Tag: Business Process Mapping

A Typical Process Workshop Agenda

15 Nov 2023 - Craig J Willis - BlogTagged , - 2 Comments on A Typical Process Workshop Agenda

Process workshops are an important tool for anyone running any type of process management projects. They are powerful because it’s one of the few chances that teams get together to talk about how they work and how they can improve. Whether you have time to prepare in advance or you are on the spot, here are Skore’s top tips to running a great process workshop agenda.

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    Remember, the output of a workshop typically consists of:

    • an agreed description/visualisation of the process
    • a list of improvement opportunities
    • a list of requirements
    • set of actions for the team to complete

    While mapping a process may be something you are familiar with, running a workshop can be quite challenging, and if you don’t have a good structure to work to, it can be even harder. Therefore it is key to get the agenda for your Process Workshop ready.

    Here’s how we would go about organising the process workshop agenda.

    Before the Workshop

    Firstly make sure you’ve agreed the scope of the process and attendees. Provide the agenda, ensure the room has been booked and all the equipment you need is there and working.

    Introduction

    Introduce yourself, and why you are here. You are likely to be new to a team of people who know each other very well already. You are the outsider and you need to start breaking down barriers and be clear about who you are from the very beginning.

    Objectives and Expectations

    Make sure you go through the process workshop agenda and discuss expectations and timings. Discuss what you hope to achieve, why you are doing it and check that everyone agrees. You can talk about what you want to cover in the meeting but it’s also just as important to make sure everyone know what you won’t be talking about.

    Ground Rules

    Its always a good idea to go through some basic rules that will apply to your workshop. Make sure that the attendees understand that everyone in the workshop has an equal say. If you have a person of authority attending then it is very important that they also back this up. Often team members are reluctant to speak up in front of managers. If you are not getting much feedback you may want to consider if this is why.

    It’s also important to make clear that there are no phones or laptops in use, you need everyone’s undivided attention. If it’s urgent then people need to step away from the room and make sure there are no distractions. Make sure you are in control of the room, so there is only one conversation going on at a time and this is clear. Any major issues needed to be parked after 5 minutes.

    A Process Map in Skore

    Guidance

    Explain the approach that you are using and how it works, show examples if you have them. Even if people are comfortable with process mapping there is nothing wrong with showing them again how the workshop will work.

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      Design Principles

      If this part of a wider programme of work there are likely to be some guiding or design principles, make sure you go through these at the beginning of the workshop. List existing standards and reference materials they have. The organisation may have a generic methodology or approach that the business needs to use and it’s important to adopt this culture, don’t try to change it here.

      List and review the content your attendees already have. You may find however that they can’t think of things on the spot, especially if they don’t use them very often. This may come out more during the workshop – another great reason to run one and you can quickly add the information in as you go!

      Start with the Scope

      Discuss the scope of the process and ensure everyone is still aligned on what you’re going to be focusing on.

      Map the Process

      Make sure you capture ideas, risks, issues and actions as you go.

      You might not finish everything in the workshop, don’t worry if thats the case, but make sure you walk through what you do have by reading it aloud to everyone. If you’re inputting the process straight into software then it’s an opportunity to get people to sign off before they leave the room and are harder to contact.

      Agree Next Steps

      Discuss actions and assign owners to each one. Make sure you agree a timetable for the next steps if possible. It’s important everyone comes away knowing what is happening next.

      Process Workshop Agenda Ready!

      Your basic agenda as prescribed by Skore. You are ready to run an awesome Process Workshop. Give it a try and let us know how it went by commenting below.

      Skore is the Process Improvement Software Platform designed to be used by everyone. Our simple two shape system means you can can map processes at the speed of conversation in live workshops and generate instant analytics and dashboards to help you build better processes that work for your team and discover areas of improvement.

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        How To Run a Process Mapping Workshop

        15 Nov 2023 - Craig J Willis - Blog, PopularTagged , , - 1 Comment on How To Run a Process Mapping Workshop

        Learning how to run a process mapping workshop is a great way to quickly capture, understand and improve processes. It brings people together, aligns them and provides a fantastic opportunity to generate new ideas. 

        Workshops help introduce people to planned change, make them feel part of it and brings them along on the journey. This means that you are more likely to gain future support and engagement in your change or continuous improvement initiatives.

        But if you’ve never run, or facilitated, a process mapping workshop before it may feel daunting. Want to learn more? In this guide we explain how to run a successful process mapping workshop. 

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          Before you start

          Choose your approach

          Process Mapping workshops are brilliant for generating conversations and collaboration. But they shouldn’t be unstructured. You need to guide the conversation to ensure you get the desired outcome. 

          For this you need a process framework or notation that is easy to use and guides the conversation. There are lots of approaches available that you can read about in our process mapping guide. At Skore we use UPN – Universal Process Notation. This approach uses a box that describes the key steps and who does them, and a box that tells you when the activity starts and finishes. It’s straightforward, clear and very effective.

          We really like this because it is very simple to use and understand. It means that everyone in the workshop will be able to engage straightaway and you don’t need to be an expert in Process Mapping to get involved!

          In any case we recommend keeping it simple while asking the important questions. What, why, how, who and when.

          Practice with this before you start. By keeping it simple this type of process mapping will come naturally to you and your participants. 

          Agree the title, scope and participants

          Don’t try to do too much at once so that your process mapping workshops aren’t too long. Think carefully about which process you’re going to map, where does it start and end. This is your scope and will help you determine who needs to be involved. If necessary you can break a large process down into smaller pieces. 

          Set the agenda and objectives

          We have written about process mapping workshop agendas before. But at the very least you need to set the duration, objectives of the workshop and set time aside for introductions and wrap up. 

          Share with your participants early and remind them before the workshop. 

          Make sure everything is set up

          There’s nothing worse than arriving for a process mapping workshop and waiting for the facilitator to set up the screen, flipcharts, handouts etc. Arrive early, or even the day before, and make sure everything is working and ready to go.

