In 1999, NASA’s Mars exploration program famously took a significant blow.
The probe that was supposed to analyze the Red Planet’s climate and terrain disintegrated upon entering Mars’ atmosphere, leaving a gaping hole in the heart of every space exploration geek and in NASA’s budget.
The total cost of the failure? Some $193.1 million.
Ironically enough, the probe’s demise was caused by nothing more than a discrepancy in measurement unit conversion that the Agency failed to account for.
This story is a perfect example of dysfunctional or inefficient processes within an organization — something that the Business Process Improvement (BPI) discipline aims to resolve.
However, BPI can benefit your company in various other ways apart from preventing embarrassing multi-million-dollar mistakes, and we’re about to explain how.
Looking to improve your business processes?
Try doForms for free!
Table of Contents
What Is Business Process Improvement?
Business process improvement (BPI) is a strategic, analytical approach to business development that companies use to improve their workflow, operations and the overall efficiency of their internal processes.
- BPI is strategic: It focuses on creating lasting improvements across various areas like HR, supply chain management and accounting processes.
- BPI is analytical: It uses data to evaluate processes and measure their impact on the company’s bottom line, client satisfaction and/or product quality.
In short, business process improvement allows decision-makers within an organization to answer the following questions:
- What are our current processes?
- How are these processes affecting our performance?
- How can we improve these processes?
- What impact would these improvements have on our business?
Business process improvement examples include:
- Automating patient scheduling
- Tracking inventory in real time
- Using automated survey tools to gather guest or employee feedback
- Implementing electronic invoicing systems
- Automatic payroll processing
- Optimizing employee onboarding
3 Business Process Improvement Methodologies
One of the main purposes of BPI is to make a company’s operations more logical, organized and efficient.
So, it’s no surprise that there are several equally logical, organized and efficient methodologies for business process improvement.
Here are the three most popular ones you should know about.
Six Sigma (6σ)
Six Sigma is a data-driven methodology that aims to improve quality and efficiency through near-perfect performance, allowing 3.4 defects per million products.
Inspired by statistical quality control, Six Sigma was developed by Motorola engineer William B. Smith, Jr. Between 1979 and 1986 to help Motorola improve and maintain the quality of their products.
Six Sigma uses two key approaches, DMAIC and DMADV.
DMAIC stands for:
- Define the goals and drawbacks of your processes
- Measure their performance and efficiency
- Analyze the origins of their inefficiency
- Improve them by eliminating the origins of inefficiency
- Control them to prevent inefficient performance in the future
DMAIC approach is used to refine and reoptimize existing processes within an organization.
DMADV stands for:
- Define your goals for the new process
- Measure the potential risk and return of implementing your process
- Analyze your capabilities and the conditions for the process
- Design the process
- Verify the process’ feasibility and whether the result answers your goals and design considerations
DMADV is useful for establishing new processes, creating new products or launching new services.
Total Quality Management (TQM)
TQM is a holistic approach to long-term success, aiming to get all employees involved in a hands-on, long-term strategy to continuously improve the organization and its processes.
TQM most likely originated in the mid-1980s in the United States and the United Kingdom.
Inspired by the booming Japanese manufacturing industry known for its rigorous quality control, TQM aimed to make American and European manufacturing businesses more competitive by improving the quality of their products.
Before it became widespread in the manufacturing sector, TQM was adopted by U.S. Federal Government organizations, the U.S. Navy and the Department of Defense.
To deliver on its promise, TQM uses three key concepts:
- Employee empowerment: TQM encourages all employees to participate in continuous improvement, fostering a culture of self-management, ownership and openness to new ideas.
- Perpetual improvement: TQM focuses on ongoing improvement, emphasizing that an organization can always become more efficient.
- Focus on the customer: Focused on customer satisfaction, TQM reduces defects and delivers quality products or services that build long-term customer trust and loyalty.
Lean Thinking
Lean methodology focuses on improving efficiency by identifying and removing non-value activities and ensuring that resources are used effectively.
Lean Thinking, also known as Lean Manufacturing, was first coined as a term to describe the Toyota Production System (TPS) approach of producing only what is required, when required, without overproduction and waste.
Lean Thinking has five key pillars:
- Value: The benefits and strengths of the business’s products or services as seen by the customers.
