Process management: the much maligned gold of your organisation

I actually wanted to title this blog post “Only Sensus process management can save your organisation J!!” Sounds great, but it’s unfortunately not very credible. However, Sensus process management as a powerful tool that helps you be in control…That’s entirely accurate! Go ahead, judge for yourself.

Process management ticks all the boxes to be THE gold of your organisation. So why is this gold often no more than bronze or even loose sand?

As is often the case, it is a combination with something else that turns something to gold. A talented person without a good team or a good coach will often not make it to the top. The same goes for processes.

For a long time, and perhaps too long, the world of Business Process Management was seen as an isolated domain. As a result, organisations’ documented processes are rarely consulted and there is often little impetus to put effort into documenting processes. This is a huge missed opportunity. After all, all logic says that processes, being a visual language, are the strongest foundation you could wish for as an organisation when you want to be transparent and agile. On top of that, it also happens to be the only adequate tool when it comes to quickly and consistently implementing improvements, seizing opportunities and addressing threats.

The way I see it, processes that are not measurable or interconnected are no more than fancy idealistic prose. So no more than loose sand.  Add to that the fact that processes, while an ideal foundation, are not the be-all and end-all

and you’ve put your finger on the sore spot. Processes are not the goal, but rather a means of serving various domains.

Which domains?

• The most obvious one is Quality management, which includes ISO certification, occupational health and safety, and environmental impact. You want your standards to be linked to processes and know which processes relate to which standard. Or which processes and responsible parties go with which standards.
• Human resources. Onboarding new people in no time, transparency of duties and responsibilities. The right person in the right job. And preferably yesterday.
• Risk management. Since you manage your organisation and priorities based on risks and opportunities, you want to know which processes are related to your risks.
• Information management. These days, companies are automated to an ever greater degree. What about the information flows and data sources? Which services lighten our workload and how are they set up? In which processes do these automated services intervene?
• An important basis and guideline for organisations. However, policy needs to be translated into action and tie in with measurable services, i.e. processes. If not, your policy will be no more than idealistic prose.
• Business intelligence. This is a domain that is on the rise. Still, it needs to be possible to trace all that intelligence data back to the related processes where the work is actually done!
• Improvement management. Terms such as LEAN, Agile and Six Sigma are all the rage these days. But remember that all improvement management methods are rooted in processes, and merely approach improvement from different specific angles.

In short, process management will only be truly successful if it is set up from an integrated domain approach and can only turn to gold when each domain owner is given a say based on his or her specific expertise.

1. It sounds great and it’s easy to understand with a healthy dose of logic. Many different management books deal with this very subject and have emphasised its importance. So why is process management so often ignored, done half-heartedly, or simply botched?

The reason for this lies, I think, largely in some of the technical limitations from the past; a large number of locally running systems, separate applications set up from a single domain perspective, which cannot be integrated or are difficult to link up with other systems.

And when software vendors do provide a total solution, it is often experienced as a monster of an application that is so complex that you end up spending your entire career getting the hang of it, while it doesn’t even quite meet the specific needs of the domain. Besides, the price tag that goes with these solutions instantly puts them in the risk management domain. You just cannot be the best at everything.

But a lot has changed in the world of IT, system interfaceability and data sharing capability. Today’s modern, mainly cloud-based applications are making it a lot easier to securely interconnect data sources and systems, and technological connections between knowledge domains and solutions suddenly turn bronze into gold. Separate 75% solutions become a single 100% solution when brought together in an integrated ecosystem.

And what’s at the centre of this ecosystem? Of course, the PROCESS MANAGEMENT domain!! Because without the solid foundations that processes provide, all the above domains are built on quicksand.

There’s one ‘but’; processes and process mapping need to meet high quality standards to be able to deliver this integrated function. This includes quality standards in terms of uniformity, readability, shareability, structurability, structural design, integratability and enrichability.

In these areas, I will take anyone’s challenge to prove that Sensus process management is the GOLD standard in process management. Our approach is based on a simple consistent process language, with a cloud application that is designed to facilitate knowledge and data sharing. A cloud application that is made to connect and enrich the various domains. A cloud application that is set up as a total ecosystem that enables organisations to be in control. And perhaps most importantly, the employees who need to read and understand the processes are our real customers. The process manager is, together with Sensus, the facilitator who holds the best tools to empower organisations to be successful in the modern age.

I admit, this final paragraph may be the sales manager in me speaking!

But still, we dare to challenge you to put my bold claim to the test. Please feel free to contact us to discuss your case.

Sensus process management – Intelligent process management

Take care, Hans