          During the workshop 

          Snacks and refreshments

          Depending on how long your process mapping workshops are you should consider providing refreshments. Even providing water, tea and coffee can help participants to relax and show that you are considerate for their situation. They will be busy, and may not have time to take regular refreshment breaks so you are offering them a safe environment.

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            Introductions

            Start your process mapping workshop with introductions, including personal introductions for any participants that are not familiar with each other. Restate the objectives to make sure everyone is aligned and in the right room!

            Review the agenda and spend some time to explain the basics of the approach and how it’s going to work. We also recommend setting some ground rules such as; set phones to silent, one person talks at a time, what gets said in the room stays in the room and park unresolved discussions after 5 minutes. These are basic suggestions so you can add your own. The objective here is to make everyone feel comfortable.

            Follow the methodology

            Now it’s time to start the work your process mapping workshop was intended for. Capture the process following your chosen methodology. You can take a look at our 5 step approach here.

            Capture opportunities, issues and actions as you go

            As soon as a group starts talking about their processes they will immediately identify issues in how they work and make suggestions for improving. Sometimes there are unanswered questions or quick wins the team can action immediately. Try to capture these things as you go.

            Use a flip chart or whiteboard to capture issues, opportunities and actions and then write them up afterward. Or if you are using software to map your processes, capture these items directly against the relevant steps in the process so that you can report on and share them later.

            This template lays out all the steps to consider

            Wrap up and assign actions

            Before you let anyone leave the room make sure you review all the actions and assign them. Agree to follow up so everyone can keep track of the actions and when they are completed, or the outcome of each one.

            It is definitely worth reviewing the objectives of the workshop. Did you meet them, or will you need further sessions and research to close it off?

            This workshop may be part of a wider piece of work so make sure you participants have access to the plan and understand how this fits.

            After

            Share the content

            At the end of a workshops participants will feel a sense of achievement. They will have had a chance to get things off their chests and discovered things about their colleagues they didn’t previously know.

            But remember that you were there to capture and understand a process. So make sure you share the content with them along with any other information that was generated.

            Many people need time to digest the discussion so often come up with more ideas and feedback after the session. Make sure there is a way for them to feed that back into the work.

            This could be by email, or if using a software such as Skore you can capture the feedback against the processes.

            Keep participants up to date with progress

            Where this workshop was part of a wider project it’s important to keep participants up to date on the progress of the project and how this work contributed. There will undoubtedly be time in the future when you will need to invite them to more workshops. So it’s essential that they feel their time was well spent and led to improvements.

            Put what you’ve learned into action

            Finally, you ran this workshop for a reason. Feed what you’ve learned back to the project team to ensure that opportunities are acted upon and the benefits are realised.

            How to run a process mapping workshop

            In this article you have learned to how to run a process mapping workshop successfully. The key steps should remain the same whenever you do this but the tools you use can make all the difference.

            Skore was designed specifically to be used in live process mapping workshops to map processes at the speed of conversation. This means you no longer need to write up notes after the workshop. You can map and share processes there and then. This means you can get sign off and agreement from your stakeholders in the workshop and not lose time chasing after them once the workshop has finished.

            What’s more, you can also capture all your risks, issues, ideas and other information against the process. You’ll have one place to store, manage and share the information. Skore will even provide instant insights through its built in analytics. Plus you get a living breathing document, easily update-able and engaging that everyone in your organisation can read and understand.

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              Top 5 Reasons to Use Process Management Software for Service Improvement

              26 Jul 2023 - Colin Claverie - BlogTagged ,

              Businesses or organisations are always seeking to improve their process and in so doing, their overall service.

              Process management and improvement will lead to service improvement, as the service becomes more efficient thanks to better processes.

              And a great way to improve processes?

              Using process management software that enriches your service improvement needs.

              Here are 5 reasons why you should be using process management software for service improvement. 

              Knowledge Management: All Your Information in One Place

              The first reason is knowledge management. 

              As we know, company knowledge can often be scattered in various departments or sub-departments. This separation of material causes a lot of problems.

              Not only for training purposes when someone new is coming in and finding that the process maps last checked months ago do not match up at all with the reality, but also to avoid miscommunication and make process review a lot easier.

              Having all the information and associated documents in one, singular place, accessible to all relevant team members, is a huge step forward. And is only possible by using software that makes it easy for everyone to access and understand how the processes work. 

              This way, you find out that teams in both accounting and customer service are wasting time filling out the same forms – and you can nip the problem in the bud. Everyone relevant to a particular document or process can have access avoiding such issues and ensuring everything is running smoothly and efficiently instead.

              And it’s not all existing in old filing cabinets, dusty binders, that one Google sheet, or in the head of a team member that’s about to go on leave.

              Process management software with access to process libraries makes it all so much easier.

              Want to learn more?

              Process Reviews Built In 

              Another feature of process management software is that your process review is built into the software itself, helping your service improve exponentially and speedily over time.

              You don’t have to set a reminder or organise a workshop every other week, simply utilise your software’s process review component.

              Software can remind you when it’s time to review your existing processes to find improvement spots. Your decision-making process will be quick and easy. With less discussion regarding changes to the budget, spending, resources, and allocation of funds, everyone is able to see the same pain points suggested on the software for improvement when reviewing processes.

              You’ll stay on top of trends and adjust your business accordingly. No more procrastinating when it comes to reviewing your process or running that workshop, let software help guide you to the best changes for your processes with your team.

              Avoid Miscommunication With Clear Responsibilities

              Another important benefit of process management software for service improvement is the clarity of roles.

              For example, Skore clarifies who is in charge of what task, and what their role entails. Creating a process or reviewing one makes it a lot easier to assign roles and check on the correct individuals whenever there is a doubt.

              Miscommunication will be avoided if people take responsibility making the entire process flow a lot smoother. Software expressly built for process mapping and process management will also typically follow a model such as RATSI or RACI to help assign responsibilities.

              This makes everything a lot more transparent and clear to all involved parties, from the those running the process to the stakeholders looking to understand how it would work. And those in charge of those steps can also understand why their involvement is required during certain points in the process.

