What is a business process?

Everything in life is a process. Brushing your teeth is a process – a process that when done well results in rewards from the tooth fairy – and when done poorly ends up in tears at the dentist (can you tell I have got kids?).

A business process is any one of the day-to-day jobs that you have to do from 9 to 5. It may be the mundane business equivalent of teeth brushing or the enthusiastic reporting of the increase in annual profits, but either way, it is a business process. Many business processes are effectively managed within the confines of your software applications, company finances, customer service records, purchases and sales – all transaction based processes that you probably have a good handle on. What keeps you awake at night usually concerns the things that fall through the cracks and invariably those things are people dependant and exposed to the vagaries of human error.

Business Process Management is the definition, honing, documenting and automating of common business processes with special attention to those involving interpersonal communication and responsibility transfer. Another, probably more familiar, name for this is workflow.

There are two initial areas of importance in workflow – the concept of “end-to-end vs edge-to edge”, and the “process owner”.

Edge-to-edge usually replicates the responsibility of the org chart – step 1 is done by department X and then step 2 is done by department Y. Ownership and responsibility get handed over (hopefully) from department to department as the job progresses.

End-to-end is about addressing a process from inception to completion regardless of divisional or org. chart delineations and responsibilities. A process owner owns a process “end-to-end” and is the individual charged with ensuring the process starts, progresses and completes in an effective and efficient manner.

The business process management journey frequently starts in assessing these two areas in relation to the primary pain points in the business and devising ways of improving the inputs to achieve consistent, best quality outputs.
So when you look into the mouth of your business tonight which are the teeth that will earn money from the tooth fairy and which will have you in tears at the dentist?