Tag: Business Process Mapping

How To Run a Process Mapping Workshop

24 May 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. 

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. 

Join our community for more insights and case studies

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.

Snacks can also help but consider healthy snacks such as fruit, rather than sweets and chocolate. Snacks high in sugar can cause the team a short term high but then a deep low within an hour and this can be hard to work through.

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.

Want to learn more about Skore?

Get even more great content from Skore direct.

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.

Get Started Today

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.

Get Started Today

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.

Like this? Sign up for more insights delivered straight to your inbox.

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.

YES! Sign me up for a free trial!

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’s Digital Discovery Platform

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 Digital Discovery platform rapidly captures business processes and produces instant insights. The Robotic Assess module enables organisations to highlight process to automate and creates the business case to support them. 

Transformation implies big changes but does it really deliver?

15 Jul 2019 - Craig J Willis - Blog, Business Performance, Digital DiscoveryTagged - Leave a Comment on Transformation implies big changes but does it really deliver?

The word transformation implies big changes. To achieve them businesses invest considerable time, effort and money. You are justified in expecting a sizeable return for all that effort.

However most businesses finish a transformation program having only achieved minor performance improvements or nothing at all.

Aims v Outcomes

It’s a sad fact that the word transformation often symbolises the amount of pain and effort a business goes through. It is rarely about the benefits intended. 

Businesses often plan to carry on working in the same way as before whilst transformation focus tends to be technology driven. This doesn’t work because new technology might make things faster but if you’re NOT doing the right thing in the first place, you end up doing the wrong things faster.

Your focus is on changing the tools the business is using, not enough on testing their original processes and changing the fundamental ways of working. 

What does this mean to you?

If your business is pinning hopes of survival on the outcomes of your major transformation project.. If they plan on carrying on doing what they’ve always done…If they just want  faster tools… They’ll just go out of business even faster.

What it means is that, once the dust has settled, all your team can hope for are marginal gains. Some of the steps in your processes are now automated, or you’ve pushed some tasks out to other employees. Simply you’ve moved the effort to another part of the business rather than truly transforming anything.

The original vision for the program got lost and instead of a 25% cost saving or a 37% revenue increase, it became focused on “we need to get the system implemented and working”.  

It’s all too easy to focus on the tangible aspects of the technology you are implementing and ignore the need for less tangible changes on how the business gets stuff done.

Those opportunities for genuine transformation haven’t gone away. You just didn’t go far enough with the change process.

10 Steps to the Perfect Process Map

How do you prevent this?

Time for discovery

Allocating ample time at the start of the project to undertake a thorough discovery exercise is vital. In order to understand the potential barriers, there must be a deep understanding of the current situation. This stage is not just about gathering detail about your current state and processes. It’s about engaging with people early, understanding their role, listening to their individual hopes and fears and learning what they know about ways to make your business better.

Raci Role Description

Image taken from Skore’s Digital Discovery Platform

Understand your ways of working and identify what’s holding you back.

Crucially, you need to understand what’s preventing it from being better and is holding you back. It might be the technology you use but more often it will be because things are done the way they’ve always been done with little consideration to how they could be done differently.

Work with the vendors to design your future

Armed with the knowledge of what slows things down you can start to design your future state processes to tackle these issues. If possible, do this with the vendor(s) of the platform being implemented. Alternatively, make sure your implementation partner has expertise in the technology and will follow these critical steps.

This is the point where you take what you think will make things better and marry it up with the capabilities of the new system. Without this you’ll simply be automating what you have always done.

Support your team in the new ways of working

When your new system is launched it should be in tandem with your new ways of working. Train your team on the ways of working and then on how the system supports them. Include the ‘why’ in the training so that your team have answers to the questions: 

Why are we doing it this way?

What are the outcomes I am expected to produce? 

Your training should show clearly how the new ways of working and technology achieve these outcomes.

Process cost Dashboard

Image taken from Skore’s Digital Discovery Platform

Conclusion

Transformation means just that. Transforming the way you and your business works. If you aren’t investing in the initial discovery and investigations, if you don’t know your own business processes; how can you expect to make successful changes? All too often the investment is in the final technology solution but if you don’t invest in your people and their processes you’ll never achieve it. Its all too easy to blame the term Transformation but change starts with you and your approach. 

The Skore Digital Discovery platform enables you to gather all the information you need during the discovery phase. Simply and quickly create a model of processes, people, systems and data in a single place that can be accessed and understood by everyone.

Skore’s simple approach means anyone can understand how the business works and how the new systems support it. It engages people in live workshops and interviews and allows your company to find the solutions that work for them.  

Why not request a free trial to see how you could deliver transformation right first time with Skore

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 tools such as Skore’s Digital Discovery platform. This capture and analysis of end-to-end processes takes a fraction of the time compared to traditional methodologies.

