13th July 2024
In Netcall’s guide to process mapping, you’ll learn about:
If you’d like to understand process mapping or want to learn a little more about any of the areas above, then please read our comprehensive guide to process mapping below.
First – what is a process? A process is a set of activities or tasks that are carried out to deliver an outcome. For most organisations, that outcome is usually tied to revenue.
The number of activities described or the outcome achieved can be completely individual to any organisation or person. While some processes are pretty similar, it’s always worth talking through them first, to make sure that they are accurate.
The basic concept of process mapping or business process mapping is actually very simple.
Process mapping or Business Process Mapping is the practice of looking at all the actions that your organisation does and visualising them in the form of a map. These may be actions that occur daily, monthly or annually. The maps exist to help you and your organisation understand how you are accomplishing your goals, who is in charge of what action, and how those actions play out.
If an organisation wants to be successful, they need to understand their processes to find places to improve or see where there may be issues. The process of capturing how things work is often also referred to as process capture or process discovery. This guide will examine process mapping using all of these terms.
A process diagram or map is how we record that process. We’ll talk about this in our process mapping guide in a lot more detail later. As we said earlier, it is a visualisation of your process. This is often presented on one single page to make it easy to read and understand, with arrows demonstrating the following steps to achieve an outcome:
We use process maps for a variety of reasons, but mostly for:
Mapping out your processes comes with so many benefits and advantages – even in a process mapping guide it is difficult to mention them all! But to help you understand its importance, here are the key reasons why your organisation should be investing in process mapping to ensure they continue to lead the way.
Gives you the ‘big picture’
By taking the time to process capture, you’re producing a snapshot of how your organisation works. Different departments don’t always talk to each other, and company leaders are not always aware of the ins and outs of the day-to-day of their processes. By taking the time to work it out in a process mapping workshop, everyone will be able to share what they’re doing and account for a doubling of tasks or gaps in the tasks that are causing unexpected issues.
A lot of the time, you’ll discover that a singular issue has plagued multiple departments in your organisation. And can be fixed quite easily. It’s just a question of getting everyone to communicate and being aware of what each other is doing. This is only obtained by having the ‘big picture’ before you.
Gather information
You can have all this information centralised in one location, such as a process library when mapping out processes on software. This means you or your employees can revisit this information constantly to check in. Having it all gathered in one place makes it a lot easier to train new employees, conduct improvements and find missing or problem-causing spots.
Process discovery allows you to collect information about your organisation which can be vital. Anything from costs, risks, time taken to achieve a task, time lost, bottlenecks, requirements, systems used – the list is endless.
Whatever the reason for mapping processes, it’s essential to be clear on whether you start by mapping the As-Is or the To-Be process. In this blog we’ll explore the difference between As-Is and To-Be, providing a guide to help you to get started.
Mapping processes is a vital way of keeping your organisation healthy and ahead of the game. The method that you use will make all the difference, changing this from a one-off painful exercise, to a way of working that brings instant and long term benefits for everyone.
Looking for alternatives to business process modelling notation – BPMN? There are some exciting alternatives available. In this blog we explore some of the options.
Explore the vital link between process mapping and the assignment of roles and responsibilities within an organisation.
Operational excellence is a philosophy that focuses on problem-solving for constant, continuous improvement. We’ve talked about the importance of constant process improvement for your business in the past. It helps you both adjust to changing times and the availability of new tools. You can grow as a business whilst avoiding losing out on more revenue.
Discover how process optimisation can help you achieve your business goals. How do you ensure that you meet those goals? By making sure your processes are running as efficiently and effectively as possible.
Keep up with regular news from Netcall – you’ll hear about cut-through process automation and communications solutions to help you achieve your business goals faster.
Company alignment
Mapping a process means that everyone gets to learn how something is done and should be done. You should involve everyone in your team to participate in the process, allowing them to see how their day-to-day actions directly impact company goals. The organisation then becomes aligned in its way of thinking and doing, as employees can see how they are making a difference.
