Documenting a business process plays a vital role in an organization’s success. Business process documentation (BPD) provides a detailed description of business processes. Its purpose is to achieve an identified business demand.
In order to work and achieve their objectives, business processes must be properly designed, arranged, written down, and discussed. It is important to capture further details within the process description—orally, graphically, or by using both techniques.
By performing all the steps, the individuals and groups who use the process can effortlessly meet the desired outcome. Although business process documents may carry different sections, some common sections should be available in the entire business documents. This pattern is deliberated to give an example of common and successful business document quantities.
Acme Corporation, the company behind the animated shorts Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, utilized BPD because of its failure to meet staffing demands. Personal staffing has been recognized as a primary zone of development by the corporation’s executive leadership.
This procedure enabled Acme Corporation to identify and meet its staffing demands by executing a repetitive and standardized personnel staffing procedure, with involvement from every division.
Understanding Business Process Documentation
The business process is an effective way to enhance your business performance. It expands workforce and resource efficiencies while identifying value-added duties to achieve critical demands.
In order for BPD to work effectively, a business process must be easily integrated with other procedures, including the organizational pattern. However, useful and effective business processes are often poorly planned, applied, and discussed. For instance, a process may result in confusion and can produce an inefficient outcome.
When proposing, applying, and discussing a new business process, it is necessary to supply a pattern, a formal procedure flow, process borders, inputs, and outputs, as well as control points. This will enable the organization not only to improve performance, but also to acquire a mechanism to continuously enhance the business procedure. The following lists the important elements of business process documentation:
1. Purpose of the process
This must explain the purpose of the procedure. It particularly answers the questions why and how the procedure will help the organization.
2. Process scope
It provides a general image of what is covered in the business procedure, what is out of the scope, or what is not included in the process.
3. Process input
This identifies the demand or input which is required to start the process. It initiates the documentation process.
4. Process boundaries
This is where a procedure starts and stops. For instance, there may be a demand or input that starts a process (a trigger), although it’s not actually a piece of the process. The boundaries of the procedure should be distinctly defined, documented, and discussed.
5. Process flow
Majority of business process documents supply the process flow in a graphical presentation. Others provide the flow in a verbal presentation. While some provide both, this may still rely on your organization’s standards. It is vital that a detailed illustration of the procedure is provided. In its absence, the process becomes open to interpretation and will experience a lack of formalization and clarification. This process should illustrate each step of the procedure from beginning to end.
6. Process output
All business processes expect an output or outcome. This is tied to the process cause. While the output may not be a formal piece of the process itself, it depends on where the border is established. It is an integral piece of the document, as it states what is expected upon completing the process. It must provide a description of the procedure’s output.
7. Exceptions to the standard process flow
Often, a business process might not be able to follow its standard function flow from beginning to end because there may be plenty of factors included in the process. This procedure must illustrate where exceptions to the flow may take place and what steps to take when they occur.
8. Define control points and calculations
Business processes are not without risk or unpredictability. Nor are they free from any sort of exertions. Control points should be initiated at a variety of points of the procedure flow where risks have been recognized.
This helps the process owner track risks connected with the process. It is functional in continuous process enhancement efforts. Measurements are significant for diagnosing the effectiveness of a procedure and executing process enhancement. They may also occur with control points in an effort to recognize where risks or problems may arise. At the same time, they diagnose a methodology for enhancing the procedure around these problems and risks. Here’s an example of a business process document.
Grow Your Organization
Taking your business to the next level is something you always look forward to, no matter how many milestones you’ve already accomplished. If you’re looking to standardize and improve the quality of your organization’s process, we at Proceso.Pro can help you in this area.
Proceso.Pro provides the easiest way to document and follow your procedures and operational processes. Contact us today and let’s get started.