When you embark on a process mapping project, following some best practices is important. This will help you avoid common mistakes and ensure your process maps are thorough, clear and fit for purpose. Here are some of the ways you can avoid potentially costly mistakes when process mapping.
Thorough Documentation
Remember that a process map is a resource. It should clearly document how to do something, including the steps involved. So, if this knowledge isn’t captured somewhere and easily referenced by everyone, it doesn’t serve its purpose.
Clear documentation of your process maps ensures you can revisit them later. If you want to improve processes in the future, you’ll have an easy reference point to start from if your documentation is clear.
Stakeholder Engagement
A business is made up of many different stakeholders. Some are internal, some are external. But all are important. It’s also true that most business processes involve multiple stakeholders. For that reason, everybody should get to contribute to process mapping. This is the best way to find out how each process step impacts stakeholders.
Simplicity and Clarity
Process maps are for everyone, not just managers and subject matter experts. It’s easy to get too technical with process mapping, especially if you have a deep knowledge of the processes. But a process map works much better if the language is simple, easy to understand and includes visual aids such as diagrams and charts.
Regular Updates
Processes don’t necessarily remain the same forever. In fact, the whole idea of process mapping is to improve your processes. So, as you change how you do business, remember to update your process maps. Doing this as your business evolves makes future strategic planning and process discovery projects much easier.
Standardisation
We can’t stress enough the importance of standardisation. This means ensuring all process mapping exercises in an organisation are completed in the same manner. They should use the same terminology, structure and process. This way, you ensure consistency across the organisation, making the entire process map more effective.
If you need assistance with business process optimisation, sales automation or customised software, contact the team at Human Pixel today.
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