“Process mapping fosters teamwork and welcomes ideas for improvement from all parts of the company so that everyone feels included regardless of their position.”
Craig Willis
Head of Client Solutions – Process Improvement, Netcall
Capturing your processes on a consistent basis means that your organisation is always ready to launch a project, course-correct strategy, or change programme. Process mapping allows change to happen – and happen successfully.
Often effective process mapping will shape how an organisation makes decisions and changes objectives or procedures for its benefit. Trying to make change without having a clear idea of how your business is run, is a high risk and will often not be rewarded.
If you truly want to make impactful change, you need to understand why you are making that change, and how it is likely to make a difference. While this is predictive and may not always be accurate, it is a much better way of beginning to enact change than simply deciding to switch any aspect of a process without having it mapped out. You may only be creating more delay if you don’t accurately know the problem spot.
With your processes mapped out, you can make data-driven decisions instead. Liberty Spark’s, our process improvement solution, is a tool that helps you take a map one step further to make such decisions. Easily providing you with the data you need, all you have to do is plug the existing information into your process map for Spark to find areas you can improve upon. And once you find those spots, you can use Quantify to try out different solutions. See what’s costing you most and remove or replace it, add or eliminate a step, and see an estimate of how making any changes will have an effect on your organisation in a week, month, or year’s time. And to top it all off, a report will be ready for you to review with your stakeholders.
Improved performance and tangible benefits
Taking the time to map processes also means that teams have the chance to look at the way they do things and challenge whether those steps are correct. They may also discover there is a quicker, or cheaper, way to do things, find steps where tasks are repeated, or think of new ways to improve customer experience.
Process capture allows everyone to assess their processes and think of the best ways to do something. This will mean higher levels of service for all and a more efficient and optimised organisation. This also helps you reduce unnecessary costs and save more to invest in the correct verticals.
Mapping a process should never be a short-term goal. Process mapping is something that should be continuous and constantly worked on as things change. Once an organisation has mapped a process, they should be able to share it with everyone. A process should always be constantly reviewed and updated. If it is, it can be an excellent training and induction tool for any employee to use.
Process maps can be stored online or in the cloud easily and in an easy-to-read format – making it effortless for employees. And, because you are constantly checking in with employees about how things are working and whether they think anything can be improved, you ensure that they are always aware of the overall impact they have on the organisation. This fosters loyalty and support.
There are so many clear benefits to process mapping – it’s difficult to really see any disadvantages to taking the time to capture your processes. But, as is true with all things, if it’s not done correctly, mapping processes can be a wasted exercise. Continue reading our process mapping guide to discover how not to process map:
Doing process discovery the right way first time, requires investment, in the form of time, revenue and in software and sometimes experts.
That can be hard for any organisation to understand. This is especially true if they haven’t really taken the time to understand the benefits. Such an investment is wasted if the process isn’t captured properly, and that also typically requires a lot of additional time from employees, which takes them away from their daily tasks. Everything will have to slow down for a bit when organisations begin to consider and map out their processes, which will impact their revenue and be a costly exercise for a short time. If done correctly, however, they will make that money back quickly and efficiently.
A lot of success and problem-solving can be hung on process mapping. Making sure the organisation understands what you can and cannot do is really important from the very beginning, otherwise, you will be frustrated with your results.
You need to map out your processes and then realistically understand how making changes will impact your business over time. Expecting to make lots of revenue simply because you fixed one problem, is not how process mapping will best help you. You need to constantly troubleshoot the process and define goals to aim for, to truly practice continuous process improvement correctly. And to get the results that you are after.
Business processes can be really complicated to display. If they aren’t mapped in a simple way, they can be overwhelming and difficult to read, meaning your employees do not engage with them. If they are on paper, it’s easy to lose or forget what was said, or not properly understand the handwriting and it doesn’t work for remote working.
