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Processes are the foundation for functioning and strategic objective achievement in any business. Being able to execute the management of activity flows effectively can provide significant competitive advantages, especially when it is supported by process automation technologies.
BPM methodology transforms and enhances your company’s results, making it more efficient and effective overall. A Business Process Management (BPM) solution provides a deep insight into workflow, procedures, and forms. When implemented properly, this method can mitigate errors and bottlenecks.
If you’ve reached this content, you probably already know how BPM works. However, one of the main challenges before actually deploying it is knowing where exactly to start, and especially which processes to choose for automation.
To ensure you make specific and criteria-based decisions, we will explain how to identify critical and prioritary processes in your organization.
What are critical processes?
Processes are ordered actions that can be sequential or related which, when executed together, produce a planned result. This sequence of activities is directly or indirectly carried out to meet specific customer demands.
Critical and prioritary processes are the most strategically relevant ones, since their execution is crucial for the company to achieve its strategic objectives.
Managing critical processes is so important that neglecting them can in fact jeopardize the entire company’s development.
When a manager knows their business and can identify critical and prioritary processes, goal and objective guidelines become clearer and more accurate, which in turn contributes to productivity, cost reduction, and proper use of available resources.
So, how do you identify critical and prioritary processes?
Critical processes are those whose outcomes impact business performance. In this sense, they can also be considered priorities because they have a significant impact on the organization, and optimizing them is essential for management.
Analyzing the criticality of a process has some biases, such as how they impact the organization, results and strategies, the customer or consumer, and work methods and interactions between processes.
One way to analyze processes and identify the critical ones is by considering:
- High risk: those whose poor execution poses risks to the company, such as financial, legal, and operational, among others;
- Essential: those that, when not performed, make the company unable to carry out its activities. This type of criticality directly affects customer satisfaction, leading to various types of losses for the company;
- Customer impact: those directly related to the customer, such as customer service, are considered critical because any wrong action negatively impacts the experience and, consequently, the company’s reputation in the market.
By analyzing internal activities and recognizing one or more of these criteria, a process can be considered critical.
After identification, process mapping is an essential step before automation. Mapping describes how activities are being carried out currently and how they are correlated with other departments, customers, suppliers, requirements, and such.
From there, it will be possible to create a new design to execute this process in an optimized and improved manner.
Critical Processes for BPM
Specifically, when it comes to Business Process Management (BPM), additional characteristics make a process critical.
In addition to the impact on results and the customer experience, a process can be considered critical when it depends on others to function correctly, when failures can have severe consequences, when they are based on strict time constraints, and when it is complex with multiple phases, interactions, and decision-making steps.
Another highlight is that the more a process poses error and failure risks, the greater is its criticality. Of course, this is considering that this set of activities is essential to the organization’s strategic objectives.
What about prioritary ones?
Although the analysis of criticality also defines which process is a priority for management, when it comes to process automation, the priority matrix is a tool that exists to make decisions clearer and more assertive.
This matrix is relatively simple to use to list important points and see where processes are located. Moreover, there is no specific standard or criterion; each company can adapt it as needed.
It is essential to keep in mind that processes need to meet the organization’s direct objectives. To select them according to priority, some process prioritization matrices can be applied:
- GUT: considers gravity, urgency, and tendency as selection criteria in demand analysis;
- CEB: considers the cost, effort, and benefits of the process to the organization;
- Basic matrix: benefit to the organization, scope of results, satisfaction of internal and external customers, investment, and operability;
- Effort and impact: considers the effort expended and the impact of the action in achieving the specific objective.
- Priority matrix: a graphical representation that shows where the process is in relation to impact (x-axis) and maturity (y-axis). Considering points such as impact, maturity, and complexity, which are presented in colors: green (low), yellow (medium), red (high).
The priority matrix, specifically, allows for a quantitative and qualitative analysis to define priorities. It also provides a graphical representation of maturity within the company.
How to improve the Management of Critical and Prioritary Processes?
When a company focuses on managing critical and priority processes, it achieves better results and determines where to allocate its resources. In addition, there is clarity about the impacts on processes and the possibilities for optimization to increase performance.
And, by understanding how these processes impact the organization, decisions become more precise.
Managing these processes should be done with a customizable tool that meets your company’s specific demands. This way, you will have information to address potential problems before they occur. Another aspect is reports that allow monitoring the progress of processes.
With Fusion Platform, it is possible to map and automate critical processes for even better results. The platform is fully user-friendly, customizable, and integrates with third-party systems. It also offers mobility of access anytime, anywhere.
If you are unsure how automation will benefit the management of critical and priority processes, try Fusion Platform.
See how real-time process monitoring and performance indicator reports will facilitate management and decision-making. And, they will be strategic for your company’s results.
