The Benefits of Business Process Mapping for Your Business

Here at Otto Digital, we love to talk about business processes. Without sound business processes, companies can waste countless dollars in lost productivity and missed opportunities. Whether it’s your human staff spending too much time on tasks that machines could do faster, or you’re losing sales because leads keep falling through the cracks, your processes matter.

In this article, we’re going to explore the benefits of business process mapping, and there are a lot of them. We’re certain that after reading, you’ll wonder why on earth you haven’t invested time in mapping your processes before now.

 

What is business process mapping?

Business process mapping is a method used to better understand your workflows and usually involves creating a visual representation. You could think of it like creating a blueprint of all the steps involved in each process, one by one.

It can be used to improve a business’s existing processes or to help a new business set itself up. It is an essential pre-cursor to setting up a CRM, ERP or any other business system. Mostly because you need to understand what is required from a piece of software at the selection phase, before implementation. This means digging deep into every process and it relates to every other process.

If that sounds super boring and you’re wondering why you’d do such a thing, well, there are several reasons. Mostly, being able to see your processes mapped out clearly helps you identify inefficiencies and find opportunities for improvement.

Basically, as customer expectations continue to grow and companies need to achieve better results with fewer resources, business process mapping becomes essential. Keep reading, and we’ll take a little stroll through all of the ways your business could benefit.

Identify inefficiencies and streamline operations

One of the major benefits of business process mapping is its ability to weed out those irritating inefficiencies in your workflows. You know they exist, your staff know they exist, and new employees quickly discover they exist when they’re told, ‘It’s just the way we’ve always done it’.

Sound familiar?

By mapping these processes out step by step, you get a clear view of where bottlenecks occur or even find tasks that aren’t necessary at all. Armed with this knowledge, you can adjust your workflows to be far more efficient.

Achieve more sales with expert business process mapping

Anybody working in a sales environment knows the importance of following up on leads. Most companies spend a lot of money on marketing to get these leads through the door, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense to let them fall through the cracks.

Conversion matters, and by reviewing your customer journey processes, you can identify areas where potential sales are getting lost. Plus, once you build more streamlined processes, staff can follow them more easily, especially with custom CRM workflows that promote better customer service.

Business process mapping assists with performance management

Have you ever tried to address performance management issues with staff, only to realise the tools you’ve given them aren’t up to scratch?

That’s exactly what happens when you’ve got broken business processes. Staff need clear guidelines to follow, and process discovery helps you provide them.

Plus, when all of your processes are clear, it just makes managing performance easier.

You’ll have clear metrics and workflows to assess staff against, and process mapping also encourages managers to look beyond staff performance when trying to improve overall results.

Provide more consistent customer service

If you love calling a company and getting different information each time, raise your hand.

Unfortunately, that’s what happens when staff don’t have clear workflows to follow.

Business process discovery helps you build clear, actionable guidelines for staff to follow. And that means all staff, not just a few. This helps to ensure your customers receive consistent advice and information every time they call. Obviously, this is huge for converting sales, building relationships and encouraging repeat business.

Support training and onboarding of new employees

Companies can spend a lot of time and resources training new staff members. There’s always a period of lost productivity while newbies are trained up, but why make that timeframe any longer than necessary?

When onboarding new employees, the ability to give them clear and easy-to-understand workflows can accelerate their development. Without having to learn about strange workarounds that only veteran staff members understand, you can get your new staff up to speed so much faster.

Smarter business decisions

Try to imagine you need to choose between two dinner options, but you don’t really know what ingredients will be in either of them.

We know, it sounds absurd, but stay with us.

The point is, that it’s hard to make a decision without all of the facts.

Business owners who don’t understand their daily operations can’t be expected to make smart decisions without all the info.

Analysing and refining processes allows you to see how all areas of the business interact, which areas need improvement and much more. You can even take advantage of opportunities quickly when you have solid processes in place.

Automate repetitive or mundane tasks

There are so many regular business tasks that could be automated.

Seriously, most businesses don’t know the level of automation that can be achieved with the right consultants on your side.

Humans are famously bad at repetitive, mundane work such as manual data entry. It’s such an ineffective use of their time, and they’re also prone to making mistakes, affectionately known as human error.

There’s no term yet for ‘automation error’, because computers can handle certain tasks more efficiently and accurately than humans.

However, in order to automate steps in your workflows, you need to know what all of those steps are. Hence the importance of business process mapping!

Scale your business more easily

We already touched on the fact that clear processes allow fast business decisions, especially for capitalising on opportunities. Whether it’s expanding to a new location, launching a new product line or simply hiring some new staff members, everything becomes so much easier with good workflows in place.

Also, remember the automation we touched on before? Whether it’s using an API to sync data between programs or building custom software systems, automation helps to reduce overheads and inefficient work.

Ultimately, this could lead to business growth even faster than you might think.

Do you need professional business process mapping?

We live and breathe business transformation here at Otto Digital, and it all starts with business process mapping, or process discovery, as it’s often called. We consult thoroughly to understand your business from the ground up. That’s how we identify the best solutions to streamline your daily work and boost productivity. If you’d like to find out more about maximising your resources and setting a path towards future growth, contact us about business process mapping today.