Course Description
Gain the critical knowledge and skills to model, automate, manage, and optimize your business processes to increase productivity and meet essential compliance and customer service needs.
Learn how to:
- Use the systematic approach of Business Process Improvement (BPI) to help your organization optimize its underlying processes and achieve more efficient results
- Apply the 10 simple steps of the BPI Navigation Map
- Develop a process list to ensure you consider what is important to the business
- Define the scope of a business process to help keep scope creep away
- Draw a process model to understand how the business process works
- Recognize the benefits of properly analyzing and defining your business processes; understand the risks involved with not doing so
- Estimate time and cost of how the business process currently works to establish improvement targets
- Validate the process model to ensure it meets the needs of workers of the process, stakeholders, and sponsor(s)
- Apply improvement methods to provide business value to the business process
- Utilize customer-focused process improvement techniques that will deliver exactly what is needed
- Streamline business processes as you identify and eliminate non-value-added work
- Apply problem solving and root cause analysis techniques that are simple, easy to understand, yet extremely effective
- Establish controls and metrics in order to minimize errors and create supporting success measurements
- Test the business process to confirm it works as planned
- Evaluate change readiness to determine if the organization is prepared for the changes in the business process
- Perform continuous improvement to validate the business process will deliver effectiveness, efficiency, and adaptability
- Add many useful tips and techniques to your business analyst "toolbox" including essential skills for analyzing, designing, measuring, and validating your business processes
25 Immediate Benefits of Attending this Course
- Gain knowledge on the analysis of a business from the cross functional perspective of a business process
- Identify and document the business processes for the current state
- Gain the required level of competencies to follow the basic steps in improving process performance
- Improve your ability to meet your customer's needs and discover opportunities to improve business processes
- Tap into the advantages of effectiveness, efficiency, and adaptability when performing business process improvement
- Develop a process list using a decision matrix to consider what is important to the business
- Establish criteria for business priorities and where to focus your efforts
- Gain support and buy-in from the sponsor to help determine business process improvement focus
- See how improvement opportunities can be identified when using graphics and textual representations of the business process
- Examine how to analyze process time, cycle time, hard cost savings, and soft cost savings to provide business value
- Execute a review of the current state model with the business stakeholders to validate needs and requirements
- Overcome bureaucracy and redundancy to streamline business processes
- Increase value-added activities, streamlining, and reduced cycle time for business process improvement
- Finally get to the root cause of the business process problem instead of always treating symptoms and having recurring issues!
- Create the future state model based on improvement targets and value opportunities
- Utilize controls to avoid errors and potential problems
- Establish metrics that will provide value to the business
- Test the process to ensure it works as planned
- Create an implementation plan
- Develop and evaluate impact analysis data to determine organizational readiness
- Gain knowledge of the approach to determine the scope of the organizational changes and the formulation of a business change program
- Learn how to effectively communicate change
- Help your organization understand and apply continuous improvement initiatives to improve business processes and make adjustments as necessary to continuously get better over time
- Discover ways to follow structured problem solving approaches to spark continuous improvement at your organization
- Find out how frequently to address business process improvement with the help of a continuous improvement plan
Learn the skills and knowledge to apply proven techniques in improving a business process
The business process improvement course provides participants the opportunity to learn the skills and knowledge essential for applying the most effective techniques in business process improvement by understanding the current state and designing the future state. The application of the techniques will be presented as part of an overall framework identifying key deliverables and the major steps of how to model and analyze the current state in order to design the future state.
The measure of performance of the program is for participants to reach the level of proficiency needed to apply the techniques and analytical framework in their work assignments.
The learning environment
In addition to the lecture and discussion of class specific topics the group exercises are designed to apply the techniques to create required work products from an examination of a realistic business scenario. The exercises are designed to provide the participants the opportunity to evaluate and work with a number of situations designed to represent actual conditions found in a real business. As part of the learning process the participants will be asked to share their answers and the assumptions made in creating the required work products. The review of the group activities will be led by a facilitator experienced in both modeling and analyzing a business for improvement opportunities.
