What is Process Improvement? Definitions and Best Practices

How is your business doing? Could you do better? If your answer is no, think again.

All companies, from start-up to enterprise level have the potential to do better. Even if your metrics are booming, you’re operating smoothly and your sales pipeline is healthy, there is always room to improve.

Going the extra mile and fostering a culture of continuous improvement will empower you to gain a competitive edge, save costs, and increase employee and customer satisfaction.

What is Process Improvement? 

Forbes defines process improvement as a methodology that helps you take in and evaluate feedback about your business processes to ensure continual improvement. The concept is to always improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your business strategy, to help identify potential issues so you can rectify them. 

In short, continual process improvement is a key strategy to highlight inefficiencies and unlock the potential for your organization to do better and achieve more.

What is Process Improvement in Business? 

Many organizations have digitalized their processes using no code or low code Digital Process Automation (DPA) tools. This alone leads to significant savings and rapid ROI, but business process improvement will take your outcomes to the next level. As its name implies, it is the idea of improving and optimizing existing business processes to achieve operational efficiency.

The Importance of Process Improvement 

Process improvement is integral to business success. It’s the foundation that your organization operates on, and it is essential to harness it to continuously improve, build, and achieve competitive advantage. For your organization to achieve operational efficiency, it is vital for business leaders to accurately, and frequently assess areas for improvement and drive widespread Business Process Automation (BPA). 

Benefits of Process Improvement 

There are a number of benefits of prioritizing strategic process improvement in your business plan. Forrester highlights a rise in the adoption of process technologies for process intelligence strategies.

They identify that 46% of organizations are proactive in their process improvements, frequent process assessments, and optimization initiatives. Improvements can be made in all industries, whether it's construction, healthcare, finance, or another, there are always benefits to be seen.

Some of the Benefits of Process Improvement Are… 

1. Productivity

FlowForma Customer Downer New Zealand recently automated their manual business processes with FlowForma Process Automation. With wide adoption throughout the organization, Downers employees have boosted productivity levels and time-savings.

To date, Downer has streamlined processes and saved over 3,350 hours. Cameron Hyndman, National Digital Engineering Lead at Downer highlights this, by saying: “Everyone is working smarter consistently, so the quality of documentation has been enhanced considerably, which was much needed.” 

2. Employee and Customer Satisfaction

Improving your processes can be beneficial to both employee and customer satisfaction. Employees can focus on their jobs rather than searching endlessly for documents and manually entering data.

Similarly, a customer-focused approach will position your organization ahead of the curve if you are continuously asking how to identify continuous improvement opportunities.

To date, Downer has streamlined processes and saved over 3,350 hours. Cameron Hyndman, National Digital Engineering Lead at Downer highlights this, by saying: “Everyone is working smarter consistently, so the quality of documentation has been enhanced considerably, which was much needed.” 

3. Agility

Automated processes are delivered far quicker than manual processes. There are features to monitor and refine the processes when resource changes or external factors necessitate change. 

4. Visibility

When a user is presented with a full view of the process, its current status, future steps, and history, process performance can be compared to benchmarks, with bottlenecks easily identified and investigated. 

5. Collaborative and Informed Decision-Making

Businesses are harnessing the power of process automation to capture information throughout the process, measuring progress and reporting on the findings. Business leaders can use these analytics to make informed, and faster decisions – backed by the data, of course. 

Process Improvement Best Practices 

At FlowForma, the best approach we recommend for Process Improvement is to make sure you have the right tool for your organization. Selecting a Digital Process Automation (DPA) tool can be difficult, there are many choices. There are certain things you must bear in mind while identifying the best fit for your company and team members. 

• List your objectives and desired outcomes.
  
  
• Use a checklist to identify your ideal Digital Process Automation tool – here’s a free checklist crafted by our Experts.
   
• Identify what process(es) you wish to improve... Ask yourself: what are the process improvements my organization can make now to maximize operational efficiency? Typically there will be at least one constraint for efficiency in all processes.
  
  
• Get expert guidance to ensure business success. 

Process Improvement Methodologies

There are many process improvement methods and methodologies for assessing your processes for areas of improvement. The most common process improvement methodologies are the DMAIC Methodology and the Kaizen Methodology.

The DMAIC Methodology: 

PMI recommends this process improvement methodology using the acronym DMAIC. The DMAIC steps are as follows: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control. 

1. Define

Identify why it is relevant for the Customer and the Business to improve this process. Set up a meeting with all stakeholders and analyze the current process in detail. 

2. Measure

Determine the metrics by which you will assess the process's success. This will give you a clear and concise area to focus on. 

3. Analyze

Pinpoint the root cause of the problem within your existing processes. At FlowForma, our Customers use FlowForma Analytics to access real-time dashboards that highlight bottlenecks, productivity lags, and any gaps in the process. 

A Screenshot from a FlowForma Analytics Dashboard.

4. Improve

It’s time to identify what needs to be changed and the actions you recommend your organization take to ensure that the process is operating in an optimized manner.

5. Control

Set up a plan for success and cover how can the organization maintain the continuous improvement of your processes. This might entail closer monitoring of analytics and dashboards by the process owners.

The Kaizen Methodology: 

Another one of the most popular business improvement methodologies is the Kaizen Methodology, a Japanese business that translates to ‘change for the better’. Its core objective is to make the work environment more efficient across all business units. The Kaizen methodology, in short, promotes the idea of continuous improvement - that a small change now can have a huge impact in the future.

Kaizen is a process improvement methodology that highlights the impact of all employees in ensuring operational efficiencies. Kaizen encourages employees to strive to improve the overall business model – no matter how small the change.

Many leading companies have employed the Kaizen methodology, perhaps most notably Toyota, a leading car manufacturer that employs Kaizen as one of its key values. In their company culture and process improvement strategy, Toyota encourages higher employee engagement in identifying areas of potential continuous improvement and actively making changes in their business plan. 

There are 5 Key Steps Involved in the Kaizen Methodology: 

1. Know Your Customer

Understanding the main users of a process can aid the organization in optimizing your current processes to enhance customer experience. 

2. Let it Flow

This is the idea of improving processes by eliminating waste, whether it is in paper processes, time wasted, or financial waste, it is the concept that everyone in the organization should be thinking about how to reduce waste when completing a task – if something is not efficient, ask yourself ‘why is this? And how can we make it better?’ 

3. Go to Gemba

Gemba literally translates to ‘the real place’. It promotes the idea that the Leadership Team should have visibility over all areas of an organization to achieve total quality management.  

4. Empower People

With the visibility highlighted in step 3 of the Kaizen methodology, the Leadership Team of an organization should set goals for the entire team and help them to achieve these targets.

5. Be Transparent

Data is the strongest way of measuring process success. Performance improvements must be transparent and tracked to determine if the performance initiative was successful. 

Whether your organization employs the DMAIC, the Kaizen methodology, or other improvement methodologies. The principles for creating a process improvement plan and making continuous improvements remain the same: 

• Assess the Improvement Methodologies and find what works for your organization
  
  
• Evaluate your existing processes, and highlight any process problems
  
  
• Identify areas for continuous improvement in a simple process to begin with
  
  
• Make impactful changes 
  
  
• Review the results and performance metrics
  
  
• Ensure operational efficiency within your organization 

With a no code DPA tool like FlowForma Process Automation, all employees (not just IT) will be able to make an impact on your business processes. Start your 14-day free trial to kick-start process improvement initiatives throughout your entire company.