Work processes that look great on paper and that work well in practice too: for housing association FidesWonen, this is no longer a pipe dream. This housing association based in Goeree-Overflakkee in the province of Zuid-Holland uses Sensus BPM Online. John Capitain, Manager of Operations & Projects at FidesWonen, talks about defining processes and making an organisation efficient. “Rather than making work processes belonging to the management, make them belong to the employees.”

FidesWonen has been using Sensus BPM Online since 2012. “At the time, we had just come out of a merger between three housing associations,” John explains. “As a new organisation, we had to harmonise our work processes and opted for a BPM methodology that involved the staff running through the processes of the former associations together. The most suitable working method was then selected for FidesWonen. Sales and rental processes, maintenance and customer processes are some of the processes documented this way.”

Working group

One of the advantages of recording the process this way is the uniform expertise in the organisation across the various work processes. John: “We determine these in a working group comprising the ‘process owner’ – that’s to say the person ultimately responsible for the process – two functional managers and of course the employees involved. In a number of sessions they look at what the objective of the particular process should be, the risks involved, and who the actors are. This is done for each process step before the process is entered in Sensus BPM Online by a functional manager. This way employees can see step by step how a process works.”

“It will then be reviewed in further sessions, and new versions may possibly emerge. Official documents such as policy documents are also added so that these can easily be consulted alongside the steps.”

Added value of BPM

According to John, the added value of BPM at a small housing association like FidesWonen is no different to that at a large association. “It is perhaps even more of a necessity. At a small housing association, a few staff members have a good understanding of the relevant processes, but what happens if that person becomes ill or leaves? When an employee drops out, the knowledge goes with them. So, a BPM system not only ensures that we all use the same language and definitions, but also that knowledge and information remains with the association.”

Means of communication

“Right now, we mainly use it as a means of communication. Though organisations often talk about processes, everyone has their own definition of this. This way we ensure that everyone is talking about the same thing. Additionally, we can make this clear to the outside world, for example to an external auditor in the context of accountability.”

“Although we see BPM primarily as a means of communication, it can be used for other purposes too. Something very much in vogue right now is LEAN. When you map a process in the software, you can use the LEAN methodology to see how you can work even more efficiently. Because we will also soon be switching to a new ERP system, we can take a good look at our manual activities. Can these be automated? And how much more efficient will this make these? BPM gives us insight into these processes and the opportunity to take effective steps.”

Risk management

FidesWonen also wants to use Sensus BPM Online for risk management purposes. “We are not doing this right now,” John explains, “but we want to do this in the future. This will mainly concern operational risks identified by staff during the process definition. They can then specify what can be done to prevent these risks or mitigate them should they occur.”

John continues, “Consider, for example, the rental process, where you have to deal with a certain vacancy risk. You may be faced with an insufficient number of interested new tenants. Describing possible measures, such as changing the target group or lowering the rent, could solve a problem more quickly.”

From and for employees

According to John, it is also important for this information to come from employees themselves rather than being pushed on them by the management. “That’s a trap you can easily fall into. This form of communication is one-sided, and that does not make the processes at a housing association more efficient. During our process definition step we experienced the same thing, where we first had an external expert instead of two functional managers and, as a result, the recorded processes did not ‘belong’ to the employees, but rather to an outsider. You don’t get the employees on board that way. Only when we started giving our own staff ultimate responsibility for the processes were we able to use BPM as a growth model to work more efficiently.”

Source: Johan van den Beld | CorporatieMedia