In-Class Workshops and Group Exercises
The participants will be assigned a number of individual practices to reinforce the application of individual techniques. In addition, a number of group activities will be assigned for the participants to apply a number of the individual techniques and create specific deliverables.
Specifically, you will:
- Develop a process list for a business case study
- Elicit high level business needs
- Complete a decision matrix and priorities
- Create a scope definition document based on the elicited requirements and stakeholder needs
- Draw the process model for the current state (as-is)
- Create the detail document of the business processes
- Estimate business process time and cycle time
- Validate the process model
- Begin identifying improvement targets for the future state (to-be)
- Determine the improvement methods that can be applied to the business process
- Practice root cause analysis techniques
- Draw the future state process model
- Create controls for the business process
- Establish metrics for the success measurements of the business process
- Recommend appropriate steps for testing the future state business process
- Evaluate organizational change readiness by creating an impact analysis
- Determine how to prepare the organization for the business process changes
- Perform data analysis of records using a business process timing chart
- Analyze trends, bottlenecks, and escalation points where the business process is not performing according to plan
- Make recommendations to continuously improve the future state business process
- Create an action plan to implement best practices from the workshop
Substitution & Cancellation Policy:
You may cancel or reschedule up to 21 days prior to the start date of the class at no penalty. For any cancellation or reschedule requests within 21 days, the full course tuition is still due and not eligible for refund. Any paid tuition will be credited towards a future class and must be used within 12 months.
*Partner delivered courses may be subject to different cancellation terms
Agenda
I. Business Process Improvement Overview
Business process improvement is a systematic approach to help an organization optimize its underlying processes to achieve more efficient results. It's important to know when to begin business process improvement initiatives.
A. Discover a systematic approach to optimize business results.
B. Focus on the three objectives for business process improvement – effectiveness, efficiency, and adaptability.
C. Learn the business process improvement navigation map.
D. Improve capabilities to meet customer needs and identify opportunities to improve business processes.
Practice Session
- Share your goals for business process improvement initiatives at your organization
II. Develop the Process List
Developing a process list includes looking at the inventory of the business processes owned by a department or the entire organization. Most workplaces do not have this list, so this section focuses on how to create one.
A. Understand the business processes in an organization or department at a high level.
B. Use a decision matrix to consider what is important to the business.
C. Establish criteria for prioritizing which business processes to focus on first.
D. Understand how to gain support and buy-in from the sponsor to help determine focus.
E. Use the process list to help identify where to focus improvement efforts.
Practice Session
- Develop a process list for the case study
- Elicit high level business needs for the case study
- Complete a decision matrix and priorities for the case study
III. Define the Scope
Scope is the area covered by a particular activity or topic of interest. To define what is in and out of scope, it is helpful to create a scope definition document and gain both support and buy-in of the sponsor.
A. Learn the steps for creating a scope definition document for a business process.
B. Understand how the scope of the business process will help keep scope creep away by establishing scope boundaries.
C. Realize the scope definition document needs to be approved before detailed analysis begins.
Practice Session
- Create a scope definition document based on the elicited requirements and stakeholder needs
IV. Draw the Process Model
A process model is a visual model or representation of the sequential flow and control logic of a set of related activities or actions. Process models help people understand, learn, see handoffs, and identify opportunities for improvement.
A. Learn how process models can be drawn with high-level or detail; standard or cross-functional using flow charts or activity diagrams.
B. Review standard charting shapes for process modeling.
C. Tap into the power of the project team to help build process models and create the detail document.
D. Identify improvement opportunities when using graphics and textual representations.
Practice Session
- Draw the process model for the case study
- Create the detail document of the business processes
V. Estimate Time and Cost
Examining process time and cycle time of the business process can help identify improvement opportunities. Analyzing how much a process costs can also help detect hard and soft cost savings.
