Process optimisation: the strategic approach to streamline, automate, and supervise all your business operations. Improve the performance and responsiveness of your organisation!
This content on process optimisation is part of our Business Process Management dossier.
One of the main objectives of management is obviously to support the company’s growth.
In an economy that is constantly changing, companies need to be able to adapt quickly and optimise the operation of existing structures: diversification of activities, reorganisation, rationalisation of processes, etc. Unfortunately, managers encounter major obstacles to making these adjustments.
Process optimisation is part of the operational excellence approach, the principle of which is to systematise and methodise the continuous improvement of productivity, quality and cost reduction in the interests of organisational performance. This permanent quest for added value implies in particular the best possible human coordination and the continuous analysis of results! It therefore requires a focus on processes and systemic thinking.
Firstly, a common example of optimisation is to act on the lack of communication between the various management applications deployed within the company (ERP, CRM, SCM, CMMS, EDM, etc.) as well as with partners (whether operational or, in the case of a subsidiary, updating group reporting). This lack of coherence due to the siloed operation of the various applications and, by extension, the related business processes, hinders productive interaction between the various departments. Administrative processes, for example, are often affected.
Secondly, management cruelly lacks any real visibility of the performance of the processes in place. It is for this reason that Blueway's Phoenix platform natively integrates the necessary business process supervision and management functions to kick-start a continuous improvement approach and thus target the objectives of operational excellence.
The day-to-day challenge for the business teams in contact with customers (sales, logistics, support, advisers, after-sales service, etc.) is to guarantee customer satisfaction while keeping operating costs under control.
If we take the example of a customer service manager in a logistics company, he has to constantly optimise his department's processes: from making appointments for deliveries to organising rounds and automating the sending of service satisfaction questionnaires used by the marketing departments.
With Blueway's Phoenix platform, the Customer Service manager automatically retrieves information from the Call Centre and automatically modifies the delivery schedules according to the sector of activity. Routing plans from their depots to delivery are calculated automatically.
As a result, his main mission is evolving towards supervision or BAM (Business Activity Monitoring), which is why he can access the dashboards from a touch-sensitive tablet, giving him freedom of movement both inside and outside the company.
Among Business Process Management (BPM) methodologies, Blueway is recognised for its pragmatic approach, which has proven its effectiveness in numerous projects.
We offer a pragmatic vision, formalised in the functionalities of Blueway's Phoenix platform: the "bottom-up" approach, i.e. the optimisation of existing business processes, without calling into question your organisation or your current information system. This means you can gradually optimise your business processes.
Automate their implementation: The implementation of these processes is then automated within the platform, giving you immediate productivity gains.
Rethink your organisation and processes: as your project matures, you can then rethink your organisation and processes within the platform (top-down approach).
Reuse automated processes: all the automated processes created with Phoenix will be reused and realigned with your new organisation.
Optimising a company’s business processes is based on improving each process, from the most global vision (circuit, etc.), to each of the stages and each of the elements that make them up (who, what, when, how). As a director or manager, this is a direct way of boosting productivity and profitability!
It’s also the way to gain strategic vision and the ability to take action at the organisational level, thanks to the consolidation and analysis of a wealth of internal and external information.
Cost reduction (production, purchasing, resources, etc.)
Satisfaction of in-house teams through their development (fewer tasks with no added value, etc.)
Better integration and value creation with the extended enterprise (partners, subcontractors, customers, etc.)
Enhanced brand image thanks to improved response times and quality
Adaptability and organisational agility
Operational excellence involves modelling the optimal process, automating what can be automated, organising actions, empowering those involved and supervising. This may sound like a technical vision, but process optimisation is also one of the levers of change management and must include the human factor! If processes have been modelled in collaboration between IT and business departments, and if business users perceive the added value of the solution, they will be much more likely to take it on board. Indeed, change management depends first and foremost on the business teams assimilating the IT tools.
Once the workflows have been correctly modelled, implemented and documented, they can be optimised by automating some of the actions. For the company and its internal users, this means significant time savings through the drastic reduction or even elimination of tedious tasks with little added value.
The main stages in optimising processes at company level are as follows:
Taking into account the cross-functional nature of processes and the interconnections between the company’s various departments is part of the foundation of our approach, and echoes one of our convictions: business processes should not be siloed and constrained by the application boundaries of the information system. It’s the cross-functional business vision, and therefore efficiency, that must take precedence!