- Value stream: The ways in which the business can create and deliver its products or services to its customers.
- Flow: The uninterrupted process of the business delivering value to its clients.
- Pull: Specific customer demand for particular value (products or services) that the business must respond to.
- Perfection: Meeting the customers’ demand with a product of the highest quality, lowest price and minimal waste.
Lean Thinking is probably the most radical and sophisticated BPI strategy you can implement as a business.
While the philosophy and theory behind it could benefit a business of any scale and industry, its practical application is best reserved for larger corporations that already have complex processes in place.
Common BPI methodologies include Six Sigma, Total Quality Managment and Lean Thinking
3 Benefits That Business Process Improvement Can Bring
Business process improvement can bring a range of positive outcomes for your company.
Improved Productivity & Performance
BPI minimizes bottlenecks and inefficiencies, so you can do more in less time. This, in turn, leads to reduced costs and downtime or increased cash flow.
Improved Customer Satisfaction
Efficient and accurate delivery of products or services means better customer experience. Coupled with effective quality control, this approach helps you meet or exceed customer expectations.
Improved Employee Satisfaction
Clear, efficient workflows reduce employee frustration, eliminate unnecessary tasks and improve productivity. This leads to higher job satisfaction and more engagement.
Business Process Improvement Tips
As we’ve already discovered, improving your business processes can benefit your company in various ways — but how exactly can you do it?
Here are some tips to help you successfully enhance your business operations:
- Set a clear goal: Define specific objectives such as reducing processing time or improving customer satisfaction.
- Analyze current processes: Create detailed process maps to identify bottlenecks, redundancies and areas for improvement.
- Engage team members: Meet with employees to gain insights into their work and pain points.
- Focus on high-impact changes: Consider improvements that will deliver the highest value and measurable results.
- Measure performance: Use key performance indicators (KPIs) to track progress and assess how the implemented changes affect your operations.
- Adopt continuous improvement practices: Embrace methodologies like Lean or Six Sigma to foster a culture of ongoing improvement.
- Use automation tools: Identify tasks that can be automated to reduce manual work, minimize errors and boost productivity.
To improve your business processes, adopt continuous improvement practices and use automation
A Modern Business Process Improvement Tool: Mobile Forms
As BPI is all about efficiency and streamlining processes, the tools you use to implement your BPI strategy need to be equally efficient.
This is especially true for methodologies like Six Sigma which heavily rely on collecting and analyzing data.
However, without some level of automation, this process — and all other steps of a BPI methodology that follow it — can end up taking a lot more time and resources than it needs to.
Fortunately, there are many modern workflow optimization and automation tools that can help you simplify data collection, analysis, management and communication.
One such tool? Mobile forms — like doForms.
Mobile forms allow you to automate data management within your organization.
They are entirely digital, mobile-friendly tools that can automatically collect your data, store it securely in the cloud, interpret it, and organize it according to your needs.
Additionally, mobile forms may also help you automate a wide range of processes within your organization, such as:
- Project progress tracking
- Customer relations management
- Supply chain management
- Equipment management and tracking
- Dispatch management
- Barcode inventory management
- Invoice processing
- Invoice management
- Payroll processing
- Employee management
- Employee scheduling
Mobile forms are also fully customizable and easily scalable according to your needs.
Check out this video to learn more about the customization capabilities of doForms.
Ready to ditch paper forms?
Try doForms for free!
Business Process Improvement: FAQs
Need more info about how to improve your business processes? Read on.
How can BPI help reduce costs?
BPI identifies inefficiencies, eliminates waste and reduces time spent on tasks, which leads to lower costs for labor and resources.
How do mobile forms support business process improvement?
doForms helps digitize your data collection, enabling employees to submit information in real time, reduce errors, and streamline workflows by eliminating costly paper-based processes.
What are the benefits of automating business processes?
Automating your processes with doForms improves efficiency, reduces errors, saves time and removes the need for repetitive manual tasks.
Can mobile forms integrate with other business systems?
Yes, doForms can integrate with systems like CRM, ERP and cloud storage systems. This integration leads to faster decision-making, improved collaboration, and more efficient workflows across the organization.
Are you ready to make your business more efficient?
Book A Demo
