Understanding business requirements and improving business processes is an essential part of any successful enterprise system initiative. Business Process Improvement (BPI) services create the foundation for a successful transformation of business processes and information systems.
From Process Improvements to Business Performance
For today’s top manufacturing and distribution companies, improving productivity is about improving business processes. Focus on understanding processes and business requirements, and identifying areas of improvement based on best practices reduces process waste.
BPI is the key to doing more with less and working smarter in all areas throughout the supply chain process, from the loading dock to the front office.
Step-by-Step Business Process Transformation
Transforming your business processes requires creating a vision of the future state from your current state – and on to defining the business value for the project. Done properly, this foundation will establish alignment of expectations with management, improve the efficiency of your team, eliminate process waste, and reduce the time to benefit for your project.
In a business process improvement project, there are five areas of focus:
Project Organization
A successful business process transformation project requires an organization of business process owners. With this team of business process owners, we determine the project scope, objectives, and measurements for the engagement.
Current State Analysis
Analyzing your current state requires gathering key performance metrics and their value. Examples include productivity, quality, overtime, inventory, and others.
Another integral part of any current state analysis is business process mapping. Depending on your industry, these can include processes like Quote to Order, Order to Cash, and Procure to Pay.
By visually engaging in this business process documentation, it becomes very easy for the team to identify waste and redundant data and processes. These current state problems are documented as opportunities to be addressed in the future state.
As part of this business process analysis, ensure your team understands and has documented:
- Business operations
- Business processes
- Software systems such as ERPNext.
- Master data and information flow
- IT strategy & infrastructure
Prioritize these improvement opportunities based on cost, timing, change difficulty, and benefits.
Visioning and Education
Before beginning to define the future state, we need process owners to understand “what is possible” with a new enterprise resource planning software solution.
By achieving alignment with your future state vision, your team is best positioned to move into a more detailed future state opportunity stage that will define enabling ERP system requirements.
Future State Opportunity
Workshops with the project team to develop the future state is also known as business process reengineering.
These workshops will be organized by business process flow, and will help identify the gaps between the current state and industry best practices to effectively design your future state business processes.
These workshops serve to identify areas where you can eliminate waste and improve your business productivity. As the design of the future state becomes clear, your team will define and quantify the benefits that can be realized from the future state. This critical activity feeds into the development of key statements that articulate the business purpose and value of change.
Business Case for Change
The business case for change is your main project driver and the foundational justification for your ERP System project. It is a compilation of business value statements that are the goals to strive for in the Benefits Realization phase.
The future state vision developed during the Visioning and Education steps is taken and translated into a credible business case. Each of the process owners develops a business case for his/her domain of responsibility with assignments they can confidently achieve.
The business case for change is important because it is used at every major milestone to confirm decisions and actions are aligned with attaining project expectations.
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