Who implements process mapping? People who want to improve their organisations - it's as simple as that. If you are aiming for business improvement it's important to remember that optimising what you already do, can have a much larger impact than just about anything else. Which is why effective business process mapping is such a valuable a skill.
So what is process mapping, who does it and why use it?
To answer this question this article will cover:
Let's start from the beginning...
A process is a series of actions taken to achieve a particular end. A process transforms inputs into outputs. For example, a process is the mechanism by which raw materials are converted into products; so baking a cake will involve taking various ingredients (inputs) and producing the cake (output) using the recipe (process). For more on this please read: What is a Process? And who Cares Anyway?
In a nutshell, process mapping is an exercise to identify all the steps and decisions of an existing process in diagrammatic form, which helps organisations identify improvement opportunities so that they can improve efficiency within an organisation.
More specifically, process mapping:
The core reason for mapping out your processes is that those organisations that perform the transformation of inputs into outputs (their processes) well, generally manage to meet or exceed customer expectation. And those that do it best are invariably the most successful.
The following extract from The Crown Prosecution Service guide to Process Mapping summarises the reasons to process map very succinctly:
In short, it is safe to say that all organisations with reasonably complex processes can benefit from process mapping because a process map captures an existing process and when a process is captured, improvement opportunities can be clarified.
Certain industries such as engineering, traditionally think in process terms and therefore are more likely to map their processes than other industries such as health and education.
However as, for example, the education sector needs to focus more and more on meeting and exceeding the expectations of their customers (students), more educational organisations are process mapping too.
One of the most common drivers for organisations to start process improvement is to achieve a standards accreditation, often both general quality standards, for example ISO and TickIT, and also industry specific accreditations such as AS9100 (aerospace management).
Other common drivers are:
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
The mapping of business processes is usually undertaken by a centralised team, responsible for the entirety of describing all processes.
They work with the subject matter experts from around the business and capture their knowledge of the process and document it as a process map.
The skills needed to process map effectively as set out in the article: Process Mapping: 5 Key skills you need to have
A further requirement of effective process mapping is to involve as many employees as possible in workshops to capture their processes. With their involvement in mapping their processes, employees feel ownership for them and achieving your end objective, or key driver becomes much easier.
There are masses of Process Mapping software tools available, but the key thing is to choose one that is both simple to use and delivers process maps that are useful to a widespread, non-specialist workforce. Too many process maps are incredibly complicated and don't therefore add much (if any) value.
Triaster has developed both a methodology and a software tool to enable businesses to easily capture simple, comprehensible process maps, that are also sufficiently detailed to enable the identification and analysis of performance improvement opportunities.
The methodology is the Noun-Verb process mapping methodology which works perfectly with our Process Library which has drag and drop process mapping shapes to create simple, easy-to-understand process diagrams - the most effective way to capture what everyone should be doing.
For anyone looking to capture their business processes, there is no better place to start than our Process Library Free Plan.
What are the Best Practices for Process Mapping?
3 Common Business Process Mapping Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them)
The Top 10 Benefits of Process Mapping
The Ultimate Guide to Business Process Mapping
This is an updated and refreshed edition of an article originally written in 2018.