Gluu

Gluu Academy

Common process understanding

25 ways business processes can create value

The goal of this lesson is to prepare you to explain to senior management how business processes can create value. 

Lesson resources

Below you can find some resources that supplement this lesson:

Key learnings

  • Processes give leaders a helicopter view of how value flows across teams and systems—not org chart boxes.
  • Tie your first process initiative to a current top 3 priority to harness attention, momentum, and budget.
  • 25 value plays span Customer Experience, Cost Reduction, Non-quality, Compliance, People, Automation, and Risk—pick the one that fits your agenda now.
  • Keep it simple and inclusive: map as-is with roles/activities/events/decisions to engage the people who do the work.
  • Run → learn → update until stable; evidence and performance follow naturally (tasks, trails, and continuous improvement).
  • Build a practical process hierarchy and assign clear ownership to sustain value and prepare automation.
  • Brand-aligned north star: engage business users to create standard work that delivers lower risk and higher efficiency.

Video transcript

Welcome! In this session, you’ll see how a process-first mindset creates measurable value—fast. We’ll connect process thinking directly to your top priorities and walk through 25 specific value plays you can use.

Processes let you step back and see the forest for the trees. They provide a helicopter view of work, so you can understand how value really flows across teams and systems—not just within org chart boxes.

Now, reflection time is scarce. Another fire is always just minutes away. That’s why I recommend you start small and deliver results fast. From working with hundreds of companies, we’ve seen process initiatives succeed the fastest when they hook into the company’s existing momentum.

Ask yourself: What’s on our company’s top 3 list right now? If you connect a targeted process initiative to one of those, you’ll harness attention, momentum, and budget—while demonstrating the value of process thinking. Win-win.

In the next half hour, I’ll give you 25 concrete examples of how business processes can implement and operationalize your strategic projects. We’ve grouped them under: Customer Experience, Cost Reduction, Cost of Non-quality, Compliance, Employee Satisfaction, Automation, and Risk Management.

#1 Clarify customer touchpoints. Map every activity that touches your internal or external customer. When people see where they connect to customers, they change behavior and decisions align around experience—end to end.

#2 Document batch quality. If you deliver components or services upstream, auto-prove that your standard process was followed for each delivery. That proof builds trust and becomes a competitive edge in B2B relationships.

#3 Save time with digital registrations. Capture data at the point of work. It boosts accuracy and can eliminate up to 90% of wasted handling time from paper forms.

#4 Reduce IT license & training costs. When roles, activities and systems are clearly connected, you can assign the right licenses and training—not too many, not too few.

#5 Improve process efficiency. Yes, improve the process itself—shorter cycle times, fewer handoffs, and a smoother flow. This is where small fixes compound into a big P&L impact.

#6 Sustain a Lean program across locations. Kanban boards help locally; visual end-to-end processes make flow visible across the entire value chain.

#7 Standardize work. Put concise, easy-to-follow instructions in the work situation so best practice becomes the easiest path, not the extra step.

#8 Capture quality issues visually. Snap photos of defects as part of the process. Visual evidence accelerates root cause analysis and supplier conversations.

#9 Manage preventive maintenance. Treat your asset lifecycle as a process. Right intervals, fewer breakdowns, more uptime.

#10 Prove processes are followed. Regulations like GDPR require evidence that you follow the process each time. Processes that produce their own audit trail make this straightforward.

#11 Filter activities by compliance requirement. Tag activities to standards (safety, environment, security, quality). Then one system can handle cross-standard reporting without duplicating tools.

#12 Prepare for certification. Getting processes under control gets you 80–90% of the way to ISO 9001/14000/27000 and more.

#13 Remember all recurring tasks. Let the process deliver routine tasks to the right roles—no manager handholding required.

#14 Make non-conformance reporting a by-product. When reporting happens as you work, you avoid retyping, and you learn faster.

#15 Onboarding that succeeds every time. Turn your onboarding program into a process—consistent, welcoming, and robust, even at scale.

#16 Role clarity reduces stress. When everyone knows who does what, hybrid teams work with less friction and fewer handoffs dropped.

#17 Better performance reviews. If you know a person’s roles, you can see the processes they drive, and review with objective, context-rich examples.

#18 Run e-learning as a process. Quizzes, confirmations, and records—handled in the flow of work, without yet another isolated system.

#19 Make processes transparent before you automate. If you automate a mess, you get a mess faster. Clarity first, technology second.

#20 Digitize case flows. Start with semi-automation. Running work as cases is a quick, low-risk win that creates immediate visibility.

#21 Train the human–AI handover. Automation works when handoffs are explicit, trained, and owned.

#22 Route incident reports by process. During, say, an ERP rollout, capture incidents in the process context—so you can tell process issues from system issues.

#23 Convert work instructions into RPA/AI input. A simple screen recording transcribed into  a work instruction doubles as specification for an AI bot.

#24 See high-risk activities across processes. When core processes are mapped, you can flag risky activities everywhere and maintain a living, operational risk register.

#25 Disaster planning. Treat crisis response as a collection of processes. A new incident becomes a case that runs like clockwork—clear roles, tasks, and evidence.

You’ve now seen 25 ways to create value. So where do you start? Pick one top-priority initiative and attach a small, high-impact process to it. Map the “as-is,” not the ideal. Keep notation simple—roles, activities, events, and decisions—and get the people who do the work involved. This accelerates buy-in and turns process maps into standard work that’s used.

Then test in real life. Run the process, capture comments, adjust every few runs, and stabilize it so different people execute it the same way over time. That’s how you close the gap between “what we say we do” and “what we really do”.

When you’re ready for scale, connect processes into your value chain—a practical process hierarchy that shows how end-to-end work delivers what customers pay for, and who owns each flow. Keep ownership close to the work, empower editors to help busy process owners, and involve colleagues early to build real adoption.

This isn’t about tools first—it’s about value and employee engagement. Transparent flows, delegated ownership, and repetition drive faster delivery, less rework, stronger onboarding, lower risk, and provable compliance. Start where leadership already has attention and show tangible results in weeks, not months.

Pick one initiative from your company’s top 3 priorities. Choose one of the 25 plays that fit. Map the process in a simple format, run it for real, and stabilize it. You’ll show the business what process thinking can do—with fast, visible value.