Business Process Optimisation

Business process optimisation is the act of incrementally changing business processes with the aim of improving effectiveness and efficiency.

Business Process Optimization (BPO) is a strategic approach that aims to enhance the efficiency, effectiveness, and overall performance of an organization’s business processes. It involves the systematic evaluation and improvement of workflows, tasks, and activities to achieve better results, reduce costs, and increase overall productivity. The goal of business process optimization is to streamline operations, eliminate redundancies, and align processes with organizational goals.

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Firstly, what is a process? Processes, in contrast to projects, are continuous actions. Consequently, you can think of a process as a chain of activities, performed by different roles that, together, produce the desired outcome.

All businesses are built upon hundreds of processes, many of which you may not even consider and are just an automatic aspect of your daily life. However, you can always improve the efficiency of those actions and when those actions are repeated frequently even small improvements can have a large impact over time.

This is where Business Process Optimisation comes in, it is the discipline of incremental improvement. While Business Process Reengineering is the discipline for rebuilding a process from scratch.

Fundamentals of Business Process Optimisation:

Ultimately, there is a multitude of ways in which your processes could improve depending on various factors. However, there are three fundamental questions that will lead you to the best solution:

1. How do we communicate our method of working?
2. How do we ensure that everyone follows this method consistently?
3. What can we do to continuously actively seek improvement?

Of course, these questions are quite vague. But, taking them into serious consideration will yield results. Especially when you involve all of your team (particularly those who do the work). If you’d like more advice on how to take the next steps towards optimising your business processes, be sure to check out our guide below.

Further Resources of Business Process Optimisation:

• Read our guide to creating a process improvement plan
• check out our article which recommends the best process improvement tools
• Business Process Management Common Body of Knowledge (BPM CBOK, 2009), The Association of Business Process Management Professionals

Related Links:

• Process Management Lifecycle
• Process Improvement
• Business Process Management (BPM)
• Business Process Transformation

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Explore more about different process improvement terms in our BPM Glossary.