Fortunately, quality, process-map-focused software exists to help keep things simple and streamlined, so that everyone can read and follow along with any process map. They will no longer be a mess of arrows and bubbles.
Out of date easily
You can spend a lot of time mapping a process. You feel great after a workshop, you create a beautiful process map… And then you forget about it for a year or two. Once you finally dust it off, its way out of date. What a waste of time! It’s vital to ensure that you continue to use your process map after the workshop, not just leave it in a filing cabinet to check in on every few months. Using software that is easy to update and share with your colleagues will make that ten times easier.
And if the software has a built-in process review, that helps to remind you to constantly check up on your process maps and compare them to how it’s working on the ground. The more accurate your process maps are, the better you are at making the changes to truly impact your goals.
Takes too much time
Make sure that you have the correct tools in place beforehand and your process discovery will go smoothly. While you do need to take your time to get it done, it should not be negatively impacting you to do so. Process mapping should be clearly explained and have demonstrable goals that everyone can follow along to help understand why the time is being taken to do it.
Sometimes, the time it takes to map out a process can be blamed for stopping the whole project or initiative. It’s really important to make sure that the method of capturing your process is effective. Can you do it in the workshop or do you have to waste valuable hours later entering all the information? Are people getting frustrated by trying to access information that isn’t accessible to all?
Like many business activities, there are different ways to approach process mapping. Different notation types and diagrams showcase how your business is run. In this part of our process mapping guide, we will go through some of the main process mapping notations and types, but this list is not exhaustive.
Mapping the actual process in a lot of ways is the easiest bit. However, what you may find more of a challenge is getting the information out of the right people to build the process as it actually plays out. This facilitation is a skill to learn all by itself and you can find out more about how to run a process workshop the right way in this part of the guide to process mapping below.
Most process mapping will start with workshops. This is the best way to get everyone together who is involved in the workshop and get them talking about how the process works. However, it can be difficult to get everyone in the same room, especially if they work in different departments. When you manage it, it’s really important to get it right. If you don’t it’s going to be difficult to convince people to come to your workshop again.
Most importantly make sure that you have invited the right people to your process mapping workshop. Ensure that you have the subject matter experts in the room. If the process crosses departments, they should all be involved. There will be no point mapping out the process, if half of the important actors are missing.
Traditionally, it’s important to make sure that you order lots of sticky notes in all colours and have a big supply of brown paper. Process Workshops historically have been held in large rooms where the paper is put on the wall and the sticky notes act as shapes. The diagram is created in front of your eyes. This works well visually of course and should bring the team together as they discuss processes.
However, you can’t keep a process map like this on the wall forever and it will have to come down and be documented digitally. This is where mistakes happen as sticky notes fall off the paper or you forget which bit came first. It also means that whoever is running the workshop then has to spend time documenting the workshop so make sure that you allocated time for this afterward. It’s important to inform those involved that they may not be able to see the end result for a week or two and manage their expectations. This does not lend itself to hybrid or remote working either.
The other way to do it is to enter the information into a laptop while you are in the workshop. By using the projector you can show the process map to everyone and it’s easy to make changes and record information. However you may find that some process mapping languages are just too complicated to do in front of everyone.
Spark’s simple method means that you can capture the steps of a process as people are talking so it’s easy to add, update and delete information as needed. The information is then ready to use as soon as the workshop is finished and can be shared with everyone.
Process mapping workshops can be engaging, collaborative and healing spaces if they’re well-prepared and organised. Using tools that can aid you and your attendees to map out a process will really help in this, so make sure you have done your research and are fully prepared to run the workshop.
The reality is, it’s not always possible or suitable to run a process workshop. Another way to discover your processes is to hold one-on-one interviews. An interview will be more focused and can be done quickly as you save a lot of time when not having to manage different discussions.
Plus, the other advantage is that people can be more open when no one else is listening. You may find that in workshops people are afraid to be honest about how a process works especially if they are in front of management.