There are a number of other points to watch out for, such as over-validation: rethinking processes sometimes leads to a desire to validate everything, both the necessary and the unnecessary, leading to bottlenecks. It is also important to question the existing system: dematerialising does not correct modelling faults!
At Blueway, we’re convinced that workflow orchestration is one of the cornerstones for optimising your business processes. It’s one of the cornerstones of our Phoenix platform.
Without calling into question your existing processes or installed applications, it enables you to automate the sequence of tasks and processes. You also give users back control over collaborative tools (portal, e-mail, etc.), giving them access to the information they need at the right time.
Making the right information available to the right people, summarising the data they need to process and ensuring that approvals take place at the right time are just some of the business problems you can easily solve with Phoenix.
Dynamic routing functions and processing supervision also enable you to be more agile in distributing information and alerts to target users. Complete traceability of exchanges means you can find out at any time the path taken by an item processed within the business process.
Process Governance is the Business Process Management module in our Phoenix Data Platform.
To increase agility, business processes can be modelled graphically and intuitively, in compliance with the BPMN2 standard, by business and IT managers, who can then work together.For excellent visibility of how the company is operating, our BPM solution gives managers access to statistics that have been specifically configured for them.These enable them to check that business processes are running smoothly by monitoring their performance indicators. When an anomaly occurs, alerts are broadcast in real time to administrators, who can quickly simulate resolution scenarios before modifying the processes concerned.
thanks to the integration of your company's data (reference data as well as Big Data) for better collective intelligence.
Instant notifications, monitoring of essential procedures, performance indicators, scenario simulation.
Automatisation, enrichissement, corrélation, assistance à la saisie…
It's easy to use, with mouse-over ergonomics, Responsive Design and forms tailored to the characteristics of future users.
between existing applications to avoid wasting time.
The coupling of the process and data processing dimensions of the Phoenix platform will enable you to automate the sequences of a process that requires little or no human interaction (even though it is closely linked to the Information System). It’s a real accelerator for optimising your business processes!
Native integration between the Process Governance and Data Governance (Master Data Management) modules also ensures that business processes use reliable, up-to-date data.
For IT Departments and IT teams, the Phoenix platform relieves them of some of the burden of projects, thanks in part to the application bus, in favour of higher added-value involvement in change management and methodology.
The two approaches, ESB and APIM, are complementary: the ESB positions itself as the orchestrator of your Information System's services, while the APIM focuses on the governance of exchanges with the outside world (managing access to and use of APIs, controlling usage, standardising APIs to ensure their scalability, etc.).
The digitisation of administrative processes is another very good example where BPM brings a strong return on investment. Administrative processes play a central, cross-functional role within organisations, structuring many essential activities. Optimising these processes frees up the potential of administrative departments by eliminating time-consuming tasks and automating low added-value processes: data consolidation, automation of data entry and transmission tasks, etc. All administrative processes can be concerned, such as order book management, audit tracking, meeting room reservations or the processing of certain files. Over and above the gains in performance and data quality, it's also a way of boosting the satisfaction of administrative staff!
To ensure optimal operation, disconnected mode with an application running entirely on a portable device enables embedded data to be processed without systematically calling on external resources. Then, when the user is able to connect, data is synchronised automatically or manually.
Between a tablet and a smartphone, the sequence of tasks, screens and the amount of information displayed on a single page must be adapted to offer maximum user comfort.Certain functionalities that are complementary to those usually integrated into an after-sales service, CRM or route management tool need to be integrated to meet users' needs: mapping, the ability to take photos, barcode entry, etc.).
Obviously, everything would be simple if all users were regularly present within the company, if the devices used were the same and if everyone was disciplined in managing exchanges between their terminal and the central systems in the best possible way. However, BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), changes in media and the management of authorisations and permissions are transforming the most virtuous systems into magnificent messes.... To avoid major disillusionment, you should at least have tools for managing these terminals (who owns what), distributing applications, data and authorisations (who uses what and under what conditions) and tools for monitoring exchanges (who has not replicated for more than "n" days, what data is exchanged, its volume and traceability).
Finally, unfortunately, securing your exchanges and data is not enough to give you peace of mind.You need to ensure that data transmitted to the wrong device cannot be read by another recipient, and that a lost or stolen terminal cannot be easily used by its new user....
These mechanisms must be simple to use and complex to circumvent to ensure that devices are secure while causing as little disruption as possible to the user, whose vocation is to have a tool with which to work.Digitising processes with a Business Process Management approach is one of the solutions to these challenges, to complement the applications already in place!
