Business Process Improvement

The Issue

Poor business process design often leads to cost, quality, delivery and service issues that frustrate both an organization’s customers and employees, and limit its ability to realize desired growth and profitability.

Our Point of View

  • Improving business process performance starts with “the end in mind” – by defining the customer (internal and external), operational, and financial outcomes that are desired from the effort.
  • Process improvement choices should jointly optimize the needs of the organization and its employees. The concept of joint optimization is essential to realizing sustainable workforce productivity improvement and retention.
  • Form always follows function – successful BPI efforts should always start with defining the content of work that needs to be done to get the outcomes needed, versus trying to improve process performance through changes in job and organization structure.
  • It’s the interplay between work process, people, and technology that result in improved business performance. BPI should clarify how people interact with each other, do their work, and interact with the technology needed to get the work done.

Our Approach

Axiom helps clients implement a BPI approach that will:

  • Clarify process outcomes and associated measures that define required and desired customer, operational, and financial performance results.
  • Discover and define what employees want and need from their work in order to realize their full productivity and engagement.
  • Define process boundaries to ensure a comprehensive focus on the work required to deliver the products or services in question.
  • Understand the current process by developing a comprehensive map of the “As Is” work content and flow, accountabilities, information, interactions, decision making/governance, and staffing.
  • Identify opportunities for improvement by eliminating non value-added work, removing redundancies, improving information content and flow, modifying job accountabilities, clarifying decision making/decision rights, and modifying organization structure and staffing.
  • Develop a complete picture of the future “To Be” process that incorporates improvements.
  • Stress test the process through simulation to ensure capability, performance, and validation of expected cost/benefits.
  • Develop a detailed plan for implementation that effectively transitions the organization from the old to the new process.

Typical Benefits

  • Reduced costs and increased workforce productivity.
  • Increased customer satisfaction resulting from improvements in quality, speed of delivery, and customer responsiveness.
  • Improved profitability.

To learn more, contact us by phone at (312) 523-2123 or by email.


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