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’s Digital Discovery platform and the Skore Robotic Assess module 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.

Find Out More About Robotic Assess

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

Historian or Visionary… Which are you?

05 Nov 2018 - Craig J Willis - BlogTagged - Leave a Comment on Historian or Visionary… Which are you?

This blog article was updated on 8th August 2019

Buying a house may be an emotional rollercoaster but for the Construction industry itself there are just as many highs and lows.

Customer expectations mean organisations must look at improving customer experience and sales management if they want to survive. It’s not just sales data that will make the difference but the way the organisation harmonises and coordinates its processes.

The construction industry is changing.

If you’re in the business of selling new homes, you will be acutely aware of how changes in consumer expectations within the retail sector, are now reflected in the expectations of home buyers. Consumers are no longer willing to ‘hope’ for a good experience, it is expected and public interest means complaints are well documented and publicised.

Yet despite this sales teams are still often relying on backward looking metrics to measure success and manage customer experience: 

Number of completions, revenue and profit are all important measures, but they can only be measured AFTER the event.

At the other end of the sales process is the opportunity pipeline containing potential buyers who have shown a real interest and ‘qualify’ as an opportunity. Sales targets may often be calculated on this and the historical sales data.

Reflect on the past but FIX the future

What neither of these actually do, is measure anything which might predict if something is about to go wrong during the sales cycle. For most organisations the first indication is typically when the buyer raises an objection, or it becomes clear the build won’t be delivered on time. By now the damage is done, it’s too late to mitigate the issue and your only option is to try and appease your buyer. How much better would the experience be for all if this could be predicted?

Revolutionise your processes to transform your customer experience

So how can you move from Historian to Visionary and identify measures that will tell you when something might go wrong before it does? 

The build process is complex and, typically, out of control of the sales team. However, having an integrated, end-to-end view of the whole process allows everyone, including your sales team, to see the key stages along the way.

How can your organisation sense and respond to potential issues, address them early and provide a better customer experience throughout the process?

Organisations should be building an integrated model in a way that is easy for everyone to follow and understand. By bringing different but related teams together organisations can clarify who does what and when key handovers of responsibility occur. Skore’s Digital Discovery Platform ensures the whole process is transparent and can identify points of critical, mutual communication. This is when the change will happen. The points where potential issues in the build process should be communicated to the sales team early enough for them to do something about it, before the customer experience fails. 

Image taken from Skore’s Digital Discovery Platform

Measure what matters

In addition it is important to focus on the value added by each step of a process. These are the steps which often make great performance measurement points as they occur throughout the process and not just at the end. 

Identifying and measuring indicators of success throughout the process means that you look to the future outcomes much sooner.

Using this approach, when certain parts of the process aren’t delivering as expected, means these measures will act as an early warning of a potential problems. These can be investigated and resolved and gives the sales team a heads up to communicate with the customer and manage their expectations.

The Skore Digital Discovery Platform enables you to map processes, deliver instant insights and identify process improvements. A live workshop tool it encourages collaboration and sharing within teams. It’s easy to use interface and reporting functions produce eye catching and informative dashboards and reports to easily measure, distribute and value your business processes. 

If you’d like to learn more about how you can use Skore to build a sense and respond organisation and deliver a better customer experience, get in touch.

Understand the root cause of your Communication Failures with Process Mapping

29 Oct 2018 - Craig J Willis - BlogTagged - Leave a Comment on Understand the root cause of your Communication Failures with Process Mapping

This blog article was last updated on 22nd October 2019

If your relationship between head office and the business is causing problems then perhaps it is time to go back to basics and rediscover your processes. Solving Communication failures with process mapping allows you to listen to your organisation and engage with the people who enable your business.

Communication Issues

Often we hear it in a shop where the stock levels are inconsistent. Or by a service provider where the member of staff isn’t empowered to make the changes that would improve customer experiences?

“WE KNOW THIS DOESN’T WORK WELL BUT HEAD OFFICE MAKE THE RULES AND DON’T LISTEN TO US”

In fact, communication breakdowns aren’t just restricted to multi-site businesses. The problem can easily happen between teams on the same site. Or between the business and its suppliers and/or customers.

It’s a frequent factor in companies that are growing rapidly, where each team is focused on a specific objective or companies that haven’t changed in a long time even though the environment around them has.

When communication breaks down, or is perceived to have broken down, the result is a duplication of effort, rework, mistakes and a general lack of trust. All in all, not a recipe for a high performing business.However before you jump ahead and start looking at which of the many available solutions you are going to use to improve collaboration, and therefore communication, STOP! Look into solving your communications failures with process mapping.

It is critical that you understand the root cause of the problem first. Once you have done this, the solution may be far simpler, and therefore less expensive to implement, than it initially appears.

