Maximising process improvement ROI during a digital revolution

This article is written by Saguna Roy, Supervisor Operations Performance & Analytics at the City of Edmonton.

• The problem: Process improvement is often an overused word in the corporate world and one that leadership finds hard to pin down an ROI on.
• Why it matters: Process improvement has the untapped potential to help your organisation on many of the emerging challenges due to the digital revolution.
• The solution: Process improvement initiatives have been shown to reduce costs, improve quality, reduce defects and improve customer satisfaction.

Process improvement is often an overused word in the corporate world and one that leadership finds hard to pin down an ROI (Return on Investment) on. So to the modern executive who is pitched a process improvement initiative, I say consider this — in the current digital revolution, is your organisation facing challenges like adapting rapidly to the pace of technological change and customer preferences, managing and analysing the overwhelming amount of data being generated to make sound business decisions and keeping jobs attractive for top talent? If so, process improvement has the untapped potential to help your organisation on all of these frontiers and beyond.  

In my experience, involving the front lines of the process from the beginning can yield great gains, even in complex and unionised environments.

At its core, a process is a series of steps designed to achieve a specific outcome. In the business context, a process is a set of inputs — activities or tasks, that generate a desired output — product or service. And process improvement involves analysing existing processes to improve efficiency, effectiveness and value. Armed with optimised processes, organisations can keep up with changing market conditions, customer preferences and technological innovations. In addition, by streamlining data prioritisation, collection and cleaning processes as well as automating certain activities, organisations can more effectively collect, store and analyse data to take timely data-driven decisions.

Finally, process improvement can make all aspects of the employee experience seamless and rewarding. Processes like job applications, onboarding, training and onwards to day-to-day job execution, organisations can attract and retain top talent by ensuring redundant tasks are eliminated and employees can focus on value-added work and thus feel more engaged.

Building a positive cycle  

Moreover, it is important to note that process improvement is not just about the technical aspects of reducing cycle time or improving quality. Ultimately, process improvement is about people and the way they interact with a process. Unfortunately, many organisations overlook the importance of consulting and involving the key stakeholders who touch the process, leading to a lack of buy-in and understanding that can cause otherwise optimal processes to produce suboptimal results.

In my experience, involving the front lines of the process from the beginning can yield great gains, even in complex and unionised environments. Therefore, it is crucial for organisations to take a people-centric approach to process improvement, ensuring that all stakeholders are consulted and informed throughout the process.

Here are the essential steps to unleash the maximum ROI of a process improvement initiative: 

Develop a catalogue of all the processes in a certain area and prioritise them in terms of impact of optimised process and effort to optimise the process. This can be done by conducting a workshop with all the employees in said area, developing an extensive list of the processes and categorising them in a matrix form as below:

1. Prioritise areas for improvement: To get started, target the low-effort and high-impact processes. This will enable the team to demonstrate quick gains, build momentum and gain leadership buy-in. 

2. Engage employees involved in the process from the beginning: Once a process has been identified for improvement, ensure all the employees that touch the process are involved from the onset. Most organisations only involve the process owner and leave the onus on them to communicate the process changes to other employees in the process. As previously mentioned, employees are critical to the success of any process improvement initiative. By asking for their input to design the future state process and providing them with training a culture of continuous improvement can be created.

3. Do not reinvent the wheel: Utilise proven methodologies and tools such as Lean and Six Sigma to steer through the process improvement journey. These methodologies have proven to transform processes in many industries and can provide a framework for breaking down the existing process, identifying key areas for improvement and finding efficiencies.

4. Measure and monitor results: Nothing proves the value of the process improvement effort more than numerical results. That is why it is critical to monitor the key metrics that define a process before and after the improvement has been made. The difference between the two should demonstrate the impact of the changes and further identify areas that need improvement. 

5. Keep at it: Process improvement is not a one-time event but rather an ongoing journey that requires continuous improvement. It is important to set a frequency at which all processes will be reviewed for efficiency and effectiveness. Inevitably changes in the organisation happening over time may impact processes and it’s necessary to proactively adapt to avoid a messy postmortem of a failing process. 

To recap, organisations can maximise resource utilisation by investing in process improvement initiatives, Lean/Six Sigma practitioners and upskilling employees to learn the basics of process improvement (a good way to get started is the White Belt certification in Lean/Six Sigma). Process improvement initiatives have been shown to reduce costs, improve quality, reduce defects and improve customer satisfaction. By following the steps outlined above organisations can unlock the full potential of process improvement and achieve lasting success.

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