“Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.” - Peter Drucker

"If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got." - Henry Ford

TL;DR: If you're not automating, your losing. In today's competitive business landscape, automating processes is no longer a luxury. I'll guide you through the financial benefits of business process mapping and automation while offering practical steps to identify non-value-added activities and implement effective automation strategies.

Introduction

In the fast-paced world of business, efficiency and profitability are more crucial than ever. Companies that fail to streamline their processes risk falling behind their competitors. Let's dive into mapping out your business processes, identifying non-value-added activities, and exploring automation's financial benefits.

Understanding Business Process Mapping

Definition and Purpose: Business process mapping involves creating a visual representation of your organization's workflows. This helps in identifying inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and areas for improvement. If you hate creating charts and visuals, I'm sorry, but you're going to have to suck it up and get good at it if you want to remain competitive. When you identify these inefficiencies, you open up your business to other more value-added opportunities. Less time-, money-, and resource-wasting activities gives you the freedom to explore unique growth opportunities your competitors don't have.

More time + More Money = Freedom to Grow; otherwise you just keep spinning your wheels. Let's take a look at the tools.

Tools and Techniques:

• Flowcharts: Simple diagrams that illustrate the steps in a process.

• SIPOC Diagrams: A high-level view of a process, showing Suppliers, Inputs, Process, Outputs, and Customers.

• Value Stream Mapping: A lean-management method for analyzing the current state and designing a future state for the series of events that take a product or service from its beginning through to the customer.

Steps to Create an Effective Process Map:

(Image) Example: Recommended Process Flow (from our AI Chatbot systems)

1. Identify the process to be mapped. You should do this for EVERY process you have: customer journey, marketing, sales, operations and fulfillment, customer retainment, and administrative (payroll, HR, billing, compliance, etc.).

2. Gather information from key stakeholders.

3. Create the process map ensuring every single branch and option is covered.

4. Validate the map with team members who are involved in the process and who have a good bird's eye view of it.

5. Analyze the map to identify inefficiencies.

Identifying Non-Value-Added Activities

Definition and Examples: Non-value-added activities are tasks that do not add value from the customer's perspective or don't influence your bottom line and can (read: "should") be eliminated without affecting the output. Examples include excessive paperwork, redundant approvals, and unnecessary meetings.

Techniques for Identifying Waste:

• The 7 Wastes of Lean: Transportation, Inventory, Motion, Waiting, Overproduction, Over-processing, and Defects.

• Root Cause Analysis: Identifying the underlying causes of inefficiencies.

• Employee Feedback: Leveraging insights from those involved in the processes.

Case Studies: I've personally worked on projects with large corporations and small and medium-sized companies offering a third-party perspective on their processes. At an engineering firm, I identified to potentially harmful processes and helped to alleviate their deleterious effects:

1. During their Design-Phase, their circuit schematics pass through many teams, but used software to track the inputs and outputs, making it difficult for users (who had to review these schematics on screens) to visualize the entire system. I simply directed them to print out each schematic and piece them together to create a full system-level visual.

2. For this same firm, I helped document the steps necessary for a critical survivability process for the purpose of knowledge-transfer. Without this guide, new recruits would have no way of learning this nuanced process without one-on-one assistance from senior staff, which is not always available. With this guide, we freed up the team's time by reducing the reliability on veteran staff as well as systemizing a process that had been solely in the minds of those veterans. This improved output, reliability, and knowledge-transferability.

3. We've built numerous tools to streamline and automate manual tasks for businesses. Check them out on our What We Do page.

Potential for Automation

(Image) Angel City providing process improvement consult to streamline reporting segmentation

Introduction to Automation: Automation involves using technology to perform tasks with minimal human intervention. This can significantly enhance efficiency and reduce costs.

Another version of automation is outsourcing automation to either a cheaper labor force or one that utilizes technology not available to or too complex for your workforce to build or maintain.

Criteria for Selecting Tasks for Automation:

• Repetitive tasks

• High-volume processes

• Tasks with a high error rate

• Time-consuming activities

Common Tools and Software for Automation:

• Robotic Process Automation (RPA): Automates routine tasks.

• Artificial Intelligence (AI): Handles complex decision-making processes.

• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems: Automates customer interactions and data management.

• Online Software Integration Tools: Utilizes triggering actions to initiate API calls, webhooks, and other data transfer/sharing programs to integrate software and facilitate complex tasks.

Steps to Implement Automation

Assessing Readiness for Automation: Evaluate your organization's current processes, technology infrastructure, and employee readiness.

Steps to Integrate Automation:

1. Identify automation opportunities.

2. Choose the right tools and technologies.

3. Develop a pilot program.

4. Train employees.

5. Monitor and refine the automation process.

Best Practices:

• Start small and scale up. Don't try to build out full process automations (unless the process is fairly simple). Allow for your processes to go through "hybrid" modes where some tasks will be automated and some manually completed.

• Ensure clear communication with employees.

• Continuously measure and optimize automated processes.

Measuring the Impact

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):

Embed simple measures to check key performance indicators that track efficiency over time. Start with a baseline measurement both before automation is implemented as well as one another baseline immediate after. This will give you two data points to compare with, measuring both efficiency improvements from before automation as well as efficiency improvements in the automation itself.

• Cost savings

• Time reduction

• Error rate decrease

• Productivity improvement

Continuous Improvement: Regularly review and update your automation strategies to ensure they remain effective and aligned with business goals.

Long-Term Benefits:

• Sustained cost savings

• Increased operational efficiency

• Enhanced scalability and growth potential

Conclusion

Automating business processes is not just a trend—it's a necessity for staying competitive in today's market. By mapping out your processes, identifying non-value-added activities, and implementing automation, you can significantly enhance your company's financial health and operational efficiency.

Ready to transform your business processes and maximize your profits? Contact Angel City to set up a Strategy Session and discover how we can help you save time and money by automating or offloading your operational and marketing activities.