With some 20,000 social rented housing units managed by a staff of around 180, Elkien is one of the largest housing associations in the Dutch province of Friesland. The association became aware of a need for descriptions of the business processes that would be clear and unambiguous for everyone. “We want to work uniformly and that is only possible if everyone knows what that means,” says the Support & Optimisations team lead. “When you are used to working without a system and everything suddenly becomes structured, that is of course quite a transformation.”

The simplicity

The Support & Optimisations team lead was closely involved in the selection of Sensus process management. “There are quite a few providers on the market, including some with specific knowledge of housing associations. What particularly appealed to us about Sensus was the convenience, the clarity. From eight icons you are directed to the process visualisation. So simple. With this approach, we mapped out our twelve main processes in twelve working groups. And as we plan to go live with our new ERP system Tobias AX, we have visualised our processes based on AX’s methodology and instructions.”

The flexibility

According to functional manager Anton van Loon, the trick is to set up Sensus BPM Online in such a way that the software meets the needs as closely as possible. “Setting up a process is more than filling in a number of variables,” he says. “You first have to determine how you want to work in a process-based way, and then see how you can adjust the design of Sensus BPM Online accordingly. Sensus offers plenty of options to build the flow the way we want it. We have created our own Elkien methodology based on the Sensus method. Once that’s in place, the tooling is intuitive enough to keep management simple. You don’t have to keep thinking about how you want to work; it’s mainly a question of evaluating and then fine-tuning in Sensus accordingly.”

The preparations

It takes a lot of time to bring people together to determine and map out the processes. The Support & Optimisations team lead explains, “You need someone who asks the right questions and who records everything in Sensus BPM Designer. In twelve sessions, Sensus consultant Monique van Dodewaard quickly helped us through this. What are we talking about? Who owns the process? What are the steps? How do we put everything together? We did not have the experience ourselves to visualise a process so precisely and succinctly. Monique took a very structured approach to this, and that saved us a lot of time. As process coaches, we all watched closely how she did this so that we can transfer our new-found knowledge to our colleagues.”

The internal market

Elkien has managed to bring the plans for process-based working to the attention of its own staff in a fresh, fun way. This is mainly thanks to Annemiek Abma, Process Coach at Elkien, who organised an in-house market with a separate market stall for each process. “With visualisations you can present the processes in an original way,” says Annemiek Abma. “That’s why we asked Sensus to make a visualisation for each process with flow charts that would provide insight into the course of the process. These we then presented at our in-house market. In addition, each working group had to pitch its own process, and the visualisations also played a role in these ‘demos’. That was very enlightening. This allowed staff to see the entire process and their own part in it at a glance. Everyone was let off work for this and so everyone was there. It was also a great opportunity to put the various working groups in the spotlight.”

The implementation

The processes are also published in Sensus’ Publisher module. The Support & Optimisations team lead explains, “Our intranet environment contains a direct link to the Sensus Publication, and a lot of our people are already looking at that. Given that this is the start of a change in culture, we are giving it an extra boost. That will happen when Tobias AX goes live in a few weeks. Sensus is also working on this. Once AX is up and running, we can see exactly how we are working now and how that differs from last week. Awareness is pivotal: I am doing something, what effect does that have on the whole, where can it be done better, and how can it be done better? The great thing is that our team is now also working on LEAN training that is increasing awareness, which will soon spread like wildfire through the organisation. That is a great challenge, exciting, and super fun! There is a lot of energy at the moment, so it’s brilliant to be working on that now.”