              Your process will instantly run more efficiently, avoiding any of the common bottleneck issues when responsibilities are unclear, and ensuring the wait times are shorter or for more specific reasons and not simply part of how “the process always is”.

              Additionally, your process is then focused on roles and not individuals. Mark from Accounting could be unavailable at any time, or even leave the company. But the Associate Accountant role has certain duties and tasks associated, so you can ask someone else in a similar role or a role above them if you run into issues. 

              Assigning roles as standard when mapping processes and having a way to analyse and track them ensures that there is accountability. Often one of the greatest challenges when running a project is being able to push things forward. Once a stage in the process has a role assigned to it, it is clear to all who is responsible for getting sign-off and moving things forward. 

              It’s why in Skore, a central part of the process map is indicating and answering the question Who? Is in charge of what action. The clearer the role in charge is, the best for everyone. 

              Cost Management At Your Fingertips

              With process management software, the Service Improvement goal of cost management has never been easier.

              Let the software calculate it for you and prepare the business case for you, such as with Skore’s Quantify.

              You simply input all the numerical data, and let the software run its options. It’ll provide you with expected revenue, how much of a difference it is from what you’re spending, and then what you should change to spend less. You can be sure that the calculations are available and correct for each process.

              Quantify can even help you assess where the blocks are on your existing process, and then also explore different scenarios. You can then see how those changes will affect the year in a month, quarter, or year, allowing you to build your case for stakeholders to make the necessary changes.

              In fact, Quantify will build the business case for you if needed.

              Decision-making internally within teams and with stakeholders will become a breeze, using valid data to help speed things along significantly. Not only do you have the numbers to demonstrate your case but you can also delve into the detail easily when challenged. 

              And you don’t even have to make the calculations yourself!

              Access the Process from Anywhere

              Finally, process management software allows you to access your process maps and information from anywhere. 

              You no longer need to all physically be in a workshop once a month to work on it together. Software allows you to rely on a cloud-based system, so that your team can access your processes from anywhere, anytime. 

              This means team members can work asynchronously on process mapping or process reviews. You should find a software that allows you to leave comments and add information where relevant. 

              Additionally, because it can be accessed from anywhere, employees will be able to consult it anytime should they run into issues. This is useful during training periods, or any time they have a question. They can quickly determine the correct individuals to ask questions if necessary, or answer their own questions by looking at the process maps. 

              This also means you can easily update your processes whenever changes occur, keeping your processes relevant.

              It also means reviewing the process can happen from anywhere, and with a tool such as Skore’s Quantify you can run it and try different solutions on your own before you share it with everyone else. This easy accessibility will help your processes run smoother and more efficiently.

              Service Improvement means Healthy Processes!

              Process management software exists to help your processes improve, and thus your service improves.

              While we’ve gone over five reasons you should be using it, there are many more to consider. A key point to always remember is process management software is designed to help your business run smoothly.

              You don’t need to patch together process maps and calculations on programs or options that don’t really work for your needs. Everything related to processes should be addressed and made easier and accessible for you in one, singular place.

              Interested in learning more about process management software and service improvement?

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              Cutting Costs With Continuous Improvement

              26 Jul 2023 - Chris Green - BlogTagged ,

              One thing you want to do as a business is to be aware and purposeful with your spending.

              Whatever you are spending your budget on, we all understand that if the organisation can’t see a return on investment then they are going to be looking to cut costs. 

              Your first step if this is the case should be to look firstly at how you can cut costs by making changes internally, your second step is to ensure that these efforts aren’t just a one-off. This is where continuous improvement comes in. 

              In this article, we’ll go over how it’s possible for companies to cut costs smartly by practicing continuous improvement. 

              Let’s start by exploring what we mean by cutting costs before we expand on continuous improvement and what steps you can take to get started.

              What Does Cutting Costs Mean

              Cutting costs in business means making the correct decisions to avoid overspending or spending on anything that leads to lean waste.

              Overspending can show up in a variety of ways. Investing too much in a product and being left with additional inventory, work being duplicated, suppliers being paid for work that is not useful, or on tools that say they will help you run your sales cycle better and faster.

              The tools or materials that are being used may end up costing you more in the long run. All of these cases can lead you down the rabbit hole of lean waste.

              Lean waste refers to any step in your business process that does not provide value to the customer. Your customer has not paid for you to do this, so your doing it is really a financial loss to the company. If we think of it in terms of overspending, it means the supplier you are paying may be a costly decision that is no longer needed as you are not generating enough revenue to support it.

              There are eight different kinds of waste that you will want to keep track of to help you cut costs. They are:

              • Transport – Anything that involves the movement of people, tools, inventory, equipment, or products farther than necessary is considered waste. As an example, consider sourcing materials needed for production nearer to the location of the factory where they are used. Adding travel time will only slow down the entire process.
              • Inventory – In terms of waste, we mean excess inventory. Having too many products that are not being sold can lead to defects, damaged materials, longer production processes, inefficient allocation of capital, and problems being hidden away in inventory. It makes it difficult to detect problems in production and leads to greater problems down the line as products have to be re-made to correct these defects, while the original ones sit as excess inventory taking up space. Examples of excess inventory can be anything from unused records to additional products, to older machines that are no longer used but are taking up space. 
              • Motion – Motion is any unnecessary movement of people, equipment, or machinery. Any walking, lifting, bending, reaching, stretching, or moving that is required but does not serve the customer. Tasks that require too much motion need to be re-designed, not only for efficiency but also to increase health and safety levels in the work environment.
              • Waiting – Waiting is any moment in a business manufacturing process in which someone is waiting for another action to be completed in order for the process to continue. The mishandling of this dead space can have catastrophic results if it is not managed correctly, so shortening wait times are always of the utmost importance. Examples include customers waiting to receive their product, waiting to receive email responses or approval, and waiting on materials to arrive at a factory.
              • Overproduction – Overproduction is when a particular product is manufactured before it is asked for or required. It leads to excess inventory, higher storage costs, hidden defects, and higher costs overall as new products have to be made regardless. Some examples of overproduction include making extra copies, excessive reports that go unread, making more products than customers demand, or in higher batches. 
              • Over-processing – This is when you overcomplicate your product or service, requiring the customer to complete more work, components, or steps. Examples of over-processing are utilisng higher quality equipment than necessary, running more analysis than needed, preparing more detailed reports than needed, and unnecessary steps in purchasing such as too many signatures on a document.
              • Defects – Whenever your product or service is not fit for use. This means reworking or scrapping it, which are not real solutions. After all, both add additional costs to your operation without delivering any value to the customer. There is no clear line between their purchase and the costs you take on in this case. An example is a product that is missing a part or that is the wrong colour.
              • Skills – This is the under-utilised skills and talent of your employees. It happens when organisations separate management from employees too strongly, resulting in a lack of knowledge and expertise from the frontline needed to improve processes. The way this plays out is usually a lack of training, poor incentives, not asking for feedback, or providing employees with the wrong tools for the job.

