17th March 2024
One of the best investments you can make as an organisation is to create a process library.
Historically, processes were difficult to keep track of and hard to keep up to date as an organisation evolved. Fortunately, due to the advent of technology, this has completely changed.
It’s now possible to keep track of your processes, and this is the help you need to bring order to your chaos.
Let us show you what this means.
A process library is simply a repository of all your mapped processes. Your organisation is run on them.
A business process refers to the series of steps your organisation takes to accomplish a certain goal. When they work well, these actions should reflect the revenue you receive, or your other markers of success.
It’s not enough to simply have the steps written down as a checklist or existing in your employee’s brains as parts of tasks that they do daily.
Processes must be mapped for organisations to truly flourish.
If you do not map your processes, you do not understand how your organisation is run. And if you don’t understand how your organisation is running, you don’t know where you are overspending or losing money.
We’ve had clients that were losing an entire week of work on activities. Once they mapped out processes and utilised Liberty Spark as a tool, they gained back precious time and resources to dedicate to their clients. Liberty Spark is our process improvement solution.
Had they not taken the time to map out their processes, they wouldn’t have figured it out.
A visualisation of your organisation’s strengths and weaknesses
Process maps serve to visualise how your organisation is working. They help you to identify places to improve. This can include realising you are missing certain documentation, or that you have a lot of redundant forms. You may discover that you can source materials closer, giving you a lot more time as a company to dedicate to other tasks.
These are the type of realisations that come from mapping processes.
A process map can take many forms and utilise many notations, but the end goal is always to help you optimise your business and achieve operational excellence.
If you take the time to map out your processes as they currently exist and then continuously check that they reflect the reality of your business, you will begin to practice continuous improvement. Your business continues to grow steadily and efficiently thanks to having them mapped out.
And you’ll compile all of these processes for constant review and update in your process library.
Mapping processes no longer involves sticky notes, coloured pens and paper. It’s no longer a time-consuming, complicated process and there are no filing cabinets where processes get lost after a long workshop session.
It used to be a headache to think about where you could keep your process maps safe to come back to. They were often lost, forgotten about or remade (because by the time anyone looked at them again, they were so out of date).
When organisations originally began to map processes, this would be done in long, tedious workshops involving all employees, from stakeholders to front-line workers. Because organisations seek to understand exactly how all parts of their business operations function, they need to involve all relevant workers involved in a particular process, from different departments as well as the experts and stakeholders.
This isn’t inherently a bad thing and it’s one aspect that remains the same today. Except the workshops don’t need to be long. Or tedious.
It’s helpful for everyone to know each other and understand what they contribute to each process and company goal. Opportunities for new ways of thinking or combining forces can come from these sessions.
After all, it’s at this point that organisations could discover redundant tasks or expenses that are actually unnecessary to their success. To get to that stage, stakeholders and owners need to understand exactly what each worker is contributing to the overall process and company goals.
Not anymore.
Software such as Liberty Spark allows you to design and map your processes on your computer and save it on a cloud-based server: a process library.
Our tool makes the mapping process collaborative and asynchronous, as employees can add to the maps as things shift according to their tasks. And, thanks to the library, they can always go back to the map if they have any questions, or during training. Process owners are encouraged to review their maps quarterly or annually to ensure they stay up-to-date and relevant.
As a leader in your organisation, you can also always easily stay updated on how processes are working by checking the library.
Having your process maps saved in one place will also make running workshops for process improvement a lot easier.
It’s no longer necessary to use a ton of paper to create them. You can simply create them on a screen and interactively add or remove them as you capture information during the workshop. And, this can be done with teams asynchronously as well, allowing relevant employees to share their contributions in their own time.
All employees can understand how their tasks contribute to the company, and as a leader, you can refer back to it for improvement or to see how a new tool or vertical would fit. Quite quickly, once you find the best process for specific goals and repeat it enough, you can make it company standard and use it for training.
In short, having a process library helps you:
Fortunately, in the 21st century, technology can help you out.
With Spark, it’s easy to map out a process. It’s also easy to create a process library for all your processes.
You can save that process and refer back to it via the process library feature.
Managing your processes has never been easier!
Utilising and managing it correctly is easy, so long as you remember a few basic factors.
At Netcall, we prefer to use Universal Process Notation (UPN).
We find that UPN ensures everyone in the organisation, no matter their rank or role, can understand what is being shown before them intuitively. There is no room for misinterpretations or confusion, no need for additional certifications and it keeps process maps clean and uncluttered.
Why would you group some processes under a similar tag?
Variations, such as accounting for odd payroll situations, or new iterations of processes as you explore different steps or technology you can adapt for improvement. You don’t want to edit the official process map until you’ve tried out alternatives.
You can edit permissions to certain processes as well as generate reports, all from the comfort of the library portal. And keeping track of edits can be done via a visit to history, to see who has changed it and how it has changed.
Permissions and sharing are encouraged with our tool, as process mapping is a collaborative job. With a library, however, you can share a map but not make it editable for all employees, simply ensure they have the company knowledge to turn to as needed.
All processes in one place
Your business processes absolutely need to be mapped for you to truly understand your business. Without this visualisation, it is akin to managing your organisation wearing a blindfold.
But once you map them, how do you keep track of them? How do you use them to train new employees or to continue improving?
Instead of having to constantly map your processes for specific workshops or keeping everything as lists in multiple documents, it’s easier than ever to have all your maps in one place: a process library.
Retain company knowledge, have ready training materials and explore alternatives or improvements – all in one place!
Get in touch with our team at Spark so that we can help you start building your process library today.
The ultimate process mapping guide! Learn how to get started – this guide covers everything from process maps to continuous improvement.
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Unlock the full potential of your organisation by creating a comprehensive process library with Liberty Spark
