Business Process Redesign in Practice: What It Actually Looks Like

Much of the information you’ll find on Business Process Redesign will be about the stages and principles. However, if you’re looking to undertake BPR within your organization a question you’re likely to ask will be ‘what will this really mean for us?’, ‘what will we actually have to do?’ and ‘how long will this take?’. Whilst many of these questions are answered during scopes, they are still fair questions to ask and we understand that a straightforward answer before taking a step may be more beneficial.

What To Expect:

Most of the time BPR will start off with a conversation to understand how the organization thinks as a whole, and how it currently views their processes. This is a simple yet important step as most of the time the process we feel is causing issues isn’t necessarily the problem. People tend to complain about certain symptoms and it’s important to understand what is actually causing the issue.

Once you understand this, we will move onto documenting. This will involve asking people on the ground to walk us through their process step-by-step. It’s usually at this point you’ll encounter your first surprise, as the real process will often not match the documented process. It is important to assure your people that there is no confrontation here, we want to understand how things are really done so we can only responsibly redesign it to be better and easier for everyone involved.

The redesign process will be collaborative. Most of the time trying to push a new process down from the top won’t last long. We’ll collaborate with the people involved in the process to create a new one. There will likely be some workshops and drafts created. There will also be a few iterations and lots of honest discussion around which steps are genuinely adding value.

What To Prepare:

Whilst having process maps, policies and role descriptions will definitely help, the most valuable thing to prepare is having access to people who can be honest. We find the process works best when those undertaking the work can be honest about what is holding them back.

Having a clear intention will also help. If your organization knows what they want to achieve from the process (speed, reliability, clarity, etc) then you will have a clear direction. Without this, you may end up with a process that looks nicer but isn’t any better.

Leadership should also be prepared to be involved. This is because the redesign will involve decisions around authority and ownership. Most of the time, organizations who really get the most out of this process are ones where leadership view it as a priority.

How Long Will It Take?

Honestly, there is no real one-size-fits-all answer. It will depend on the scope. If you are redesigning one process with cooperative stakeholders and decent documentation, it could take a few weeks. However, if you are redesigning across a range of processes or within a complex organization with lots of decision makers, it will inevitably take months.

We can say that each stage will take time. Often the discovery and mapping stage will take longer than expected as it is important to get this accurate. Once you understand the current state, the design will progress quicker. Then the implementation and measuring will go beyond the formal project timeframe as the redesign can only be considered complete when the new process has become embedded and proven.

PISC will work with your organization throughout the process. As we mentioned at the beginning, we only start with a simple conversation.