Finding a solution

A recent Skore client had two teams doing the work that really belonged to one. Team A was the rightful owner of the work yet nearly 50% of it was done by Team B.

Team B weren’t properly trained in the task and lacked time. When things went wrong, Team A often got the blame. In addition there was duplication.

When Skore was engaged trust was at dangerously low levels and adversely impacting their effectiveness. The first step was to map out the end to end work that both teams were doing.

Using a simple approach, the teams described the key activities, who owned them and the value each activity brought to the process.

These sessions were immensely powerful in stripping out any emotion attached to the inter-team relationships and allowed everyone to describe the work as it should be done. As the steps and interactions were captured, ownership was clarified as was, more importantly, the key interfaces and what was expected of each team.

communication failures with process mapping
Image taken from Skore’s Digital Discovery Platform

Communication is key

The client had initially engaged Skore to help them capture requirements for an upgrade to one of their systems. A change that would alter the way aspects of their business processes worked. Using Skore enabled them to capture the necessary requirements, realign the teams’ processes, roles and responsibilities

More importantly it demonstrated to them the value of allowing employees the time to go back to basics, to understand their roles/responsibilities and others and then collectively to start the healing process. Positive and effective communication grows from understanding and trust, when that is lacking no manner of communication tools will solve the situation. 

Using the Skore approach it is common to identify hidden problems in a business. Once a problem is identified you’re halfway to a solution. However, when people are unable to articulate the problem, can’t see the root cause clearly, or aren’t empowered to challenge, problems will often be put down to communication and trust issues. In turn this can lead to accusations of poor workmanship when in fact it’s simply a broken process

Skore Digital Discovery is a process mapping, improvements and insights software platform. With live workshop functionality it enables you to engage with your employees instantly and provides a lasting interactive record of your people, processes and tools.

Sign up for Free Trial Today!

10 Steps to the Perfect Process Map

14 Jun 2018 - Anna Roebuck - Blog, Business PerformanceTagged - 2 Comments on 10 Steps to the Perfect Process Map

This blog article was updated on 7th August 2019

Skore’s success as a software platform undoubtedly demonstrates it’s importance as part of the process capture solution. However our own experiences within the Skore team have also enabled us to master the ability to map out and analyse processes effectively.  We’d like to share with you our steps to creating a process map that will engage and inform your organisation. 

A simple structure and approach is the most effective. It will get you started, guide you, enable you to learn and build experience. That’s why Skore is based on a simple, yet powerfully flexible, framework for describing and aligning processes, people, systems and data.

Indeed Skore has the framework built in to it and it makes it quick and easy to apply. However underneath there is still a basic approach that underpins the application of the framework. After the numerous training and discovery sessions Skore have been involved in we’ve put together the following 10 simple steps to creating the perfect process map.

Need to learn more about Process Mapping? Try our guide here

So if you want to create good quality and insightful process maps for your organisation in 10 simple steps read our recommendations:.

10 STEPS TO THE PERFECT PROCESS MAP

1. SCOPE

Ask yourself – what is the scope for this process? Make sure you capture the title, initial input and final output

2. ACTIVITIES

What is the work to be done? You only need to record the verb and noun for each activities, don’t worry about sequence at this stage or trying to write full sentences. Just get them all down.

3. OUTPUTS

For each activity, add the output – our tip is to try to avoid just putting the past tense of the activity, think about the now. 

4. FLOW

Only once all the activities have an output should you hook them up. What does this output trigger next? This checks you’ve got the right activities at the right stage of the process. You may be surprised at this stage how many people may disagree with you.

5. WHO

A process is never complete until the ‘Who does it?’ is filled in for EVERY activity. For higher levels, who is responsible? For lower levels, who does it? Again this is a very enlightening exercise for the whole team. 

6. ENRICH

Add in things like systems, data, document links, requirements, etc… depending on the reason you’re process mapping. Make sure these are captured in the software to show reach and priorities.

7. TIDY

Remember this process is for all and you want it to be visually pleasing. Align the tops, space apart… a neat process is a happy process, and it’s pretty satisfying too. 

8. SHARE

Don’t keep the process to yourself, make sure the access rights are set up correctly and share the link to a wider audience. Switch on Comments if you want feedback directly. Allow your process map to become a community builder within your organisation. 

9. REFINE

Take the feedback and improve the process, update it. Look at the insights generated and use that information to clarify and hone your map. 

10. PUBLISH

Decide who should approve the process (usually the Process Owner!) and Publish. Remember, this is just a line in the sand, it will change and need to be re-published. You can always roll back to an earlier version if needs be so don’t be reluctant. A process map is only a useful tool if seen and shared by those who need to. 

The Skore Digital Discovery Platform is a process mapping, improvement and insights platform. Live workshop functionality, instant updating and shareable, it enables you to align your people, processes and tools. Find out more here