The disadvantage of an interview is that you get a very one-sided view of the process. This means you need to make sure you interview as many people as possible to get different views and approaches. One-to-one interviews may be a safe space, but it may also mean that issues aren’t addressed and teams are not aligned.
An interview could also be a good way to start off your process capture before a workshop. It allows you to review the process and then it can be discussed by the group. With Spark, individuals can always contribute without feeling singled out as it can be done asynchronously.
In addition, you can always examine existing documents to start putting your process mapping together. It is possible to take existing documents such as policies and procedures and translate them into processes. It’s unlikely that document translation would ever be enough to complete your process map. However, it would raise questions and discussion points which can then be reviewed by the team later as part of the process capture.
It’s an opportunity for your team to get together and check if they are doing things the right way and see if they can do anything better. Even more than that, it is a chance for the team to check they are aligned, that they understand each other’s roles and they work together to make change happen – it’s a way to inspire loyalty and pride for your organisation.
“Processes are an essential part of any organisation. For your organisation to be successful, you need to understand them. In our experience, mapping a process is a sharing, collaborative and engaging experience. “
Craig Willis
Head of Client Solutions – Process Improvement, Netcall
Use this process mapping guide to make sure that you are getting the most out of this activity every time. And to truly improve and get the most out of your process maps long term, you must practice continuous improvement.
Continuous improvement is a philosophy that preaches continuously studying and engaging with your existing processes to improve them. This helps your business run more effectively, manage costs, improve customer satisfaction, and will overall optimise your business for success. This part of the process mapping guide will go into more detail of how continuous improvement works.
By practicing continuous improvement, you always know how your company is doing. You can recognise changes and emerging trends in positive or negative directions, and adjust your organisation’s processes and goals accordingly.
And always remember to involve all parties in this, as it helps keep everyone aligned with company goals. The more your employees understand the direct impact they have on your organisation’s success, the more you foster loyalty and can inspire everyone to find ways and places to improve.
Continuous improvement works by consistently checking in on the effect your current processes are having on your success.
You can typically figure it out with numerical data, such as sales numbers, costs and how well they are doing. The lower your sales and higher your costs, you can easily put together that something is going wrong. In the past, it could be easy to forget to check this if you don’t have someone assigned expressly to do so. This meant even though sometimes processes changed on the ground, only those directly involved found out and owners or stakeholders did not, as there was no good record of these changes.
And when those employees moved on, the new process was lost. Organisations constantly find it easy to do the groundwork to capture process information, but incredibly difficult to maintain that progress. This does not need to be an issue anymore
Continuous improvement is directly linked to knowledge management. By knowledge management, we refer to maintaining information instrumental for your processes to run correctly stored and saved within your organisation. In the past, your processes (maps and any associated documentation) could not be consolidated in one singular place to function as a centralised source of truth for how your business is run.
But technology has made it possible. How? Simply by creating a process library.
A process library is a location for all of your processes and their documentation to be stored. It allows you to easily use them for training purposes, for workshop purposes, and to retain the knowledge you have of how your organisation is currently being run.
Process libraries are instrumental in continuous improvement.
Without them, you do not know enough about how your processes are being run for continuous improvement to be practised. Or you have to re-map your processes every time you remember you want to improve on them, making it an incredibly time-consuming activity you simply keep procrastinating on.
With the right software, you can create and document all your processes and save them in a shareable, collaborative space for everyone to check. And it can even remind you when you should be studying them to see what can be improved on based on the numerical data you input as well – that’s what we’ve done with Spark.
Remember, you are never truly done improving your processes, something can always be improved, but you won’t know where to even start if you don’t have your knowledge stored in one place, easily accessible and shareable.
If you found this process mapping guide useful, you can gain access to even more resources below and take a look at our easy to use process improvement tool – Spark.
Now it’s faster and easier to map and evolve your processes. Create process maps that everyone understands.