              When we talk about cutting costs, we talk about taking actions that will directly affect one of these eight wastes. By doing so, you’ll make your business run smoother, leaner and it’ll be a lot more affordable.

              But how to cut costs intentionally to see a real solution – by practicing continuous improvement. This is a long-term solution for your organisation.

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              What Is Continuous Improvement

              Continuous improvement is a philosophy that calls for a constant, incremental improvement to your business processes leading to higher efficiency and thus greater success for your business.

              By practicing continuous improvement, you are always in the know of what your company is doing and aware of where there may be spots you can improve on. Having this information available and handy is key for strategic decision-making, allowing you to adjust to new trends, new technology, or any disruptions that may happen.

              As a philosophy, continuous improvement provides you with a set of tools and techniques you can use to best lead your company to success. It’s subdivided into four key components:

              1. Involve everyone. A big component is the involvement of everyone in your workforce to think of ways to improve and monitor existing business processes. By involving them so directly, you also foster loyalty and a positive feedback loop can be established, as they can understand exactly how their work contributes to the business’s success, and thus their success too. 
              2. Continuous improvement culture. Establishing a culture of continuous improvement from the get-go will be entirely beneficial to your business. You don’t have to re-train people, simply make it part of their everyday tasks and they themselves will begin to think of ways that your existing processes can be fixed. This fosters communication and helps avoid issues such as the doubling of paperwork or tasks unnecessarily. It also helps keep responsibilities clear. 
              3. Map your processes. To find the areas of improvement, you need to have your processes mapped and as true to life as possible. Without these maps, you’re the blind leading the blind, and unlikely to see much improvement. Map your different processes, involve your team in doing so, and involve your team in reviewing them. Those troublesome bottleneck spots will be easy to find and solve by making the right fixes and changes.
              4. Find the right tool. Finally, you want to find the right tool that helps you achieve continuous improvement in a way that is easy and sustainable for your business. For some, this means having their company knowledge spread out over several Google sheets and docs, for others it means making use of tools such as Visio or Nintex Promap. At Skore, we like to help companies centralise their knowledge and have everything accessible, from documentation to external information, in one location.

              Remember, in continuous improvement, everyone is always wanting to identify and fix any business process inefficiencies. 

              An inefficiency that you will find is fixed over time as a result?

              Overspending.

              How Continuous Improvement Leads to Cutting Costs

              Because you are constantly looking for inefficiencies in your business processes, it will be quite easy to find areas where you can cut costs. You want to maximise efficiency to run smoothly, and that involves improving your spending practices.

              You may find that the manual tool that requires manual follow-ups to all leads is actually quite draining on your employee’s time and your wallet, so you switch that up for a more automated option instead.

              Constantly checking on trouble spots also means you’re aware of how much is being spent in certain parts of the process. And if what you’re making from those deals does not match up with how much you are spending, you’ll know you need to start trimming the fat and find ways to spend less.

              How to best practice continues improvement?

              That’s where software such as Skore comes in.

              You’ll have your collection of process maps in your shared process library, so that all involved employees can study the relevant processes constantly. On Skore, it’s possible to set up a monthly process review. Because you can also add all the relevant data, it’ll be quite quick to see how your processes are doing numerically and thus, easily compare revenue vs spending. 

              The minute the numbers are not adding up, you can start looking into why and trying different solutions on Quantify.

              Unique to Skore, Quantify can help you identify the bottlenecks in your process that are resulting in hidden costs. It can help determine what you should change in your process, and it can help you predict what those changes will look like in a month, quarter, or even a year. Your decision-making will be a lot easier, and a lot quicker with the numerical data backing you up. 

              No more worrying about hidden costs.

              Instead, easily cut costs by practicing continuous improvement using a tool such as Skore, that will keep this information safe and accessible to you in a process library you can re-visit any time.

              Conclusion

              Businesses need to take care of their bottom line if they are going to succeed.

              This means keeping track not just of money coming in, but also of money going out.

              And finding ways to minimise how much of that money is going out.

              The best way to do so? As we saw, continuous improvement will lead to smart decision-making and changes that will help you cut costs while retaining your business’ efficiency.

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              4 reasons you should use Process Hierarchy when mapping processes

              05 Jul 2023 - Craig J Willis - BlogTagged , ,

              Do you understand the importance of process hierarchy and creating sub processes? 

              Mapping processes is a vital way of keeping your organisation healthy and ahead of the game. Any successful company should be doing it. But the method 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. 

              You may have seen large 2 dimensional processes with tens, or even hundreds of steps included. They may have limited sub-processes, but most of the information is displayed in a single view. If printed out they span several pages carefully stuck together on the wall. Or if viewed on a computer screen they require both vertical and horizontal scrolling, constantly zooming in and out, to work out where in the process you are.

              Some notations, such as UPN and IDEF0, have process hierarchy built in. It’s a natural part of the approach where processes are summarised at a high level and then individual steps are broken down into more and more detail. While this creates more diagrams it has a number of advantages making your process documentation more accessible to users, more effective for improvement, more efficient for stakeholders and much more connected across the organisation.

