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Effective Business Process Mapping For The Front Office

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Aligning Information Flow With Your Customer Centric Strategy

Effective Business Process Mapping might scare some of the middle market companies I've worked with. The mere mention of it can send visions of an army of blue suits, a cacophony of acronyms and a salvo of symbols obviously designed to belittle and confuse those who didn't go to graduate school. Yet, aligning your work and information flow to create a better customer experience can help middle market companies as well as large enterprises.

In the CRM world, the workflows we are talking about are front office. There is a huge difference between manufacturing processes and information processes in the front office. Therefore, manufacturing process methodologies, like Six Sigma, do not work effectively in an environment where decisions are being made (versus tasks being performed). If you'd like to learn more about these distinctions, I recommend reading the Visual Workflow whitepaper written by Dick Lee of High Yield Methods. It's a great explanation of their methodology designed specifically for effective business process mapping in the front office. I'm going to summarize some of it here.

A lesson on how the wrong consultants can make the wrong difference in your organization.

Last week, we took some friends to a new restaurant, 'Steve's Place,' and noticed that the waiter who took our order carried a spoon in his shirt pocket. It seemed a little strange. When the busboy brought our water and utensils, I observed that he also had a spoon in his shirt pocket. Then I looked around and saw that all the staff had spoons in their pockets.

When the waiter came back to serve our soup I inquired, “Why the spoon?” “Well,” he explained, “the restaurant's owner hired Andersen Consulting to revamp all of our processes. After several months of business process mapping, they concluded that the spoon was the most frequently dropped utensil. It represents a drop frequency of approximately 3-spoons per table per hour. “If our personnel are better prepared, we can reduce the number of trips back to the kitchen and save 15 man-hours per shift.”

As luck would have it, I dropped my spoon and he replaced it with his spare. “I'll get another spoon next time I go to the kitchen instead of making an extra trip to get it right now.” I was impressed.

I also noticed that there was a string hanging out of the waiter's fly. Looking around, I saw that all of the waiters had the same string hanging from their flies. So, before he walked off I asked the waiter, “Excuse me, but can you tell me why you have that string right there?” Oh, certainly!” Then he lowered his voice. “Not everyone is so observant. That consulting firm I mentioned also learned that we can save time in the restroom. “By tying this string to the tip of our ‘you-know-what’, we can pull it out without touching it and eliminate t he need to wash our hands, shortening the time spent in the restroom by 76.39%.”

I asked quietly, “After you get it out, how do you put it back?” “Well,” he whispered, “I don't know about the others, but I use the spoon.”

Properly done, effective business process mapping can accomplish a number of things. In the CRM context, the goal is improve customer relationships by reviewing the way information flows from the customer's perspective. But there is more to it than that. I like the way Dick Lee lays this out. More importantly, here's the list of outcomes he sees when using the proper workflow mapping methodology (his Visual Workflow, of course) --

Improved alignment: He doesn't focus on streamlining. Visual Workflow (VW) aligns process with strategies and technology with process. If you've read any of Dick's blogs or books, you'll know that he adamantly suggests that allowing technology features to drive back to process is a big no-no.
Stronger Customer Relationships: This is the obvious goal and why the proper process alignment methodology must be used.
Stronger Employee Relationships: It's funny because I've seen completely chaotic environments where people stay for years..because they own it. I've worked in those environments and know personally that I had to leave as soon as possible. If you can keep high quality people happier by empowering them while reducing friction, it's a good thing. Effective business process mapping can help.
Reduction in FTE requirements: A properly aligned workflow reduces the internal friction between moving parts of the company. As a result, things get done more efficiently. This allows companies to reduce FTE requirements and either cut costs, or absorb new capacity as they grow.
Increased throughput: Locate the bottlenecks and eliminate them.
Reduced cycle time: When you eliminate redundant and non value-adding steps and combine that with automation, you can see dramatic reductions in time.
Improved work quality: Unlike manufacturing processes, in office environments defects typically occur during hand-offs of work and information between people and functions. Visual Workflow is uniquely equipped among process approaches to identify and correct these issues.
Detailed technology requirements: A logical outcome as workflow and information are treated as inseparable element, any changes here will drive changes in any data distribution and integration technology.
Stronger Infrastructure & greater scalability: If growing is painful, there is no incentive to grow. Aligning process with humans and technology creates capacity for growth while keeping related expenses under control.
Almost immediate ROI: When you can reduce FTE's that's great. But if you can avoid making the wrong technology purchase, that's an added bonus. Along with a workplace with less friction, you've created permanent savings for your company that can be realized right away.
Even greater long-term ROI: Putting a focus on your customers improves retention, increases penetration and drives new customer acquisition.

In summary, you can choose your effective business process mapping methodology. But keep in mind that the only published one, that I know of, that deals specifically with front office information workflow is by Dick Lee. I'm sure there are others out there, but you probably won't see them coming out of the large consultancies. You can do a Google search on CRM + "Six Sigma" and you'll see a lot of folks pitching this as a viable way to improve customer relations. More on that later...