A. Learn how to estimate process time and cycle time for a business process.
B. Review how to estimate process costs for a business process.
C. Identify hard cost savings and soft cost savings for business processes.
Practice Session
- Estimate business process time and cycle time for the case study
VI. Validate the Process Model
Validating the process model means confirming it accurately reflects the existing business process. This involves reviewing the model with key business stakeholders.
A. Perform a walkthrough of the current state (as-is) process with the business stakeholders to validate understanding their needs and requirements.
B. Begin considering and identifying improvement targets based on stakeholder feedback.
Practice Session
- Validate the process model
- Begin identifying improvement targets for the future state (to-be)
VII. Apply Improvement Methods
There are six improvement methods to consider helping guide business process improvement. Once each of these has been examined and you have performed root cause analysis, you can begin to envision and create the future state.
A. Examine the business process for six potential process problems and use them to improve the business process.
B. Review how to conduct root cause analysis techniques.
C. Discover problems before considering automation of the business process.
Practice Session
- Determine the improvement methods that can be applied to the case study business process
- Practice root cause analysis techniques
- Draw the future state process model
VIII. Establish Controls and Metrics
Looking for potential areas where a business process needs controls for the future state can help ensure successful change. Determining how to measure the effectiveness of the improved business process helps provide value to the business.
A. Identify how controls can help avoid potential problems or errors in a business process.
B. Refine success measurements to establish metrics for measuring the success of the business process.
C. Establish metrics that will help determine if the business process worked as planned.
D. Ensure established metrics provide value to the organization.
Practice Session
- Create controls for the business process case study
- Establish metrics for the success measurements of the business process case study
IX. Test the Process
Testing the new and improved process helps to identify bottlenecks, work out bugs, defects, and/or errors, fix or rework problems, ensure the process meets stated goals, and helps implementation to go smoothly.
A. Learn the testing process steps.
B. Identify who, what, where, when, and how to test the business process.
C. Ensure the process works as planned by testing the business process.
Practice Session
- Recommend appropriate steps for testing the future state business process for the case study
X. Evaluate Change Readiness
Evaluating change readiness involves identifying who needs to know, what they need to know, when they need to know, and how to communicate changes to the affected stakeholders. This step of business process improvement could include an implementation plan, impact analysis, force field analysis, communication plan, and/or training plan.
A. Identify required tasks for implementing the new business process by creating an implementation plan.
B. Build an impact analysis table to identify the readiness level of the organization regarding the business process changes.
C. Learn how force field analysis can be used to examine the forces for and against a decision.
D. Determine how to communicate with stakeholders through the creation of a communication plan.
E. Identify when to use a training plan to educate stakeholders affected by the business process changes.
Practice Session
- Evaluate organizational change readiness by creating an impact analysis for the case study
- Determine how to prepare the organization for the business process changes
XI. Perform Continuous Improvement
Continuous improvement is an ongoing effort to improve products, services, or processes. It involves the creation of a continuous improvement plan to determine how frequently to review the process so it doesn't slip out of control again!
A. Deploy the successful business process.
B. Identify continuous improvement strategies to improve a business process and make adjustments as necessary so the process gets better over time.
C. Adapt business processes to changing business needs.
D. Follow a structured problem solving approach (DMAIC) to ensure continuous improvement occurs.
E. Recognize how benchmarking and SWOT analysis help identify potential areas of continuous improvement.
F. Build a continuous improvement plan to establish the steps for regularly reviewing the business process.
Practice Session
- Perform data analysis of records from the case study business process timing chart
- Analyze the data for trends, bottlenecks, and escalation points where the business process is not performing according to plan
- Make recommendations to continuously improve the future state business process
XII. Summary and Conclusion
Review course objectives and produce workshop lessons learned.
Practice Session
- Create an action plan to implement best practices from the workshop
- Discuss next steps