              With modern software tools there’s really no need to keep creating large, complicated and difficult to use processes. 

              So here are 4 reasons why you should be using process hierarchy:

              1. Process Hierarchy makes processes easier to read

              Being able to summarise processes without losing the detail means that users can digest what’s on the page much faster. In many cases, individuals only need to understand a specific part of a process so being able to see the relevant part straight away makes life much easier.

              High Level Process Map

              What’s more, a summarised process is easier to display, in a readable format, on a single page or screen. Today, when we spend more time reading and consuming information on a computer screen, we are also limited to the size of that screen. So if you can fit a process on a standard computer screen, and make it readable, without zooming in and out of the text, it’s going to be easier to read.

              With the right technology, users simply need to click through to see the next level of detail to get what they need and still understand the full context. Making it easier for them to read means you are going to have better engagement and collaboration from the people who really need to be accessing this information. 

              2. Process Hierarchy connects the right people to the right information faster

              In addition to making processes easier to read, through breaking them down into digestible chunks, the process hierarchy means that colleagues only need to access the part of the process that’s relevant to them.

              Clear Hierarchy in Process Software Platform

              For example, executive management doesn’t need to know the details of how an invoice number is generated or who approves it. But they do need to know the key processes that deliver value to customers, the order they happen in and who owns them.

              Similarly, a Finance Manager doesn’t need to know the individual line items on an invoice, but they do need to know the approval flow and the business rules that dictate who approves what.

              The Finance Administrator needs to be very clear on how and when to create an invoice number and how to order the line items.

              Each of these colleagues can enter the process hierarchy at the relevant level saving them time looking through large complicated flowcharts where only a small portion is relevant to them. This means your process map becomes a tool that can be presented to executive management for a high level overview and then drilled down into the detail when needed by any level of the organisation. 

              3. Process Hierarchy shows how key processes fit together

              One of the most common problem areas, identified in process improvement projects, are handovers. Where information, or products, get handed over from one person, or team, to the next.

              While we can try to reduce the number of handovers, across a whole organisation it’s impossible to eliminate them completely. Instead we need to know where the critical handovers happen and who owns each side of them. That way we can monitor and manage these interfaces.

              Using process hierarchy to summarise all the processes into a single ‘Business on a Page’ view elevates this challenge to the executive level. All the organisation’s key processes can be displayed in one place, along with the key handovers.

              This ‘architecture’ view of the organisation helps inform strategic conversations and aid decision making, especially when it comes to change and transformation.

              What’s more, if the hierarchy is connected all the way down to the task level then senior management will have better insights into the impact of potential changes.

              4. Process Hierarchy helps develop critical thinking

              Mapping processes using hierarchy makes your efforts more effective because it forces stakeholders to think more critically about their processes. Simply describing a process step by step helps people to think about and challenge how it’s done.

              But when stakeholders are also asked to summarise their process and then group low level activities together they go through a much deeper thought process. 

              It helps to reconcile different types of thinkers. Some people naturally think at a very high level while others think in detail. If your process document is only focused on detail then it’s harder for the high level thinkers to engage and follow and vice versa.

              So collaboration becomes easier as you are able to use the hierarchy to address both needs and bring them together. Participants have more conversations about handovers as those handovers need to make sense at both the higher and lower levels. This forces teams to address issues that often go unnoticed and make decisions there and then.

              Process hierarchy in UPN – choosing the right approach

              Most standard process notations are designed to be flat 2 dimensional diagrams with all relevant information displayed in a single view. Notations such as BPMN allow for some sub-processes but these are generally limited in scope to include only activities carried out by the role, or system, associated with the parent box.

              UPN, on the other hand, is designed with hierarchy as a key part. The intention is that processes can be summarised at a high level, then each step is deconstructed into more and more detail until the necessary information is captured.

              Traditional tools for creating flowchart diagrams typically require the author to create multiple diagrams and manually link these together, which can be time consuming and prone to error and resource intensive maintenance over time. So when looking at building processes with hierarchy it’s important to find a tool that has this ability built in so that the software can manage the relationships between the parent and child diagrams in the hierarchy.

              Conclusion

              If you’re trying to influence change across the organisation and make a real impact with process improvement and process management then using process hierarchy is essential. It helps you create a holistic picture of all the processes in your organisation and how they connect.

              But it’s just as important to select the right tool to help you. Not all process platforms support this type of mapping, or at least not easily. Notations such as UPN are hierarchical by nature so it’s best to choose a software that also supports hierarchy by default.

              Doing so will help make your effort more effective, more efficient and more connected to the wider organisation.

              If you’d like to explore this further please get in touch with a member of our team. 

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              Creating a Roadmap to Success with Skore.

              24 Nov 2020 - Anna Roebuck - Case StudyTagged , ,

              Skore’s partnership with this leading RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing) vastly improved communication between the Client and Project Team. This enabled them to onboard new clients quicker and ensure a high quality and efficient service. 

              Cielo are an US based RPO whose mission is to ensure their clients attract the best candidates possible and provide incredible service. They were frustrated by the rigidity and overly complicated process drawing tools they were using. The introduction of Skore led to an enhanced and improved user experience. It was easy for both client and project team to understand and engage with. 

              As part of their onboarding process, Cielo reviews a client’s current recruitment process, identifies improvement opportunities, aligns with best practice models. They create a world class future state service to delight and satisfy clients. They use Skore, process improvement software, as an essential part of every client project. 

              Driving Change Differently 

              The easy to use and simple interface means that everyone in the organisation can follow the process. Erin Arkin leads the project management office for Cielo. She is responsible for managing work streams, engaging with clients and ensuring deadlines are met. Skore was an instant hit with Erin.

              ‘Look at this great tool, it made us think, how can we map processes differently? And how can we drive change by looking at change in a different way.’ 

              High standards and thorough discovery work means lengthy questionnaires are often needed with new clients. Best practice models must fit around a client’s bespoke organisational structure, compliance requirements and business culture. Skore was the tool that gave them the flexibility to shift and move things around without having to recreate a process flow every time. This greatly improved the user experience for all involved. 

