Founder and CEO of Anthill John Endeacott explains the importance of Effective Process Management and why every company process should be aligned with your organisation’s goals.

Effective Process Management is the practice of aligning every company process with your organisation’s strategic goals.

Put simply, a robust process ensures everyone is pulling in the same direction, with every action undertaken geared towards achieving one of your company targets.

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However, if left to fall by the wayside, process standards can slip as inconsistencies bubble to the surface.

Thinking to your own experiences, do any of the following sound familiar?

• Spending too much time swapping between systems to find critical information.
• Manually chasing leads for internal updates and external communications.
• Struggling with limited visibility into what happens in your team’s customer interactions.
• Restricted in your reporting by outdated technology.

The common denominator is an inherent issue with operational process. But how did we get here?

Process problem origins

When the status quo is not disrupted, your process may remain relatively unchanged; yet over time, consumer demands begin to shift.

Before your eyes, what was once most effective, slowly becomes outdated and ineffective.

Research indicates more than 75% of business leaders believe their current process infrastructure is not up to scratch for their business needs.

This begs the question, why are organisations putting up with technology that hinders more than it helps?

A failure to modernise process can put many a KBB organisation at risk. Both from being held back by legacy infrastructure and a characteristic inflexibility brought on by a lack of adaptability.

Neither option is desirable for those retailers, fresh out of a global pandemic, wanting to stay ahead of the competitive curve.

Wrong process management

The business may have steadily been chipping away at adapting process as demands change but has that eclectic mix of modifications grown into an uncontrollable behemoth?

This can create a wide array of issues, not least a system that has become too sticky to ever consider leaving or a sole reliance on one individual who has been a part of the whole journey. Thing is though, what happens when they leave?

Likewise, for those organisations that are aware of the importance of consistency, your process may have been modernised, but is it adhered to?

That project you undertook to work out your ideal customer journey, are all the steps taken every time?

Or is there inconsistency depending on when a client interacts and who they interact with? Do you even have the visibility to know the answer?

Effective process management

When it comes to variation, process is not about restricting individuals, nor is it about creating a bland, homogenous, one size fits all approach.

The important thing is ensuring a quality experience for the customer, every single time.

Variations can spiral out of control, GSK recently revealed that they had discovered 28,000 variations on the same process during a single process mining project!

We are not suggesting the scale of the issue is comparable to the majority of KBB retailers, but the underlying principle remains the same, no matter your size.

If process is not managed, tracked, and regularly reviewed, it can become a major risk.

Ultimately, the challenge facing businesses is the knock-on detriment to efficiency, productivity, and quality service a mismanaged process can have.

To help review and revolutionise processes, Anthill has put together a free guide entitled “Process Management – How To Streamline Your Operational Processes”. As well as covering the basics of Process Management and its significance, the guide contains actionable tips on how to look to your internal organisation and identify areas for improvement.