Finding clarity in purpose: a ten step guide to process mapping

by Leslie Allan on 30th June 2009

It is an unfortunate truth that many organisations continue to communicate fragments of important policies and processes to employees through one-time emails and the like. This could include a new purchase authorisation policy or a new data entry procedure. Expecting employees to forage through past emails and other transitory type documents only leads to wasted time and exasperation.

Process clarity is one of the three key foci in effective organisational design, along with people and technology. Yet with the haphazard process management common in many businesses, it is little wonder that employees struggle to do a good job. How an invoice is processed, customer complaint handled or engineering drawing approved in many organisations depends more on who does it and what day of the week it was done on rather than on sound business reasoning. Where process and role clarity is lacking, personal idiosyncrasies and political maneuvering take over.

Moreover, research indicates that less than 20 percent of product defects and service problems are due to non-random factors, such as malicious employees, machine breakdown and poor raw materials. The other 80 percent or more of problems is due to systemic deficiencies with processes. So, although mapping your business processes is relatively simple to do and involves no costly capital expenditure, it pays huge dividends in business efficiency and employee commitment. If you are thinking about mapping your processes, here are ten key pointers to keep in mind.

1. Involve employees who actually do the work in the mapping

Employees who do the actual work are in the best position to know the detailed steps in each process. They are also most familiar with the common roadblocks and bottlenecks and the key contacts in the organisation to get things done. Involve your employees up front by inviting them to join process-mapping teams. Keep managers and supervisors out of the process-mapping sessions, as they have a tendency to dominate the sessions with their own “expertise”.

2. Identify process start and end activities

For each process, clearly identify the start and end. If the team neglects this important step at the start of each mapping session, in the team’s enthusiasm, extra activities will quickly creep into the picture until the process becomes unmanageable. Think of one activity that triggers the process, such as an invoice appearing in an in tray. This is the start. Then think of the last activity performed. It may be, for example, posting an item to the General Ledger.

3. Identify process objective and inputs and outputs

This is where work starts to take on new meaning for employees. The team leader should ask employees why each process is performed and what are the expected results of each process. Not only does this help to focus attention on removing non-value add activities, but it also gives employees a sense of purpose in their working life.

Asking the teams to identify the inputs to the process and the expected outputs will serve to clarify what the process needs before it can begin and what customers of the next process will get before they can begin. For example, agreeing that widget assembly cannot begin until the joining screws are supplied will eliminate a lot of idle work in progress.

4. Identify Customer and Supplier requirements

Next, each team needs to work out who the suppliers and customers of the process are. This step is critical as it identifies who the team needs to work with collaboratively to maximize business results. If a process does not have a customer, then eliminate it as it has no useful purpose. Every employee working in a process should serve either an internal customer or an external customer or both. Each team should then ask of their customers what it is they want from the process, in terms of quality, turn around time, and so on. For example, the internal customers of the purchasing team may require orders to be fulfilled within two days unless placed on backorder.

Conversely, the team needs to clarify what it is they need of their suppliers, both internal and external, to perform their process effectively and efficiently. A purchasing team may require other departments, for example, to fill in all fields of the Purchase Order prior to submission.

5. Identify a Process Owner for each process