              Delivering Information in High Level conversations

              Skore showed Erin a more dynamic approach to presenting processes. 

              ‘Previously we were getting into rooms of leaders, heads of Talent Acquisitions and Senior Leadership teams and then having to pull out a process map with swimlanes and trying to walk them through what the future was like and what it meant for them. It just wasn’t communicated at all in the right way. Being able to show Skore and say here is an overview of your process flow, we can do detailed dives, we can call out notes, document SLAs, responsibilities etc in a way that is really engaging.’

              Skore enables Erin to go to leaders to review processes with the ability to talk about a high level view of what it would look and feel like. She has no need pull out a 20 page process map that they have no interest in. The easy to understand process diagrams encourages engagement and collaboration at every level of the organisation.

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              The Backbone of Every Project.

              Cielo’s comprehensive discovery process with the client means Skore is engaged from the very start of every project. The software allows them to map the process, at the speed of conversation, in front of the client. From there it is simple to demonstrate Cielos’ proposed vision of the new process. For Cielo the added advantage is that clients can effortlessly understand and easily sign off on the project.

              Internally the team can then use Skore to develop detailed procedures on how they will follow the process workflow and the key steps needed to implement. Plus the detailed and easy to read process maps are then used to train recruitment teams and advise on how to interact with hiring managers and candidates.

              Amber Boland is the Experience Designer for Cielo. Her role is to work with clients and understand how recruitment functions work in their organisation. She ensures that future processes are aligned with the Cielo best practice model. Skore is an essential tool for success. 

              ‘It really is the backbone of the design, of everything we do in the project. It provides a roadmap of a project that the client signs off. It can show a level of minute detail and simultaneously be high level enough to give the client the required overview’.

              Flexible and Adaptable

              Skore’s design means that Amber is able to build out Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for her team. Using the software platform she is able to identify the workflow early on, train her team and brief Shared Services. Skore holds all the relevant information and is available to her at a glance while keeping all the internal workstreams aligned. 

              For Amber, Skore is a living breathing document that describes all aspects of a client project. Allowing you to add and tweak information, it starts as a template and grows into the single source of truth for everyone involved. 

              ‘Little details come out the more you get involved with a client and the more stones you unturn. I can hop back into my map and move some boxes around, update who is responsible, add a note box about an exception on a process, add in some questions to ask the client… like throwing up sticky notes on the map.’

              Skore’s flexible, adaptable approach means that for Amber and her team, their process maps constantly evolve. After the team is trained and the project goes live the team continues to update, improve processes and publish new versions. This functionality also supports the team as the relationship with the client grows. If Cielo wins further business with the client they already have an up to date and interactive library of information ready to go. 

              Optimising internal processes and creating efficiencies

              Cielo first started using Skore to assist with external projects but having seen the benefits Skore is now also used internally. Using templates in Skore, Cielo can easily ensure their own teams understand and utilise best practice models. By engaging this way they are able to review the way separate teams work and create consistency in technologies and tools used. Erin confirms:

              ‘Skore helps us to look at how we optimise the way our teams work in business as usual and move them where necessary into a more optimised process and engagement model. We can find the gaps and look at efficiencies.’

              Constantly providing clarity and simplicity

              For the Cielo team using Skore gives them the ability to create a more functional process using an easier tool for teams to navigate.  

              ‘Skore is so user friendly, it’s easy to get in and move things around. For the basics – anyone with a quick tutorial can get the gist so it really saves time with new people joining the team to access and add information. The simple, comprehensive design consolidates everything into one picture, a one stop shop to see the Who, What and Why.’

              Internally Skore has won over leadership and stakeholders, it allows teams to be flexible, proactive and adaptable with new clients. Using a process mapping software that dares to be different and allows everyone in the organisation to collaborate and engage gives Cielo yet another advantage over the competition.

              Skore is the Process Improvement Software designed to be used and understood by everyone in the organisation.

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              Skore & Marjolo – deliver ground breaking business transformation.

              17 Dec 2019 - Anna Roebuck - Case StudyTagged ,

              Early 2018 saw Marjolo and Skore embark on the beginning of a partner relationship that would transform their own business practices and the scope for innovative transformation projects. 

              The Opportunity Identified

              Marjolo’s ‘disruptive and dare to be different’ attitude attracted Skore who saw an opportunity to  work with a company with a similar ethos and behaviours to themselves.  Skore initially collaborated with Marjolo on short outcome based projects where it was vital to deliver value quickly. It became rapidly obvious that the combination of Skore and Marjolo was not only a perfect product fit but also a true company match, and recipe for success.

              Originally used internally to define their own processes and growth prospects, Marjolo immediately saw the value and began to use the same process with customers. Initial collaborations saw Marjolo using Skore software on smaller projects, adopting it quickly for tactical situations whilst combining Skore on a wider scale into their methodology.

              Partnership Development

              The relationship between the two companies developed swiftly with similar cultures being only the start. Skore and Marjolo continue to work on projects together with Skore recently hosting public training at Marjolo headquarters in Sheffield and a Skrum community event planned there for March 2020. Chris Green, Skore Partners Director, says

              ‘Working with Marjolo on community events like these just demonstrates again how aligned Marjolo and Skore truly are. Shared thinking and collaborations means the customer is truly put to the front of everything we do’.

              From the beginning, Marjolo’s innovative approach to everything saw them considering new and fascinating ways to apply Skore to different projects. One such opportunity saw them considering how to use Skore to improve a Capability Assessment approach on an already established client project. Indeed, one of the most exciting parts of this new partnership is the chance for Marjolo and Skore to combine their expertise and explore ideas of how software could be developed and improved for the future to create industry leading initiatives, offering sustainable growth and financial advantages for clients.

              Collaboration Tried & Tested

              A recent in-depth project challenge with a multinational BPO was to develop the concept of the ‘Contact Centre of the Future’.

