Process improvement is on the agenda of many organisations. Sometimes it’s out of necessity, but often because there’s room to do things even better. But how do you approach process improvement, and how do you identify opportunities for your organisation?
Sometimes, processes urgently need improvement, and process optimisation becomes inevitable. For example, from a financial perspective. But it can also be that current processes are undermining the business model, or are negatively impacting employee satisfaction.
In other cases, processes are running fine, but there’s an opportunity to make them even better. This is called proactive process improvement. Think of performing even better for the customer or taking your services to the next level. It’s also possible that new technologies have emerged that you want to implement within your organisation.
What is process improvement?
Process improvement is about systematically improving business processes to work more efficiently, effectively, and/or cheaply. The goal is to reduce waste, increase quality, and improve both customer and employee satisfaction.
Small adjustments, big impact
Process optimisation starts with critically analysing existing processes. Identify all the bottlenecks and inefficiencies, and investigate what their causes are. Once you have these insights, you can start optimising in a targeted way. Small adjustments can have a huge impact on your processes.
By evaluating processes in a structured way, you get the opportunity to look at your organisation’s processes with a fresh and objective perspective, uncovering new optimisation opportunities.
Strengthen, improve & innovate
In addition to the improvement points that emerge from the analysis of processes, we also view process optimisation from other perspectives. Consider opportunities such as:
- Digitising, automating, centralising, and mechanising processes or activities.
- Training the team to increase effectiveness.
- Standardising workstations and processes to work more efficiently and improve employee satisfaction (after all, a well-organised workspace is more enjoyable).
- Improving physical layout and routing, and using process boards.
- Using apps that provide the team with better information, allowing your processes to run significantly better starting tomorrow.
Don’t jump to conclusions too quickly
By using Workload Planner and Workforce Planner for process improvement, you immediately gain insight into the impact on hours and labour costs. These tools help you quantify the effect of the changes in your process (i.e., what’s the return in euros?). This gives you a realistic and well-founded picture. This way, you avoid overestimating your results (you wouldn’t be the first to do so).
Next-level efficiency? Let’s make it simple
Curious about how we work? We’d love to have a conversation with you to tell you more about our approach. With our structured method, we quickly get to the core. Successful process improvement is teamwork. Together with your stakeholders, we turn adjustments into lasting better processes.
