work with a single version of reality.”

Mastering process-oriented working

Tirza continues: “Where Sensus states what you do within the organization, there is still room left for how you should do that precisely. We have always had work instructions, but not all of these could be found in a central place. Some were also outdated or people had printed out an old version. That is why we are now using SelfGuide, a work instruction tool. Within SelfGuide, you can see step-by-step how to perform a task, where you can really follow every click in the system. A major advantage is that all work instructions are in a central place. We have also linked it so that you can find the work instructions per process in Sensus. That helps us enormously to better master working in a process-oriented way ourselves.”

Uniform working methods

By using Sensus and SelfGuide, new employees can be easily onboarded because they see what and how they need to do something, Tirza explains: “They open the process they need to perform and can click through to the linked instructions. This allows you to onboard employees effectively and create uniform working methods. For existing employees, the use is helpful when something changes. For example, when we implement a new application, there is an update, or a change in the law, this is updated in Sensus and SelfGuide. Everyone then receives an update and can consult the software to see the revised working method.”

New vision

Portaal is currently working on a new vision for process management, Jacques concludes the conversation: “We are also conducting a process management scan. Based on this, a transition plan will be developed to further increase the maturity of process management within Portaal. This will include a focus on embedding governance, chain processes, and process control, among other things. In this way, Portaal will further shape the smarter and better organization of our processes to serve our tenants even better.”

Source: CorporatieMedia, Photo: Portaal

Curious whether this way of working

is right for your organization?

See how processes become part of everyday work

Want to see how Sensus BPM Online makes process management part of the way people actually work? Try it for yourself and see whether it fits your organization.

Try Sensus BPM Online

Try it free for 30 days, with no commitment. You can get started right away.