In many organizations processes developed over time but are no longer optimized with current business requirements. Well-managed processes can be the key to realizing your strategic goals, adequate risk control, a customer focused organization and a state of real operational excellence.
To be able to manage a process, high quality information about the level of process performance is critical. Questions such as “How should we measure this?” are common. Once the Key Performance Indicators at strategic level have been determined, they need to be consistently translated to lower process levels. This holds true for both financial as well as non-financial indicators. Cause-and-effect relationships offer the opportunity to create early warning indicators that provide management with a bigger time span for corrective action.
One of the pitfalls within many organizations is the lack of flexibility regarding implementing changes in processes. For example IT-systems frequently show high change costs that can become an obstacle when strategy needs to be adjusted or a merger is proposed. Adaptivity is a matter of organizing processes in such a way that people are involved, processes and performance are transparent and IT-systems are flexible.