              By using Skore’s software, Marjolo was able to underpin the three main process elements of the project in greater depth through workshops and greater engagement of the organisation:

              • Technology
              • People (future job opportunities and capability requirements)
              • Process

              Marjolo capitalised on the Skore platform solution by implementing it as the thread connecting the various workstreams.  By simplifying the project, Marjolo accomplished innovative transformation initiatives and delivered effectively on cost and time demands.

              Skore’s leading edge software resulted in Marjolo being able to capture the Roles and Responsibilities in the People workstream whilst collating and understanding the technology requirements (Epics and Stories) against the processes. Together they prototyped a solution to take these requirements and process information and transfer the project directly to DevOps.

              For Dave King, CEO of Marjolo, it was

              ‘the first time I had seen true process led requirements capture’.

              Differentiation by Partnership

              Ground breaking innovations such as these, results in Marjolo now including Skore as part of their ‘go to market’ offering to truly differentiate themselves in the market and outperform against all business strategy expectations.

              Chris Green stated that he is proud of the fact that Skore with Marjolo are winning more work and increasing software sales. More than that however,

              ‘Marjolo have assisted Skore in reaching an even wider audience and exploring possibilities that we would not have considered possible a few years ago. Marjolo are more than a partner – they have the capability to instinctively bring out the best in Skore, assist us in product development and continuously challenge the way transformation and change occur in organisations.’

              Skore is a Process Mapping and Analysis Platform that captures current process mapping in a live workshop environment.

              Used by consultancy partners and end users alike, it enables organisations to understand, map and collaborate on their processes by providing an intuitive interface. A live workshop tool, its’ reporting and dashboard functionality delivers clarity, insight and process efficiencies. Skore aligns people, processes and tools

              Marjolo works to support businesses in navigating industry and economic challenges by aligning business capabilities & culture with digital technology innovation, creating and delivering success blueprints resulting in real savings & benefits to meet organisational aspirations.

              Are you continuously improving your processes?

              04 Nov 2019 - Craig J Willis - BlogTagged ,

              How often has this happened? You map out and understand key processes for a systems implementation or organisational change. Identifying the opportunities, requirements and constraints you deliver the much anticipated improvements. Then, the processes get filed away and largely forgotten. How therefore, can you continuously be improving your processes if they are not engaging your organisation? 

              Fast forward a year, the next change is around the corner and you know the processes are already captured. You retrieve the documentation, dust it off and discover the world has changed more than you thought. Despite all your hard work in that last year, not one person has been responsible for continuously improving your business processes and they are out of date. 

              Does this sound familiar? If this has happened to you then read on. Learn how to develop a sustainable process framework that ensures the processes are not only kept up to date but more importantly deliver considerable value above and beyond the original project. 

              Skore Process Map
              Image taken from the Skore Digital Discovery Platform

              Chart a new direction

              Instead of filing the process documentation away for use in some future project, think about how it can be used to deliver more value to the business today. In the short term, for example, it should provide training material and support to those involved in the change.

              Explore other initiatives in the business that would benefit from having clarity on key processes. A good place to start is with compliance, standards, customer experience, continuous improvement and operational excellence. Identify the key people in these areas and share the work that has been done to see how it could support their goals and objectives.

              Creating the processes is one thing but keeping them up to date will probably require new processes to ensure feedback loops are closed and content actually gets updated when required. Consider what infrastructure you need to put in place from the beginning to encourage this culture and help you improve your processes continuously. 

              Next, think about how this gets communicated to the business. Make clear what the benefit is for each team, the individuals in those teams and how it helps them to do their jobs better.

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              Empower the business

              Once the processes are defined think about the people in each team who own and look after them. Identifying the process owners is essential as these are the people that will have the final say on what gets changed.

              Identify champions responsible for gathering feedback and ensuring something happens with it. A system, such as Skore, helps here by gathering comments and managing changes to content. However someone has to be responsible for making happen. Therefore you need a ‘go to person’ in each team that everyone knows to ask.

              Learn how to share a process across teams in Skore

              Sense and respond to change

              With the key stakeholders identified and the processes mapped start putting it into action. Well mapped processes provide a common language for teams to have focused discussions about what works well and what can be improved. For this reason we recommend that teams start to include a process review in regular team meetings. Continuously improving your processes should be a team effort not individual.

              These can be once a week or even once a month but it’s worth taking 10-15 minutes in each team meeting. Review one or more processes and ask those simple questions; what’s causing us to slow down? What could we do better?

              This may, or may not, lead to a change in the process. Either way the team knows and is reminded about how it works. Processes actually end up being tweaked more regularly as teams become more familiar with them. The processes become a reference point for experimentation and identify potential issues long before they become a reality.

              Embedding simple process reviews into regular team meetings significantly increases the agility of the team and maintains high levels of communication and trust. These regular team meetings offer you the opportunity to ensure processes are improved continuously. This is better than at the last minute or because something has gone wrong. 

              Continuously Improving Your Processes

              There are clear benefits to reusing processes in this way. First the ability for a team to sense and respond to changes much quicker. Second, when that next transformation programme inevitably comes around, the processes will be up to date. The team will already be aligned and have a much deeper understanding of the need for change. Sustaining processes not only saves you money when you kick off a change programme. It can also increase the performance of the whole business. Your organisation must stay agile and continuous improvement of your processes is key to that success.

              Skore is the process discovery, insights and improvements software platform. Skore allows you to map processes in live workshops at the speed on conversation. You gain instant insights into your organisation and engage and collaborate across teams.

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              Can’t see the robots for the trees?

              24 Jul 2019 - Craig J Willis - Blog, RPATagged , , , , - 1 Comment on Can’t see the robots for the trees?

              Make sure you are identifying the right RPA processes straightaway.

              As soon as you get into RPA you can’t help but see opportunities for applying the technology everywhere. Although not every opportunity turns out to be suitable, it’s important to keep feeding the pipeline. 

              The concept of using robots to automate manual activities is very simple. Logically it should be fairly simple to spot opportunities for using them. However, this whole area, despite the phenomenal growth in the RPA market, is still massively under exploited in most organisations.

              Why is it so hard?

