Business Process Re-engineering

BUSINESS PROCESS RE-ENGINEERING

“In the age of the customer, executives don’t decide how customer-centric their companies are — customers do.” ~ Kate Leggett

The customer should always be at the centre of the design of business processes. It’s logical – without customers, there is no point in keeping the business running after all. But do organisations actually design their processes with their customers in mind? Many organisations have incrementally changed their processes over time to meet new emerging requirements and have eventually found themselves with processes that are bulky, inefficient and organisation-centric rather than customer-centric, which:

+ Require and/or generate a lot of paperwork;

+ Satisfy the requirements of the process executors rather than those of the customer;

+ Are riddled with duplications and unnecessary steps;

+ Take much longer than necessary/reasonable to complete;

+ Cost the organisation in terms of lost customers (opportunity costs) and additional labour hours required to complete the wasteful steps.

In the highly competitive environment that we operate in, every customer counts. Customers are more conscious, less loyal and in search of greater satisfaction. Therefore, the organisation that makes it easier and faster for customers to deal with it, shall conquer more customers. The organisation that has leaner, more efficient processes shall have a lower operating cost base and, as a result, better net profits.

As such, businesses, you have to ensure that their processes are truly customer-centric and efficient. This exercise requires dedicated staff, preferably with business analysis experience, to document every single process, to analyse the current status and to re-engineer/re-design these processes to make them more efficient and customer-centric, and automating them wherever possible. This endeavour is best handled as a project as the end result is not simply a set of redesigned processes on paper. Rather, the end result is a more customer-centric organisation, with leaner processes and a changed mindset.