              There are numerous reasons for this. Firstly RPA capability is still young and developing in most organisations and there is limited capacity to move quickly. Secondly, for many the value is yet to meet the promise, although when it undoubtedly does it will rapidly hit a tipping point. Finally, the workforce in general do not have the necessary skills, knowledge and information to spot relevant opportunities. It is vital that your organisation can identify the right RPA processes from the start.

              Skore’s Experience.

              Skore recently was contacted by a client working on compliance processes in Skore. It involved checking hundreds of PDF files to ensure the right data had been entered into the right fields. They could only check a sample each month which was about 1% of the total.

              The client was aware of RPA, having seen it in action in their organisation, yet hadn’t spotted the opportunity to automate in their own department. It was only when they captured the reporting process and it came to life in Skore, that the light bulb moment arrived.


              Identify RPA processes
              Image taken from Skore

              As they summarised –  “the problem is that we spend so much time down in the weeds. We’re focused on getting all this work finished everyday we don’t see the bigger picture.”

              When the wider process was laid out visually, with highly manual and repeatable steps clearly highlighted, it was obvious that significant improvements could be made. When the time and cost data was added to Skore there was a clear business case too. Then they were able to identify the right RPA process.

              A revolutionary change…

              Although it was the significant time saving that was exciting the client, the benefits went way beyond. Suddenly their 1% sampling could become 100% of documents with the team free to follow up on those that failed the compliance check. This significantly reduced the risk of poor customer experience, regulatory fines and the resulting effect that would have on the business brand.

              Despite the fact that the client was well aware of the capabilities of RPA they had found it difficult to spot opportunities for applying the technology. They were so focused on the day to day activities that they couldn’t see the difference between those that were highly standardised and repeatable and those that weren’t. It was by taking the time to capture these processes that the RPA need and benefits became clear.

              Conclusion

              To identify RPA opportunities we need to take a step back and look at our processes objectively. We must devote time to understand what the company needs, what our staff need and what our customers need. It is very easy to get lost in the detail and lose the bigger picture. RPA promises great benefits but only if we can commit to taking the time to identify the right processes to automate.

              Skore’s cloud based Process Improvement platform rapidly captures business processes and produces instant insights.

              The Number 1 Reason RPA Projects Fail

              18 Jun 2019 - Craig J Willis - BlogTagged , , , , , - Leave a Comment on The Number 1 Reason RPA Projects Fail

              How to stop RPA failure? Up to 50% of RPA projects fail during or after the initial implementation according to a recent Ernst and Young’s report. Unsurprisingly for many, the main reason is that projects are IT led rather than by the business.

              However this is not an IT problem, it’s a business problem. It is the business who has failed to engage with, or properly understand, the project and it is the business who has misaligned their strategy and processes.

              Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a technology with strategic implications. Absolutely IT must play a significant part in any implementation but to achieve a truly transformational change to your bottom line, profits and customer experience the business must be in the driving seat.

              So, how does the business become, and stay, engaged in such an important initiative? How to stop RPA failure?

              Business benefits

              RPA, in its simplest form, takes on many manual and repetitive tasks currently performed by humans.

              More sophisticated RPA implementations can start to pick up more value adding work, often between multiple systems, where humans are performing manual interface activities such as moving data from one system to another. This is especially true when augmented with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

              Typically RPA should only be applied to parts of the process, significantly speeding it up and reducing errors. Very few full end-to-end processes are suitable for implementation of RPA.

              Not investigating and entirely understanding your processes means potentially you are pushing the problem further along. The bottom line is that while RPA may have improved one part of the process, the rest continues to consume as much time and resources leading to little or no business benefit.

              It is essential that the business leads the effort to understand the end-to-end business process. They must identify the parts most suitable for RPA and understand the impact on the rest of the process. Only this will ensure that a real and measurable improvement can be produced.

              Business priorities

              The old adage “when you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail” is common when any new and disruptive technology comes along and RPA is no exception. Once you start to look at your business through the RPA lense you’ll quickly identify many potential opportunities.

              The key is, as above, to try and identify the true business benefits. It doesn’t have to be time consuming. The days of long discovery and analysis phases are coming to an end with the advent of new software tools such as Skore’s Process Improvement platform. This capture and analysis of end-to-end processes takes a fraction of the time compared to traditional ways.

              This means the business can quickly understand the potential business benefits across multiple processes allowing a comparison and prioritisation of opportunities.

              Once benefits are understood in terms of time and cost savings they can be compared to strategic business priorities to ensure that your RPA initiatives are clearly aligned to your business strategy.

              How to stop RPA failure
              Image taken from Skore’s Robotic Assess Module

              Support for IT

              IT will play a critical role in the success of any project.

              To support IT ensure they have the necessary budget to deliver the expected benefits. Essentially however, they must also have access to the business expertise to ensure they can build the right solution.

              Any work carried out to understand the processes and quantify the benefits should include representatives from IT. This means they are engaged early and fully understand the context of what you are asking them to provide. It will go a long way to preventing unexpected problems cropping up later in the project or after going live.

              Conclusion

              RPA promises to transform many businesses with rapid deployment, speed of operation and quality of output. However applied in the wrong place with the wrong motives it can quickly turn into an expensive project with no tangible benefits.

              Follow our tips on how to stop RPA failure:

              • RPA projects should be led by the business to deliver tangible business benefits aligned with strategic priorities
              • Processes need to be understood holistically and the impact on non-automated parts properly understood – investment in this stage is vital
              • Keep IT engaged throughout to ensure everyone is fully aligned

              Find out more about how Skore and how our analytics could help your business identify the right processes for automation. Skore’s software platform builds a prioritised portfolio of RPA opportunities based on robust ROI analysis. It was designed with a simple two shape system which means everyone in the organisation can understand and share processes.

              Learn more about how Process Improvement can transform your business by accessing our resources here

              Learn More

              Statistics taken from Ernst and Young’s recent report ‘Get Ready for Robots’ available here  https://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/Get_ready_for_robots/$FILE/ey-get-ready-for-robots.pdf