As the last and final step of our journey to process analytics blog post series we are looking into process governance and its impact for your operational and more importantly customer excellence. Earlier this year we started looking into 10 steps for successful journey to process analytics.
Today’s process and journey professionals are challenged with focusing on people experience including customers, employees and suppliers and govern enterprise process management activities, managing process lifecycles and ensuring that processes are reviewed regularly – while establishing process ownership and automation potential within the organization. Although the concept may initially appear to be complex, some structured steps can significantly increase inherent simplicity. Please continue reading for a deeper understanding.
The key components of process governance include the following:
Overall, these key components can help ensure that an organization's business processes are aligned with its strategic goals and objectives. They allow a consistent and efficient process execution and free up resources to elevate customer centricity by including experience-driven analytics and mining results.
The definition of critical business processes involves identifying the specific processes and journeys that are critical to the organization's success and defining them in clear and specific terms. Critical business processes are the most essential activities that a company must carry out to operate effectively and achieve its goals. These processes often involve the management of key resources such as financial assets, human capital, and information, and are typically vital to the overall success of the organization. Examples of critical business processes include inventory management, supply chain management, and customer relationship management which ideally includes experience-driven process and journey analysis. Ensuring the smooth and efficient functioning of these processes, resulting in end-to-end customer journeys is crucial for a business to survive and thrive in today's competitive marketplace. Therefore, it is important for companies to carefully design and continually review and optimize their critical business processes to stay ahead of the curve and remain competitive.
The definition of these processes is a key management task, but all critical processes and journeys should be mapped and modeled based on common standards within a process management solution. We shared best practices in step 4 (better model customer journeys) and step 5 (better model your business processes) within our blog post series.
This involves defining the specific individuals or teams who are responsible for each process or journey, as well as their specific responsibilities and authority. In between process management solution administrators, process and journey owners, collaborators and business users, roles and responsibilities must be defined and documented clearly. A clear access strategy based on need-to-know-principle is industry best practice and can be taken one step further with role-based dashboards. Enterprise process management solutions offer options for process administrators to create dashboards tailored to specific user groups or roles.
Process and journey modelers can be provided with specific insights to their roles helping them to understand process performance and people experience better. We recommend adding journey experts as part of the diagram approval workflow to add their review based on customer, employees, and supplier experience.
Choosing the right technology is highly influenced by your business goals and transformation targets but it should include setting performance metrics and regularly reviewing and analyzing data to identify opportunities for improvement. Both operational and customer excellence should be included into the journey and process performance analysis to not only achieve best practice, but also to have your customers choose you over other options in your market. It also involves conducting regular audits to ensure that processes are being executed in accordance with established standards and procedures.
SAP Signavio unites a proven transformation methodology with enterprise process transformation technology and tailored value accelerators combining:
Assuming the right technology in place the next step involves engaging with key stakeholders, such as customers, employees, and regulators, to understand their needs and concerns and incorporate them into the organization's processes. This marks the crucial interaction between process governance and people interaction with your processes and ultimately the resulting experience.
Lowering the impact of the human factor within security and compliance requirements is strongly bound to global zero-trust principle mandates across various industries. This translates into the limitation of so-called human factors like forgetting to review processes regularly, typos, missing approvals, untraceable changes, or over privileged users seeing more than what is essential to their role and many more.
Involving multiple stakeholders should be standardized through process governance workflows by adding additional approvers and configure the approval form to fit individual business and compliance needs. In addition, all changes being made to processes and journeys should be tracked including information on who made what change and allow the option to revert to earlier version in case needed. The impact of all changes should be analyzed by process analysis and mining initiatives in strong alliance with experience-driven metrics which we like to call journey to process analytics to guarantee best possible results for all people interacting with the sum of process. As a micro change in one process might affect a customer journey on a larger scale, we recommend to auto inform journey owners and modelers about recent changes on their journey’s linked to processes (journey to process change alerts).
An open and transparent communication throughout your entire process and journey landscape is highly beneficial and supports stakeholder involvement. Make use of comment and notification services within a process or journey to share information with your peers concerning upcoming changes, ideas, perceptions, or incoming customer feedback.Make your people part of your process management strategy to foster the wisdom of the crowd while tracking and documenting all steps.
Creating seamless journeys also requires different teams in your organization to work conjointly and engage with customers at various touchpoints. Hence, journey and process governance is equally critical to ensuring consistent experiences.
Last, but not least we get to the most important key component. This involves regularly reviewing and updating processes to ensure that they are aligned with the organization's strategic goals and objectives and are being executed in a consistent and efficient manner. As mentioned,you should extend the level of pure process excellence and governance to include customer experience (CX) levels.
Depending on your industry annual audits are recommended including a full audit track around process compliance. We recommend internal audit reports every 6 months utilizing documentation and reporting capabilities. On top of that you can assess the maturity of processes and add CX dimensions into the maturity, “how mature this process when it comes to CX touchpoints” and adjust accordingly based on your journey to process analytics data.
Setting up approval process approval and assessment workflows involving process owners and modelers and if needed business users adds another level of automation. Reviews can be easily forgotten. We recommend to preschedule them to enable process owners to report on assessment level and progress for all crucial processes. Looping back to the very beginning of our series we like to remind you that only “what gets measured, gets managed” (P. Drucker), but also that “when one measures a target, the measure becomes the target” (M. Strathern).
Measuring and monitoring Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is a key challenge in organizations. To facilitate a holistic perspective for process-driven and customer-centric companies, SAP Signavio journey to process analytics integrates operational process metrics with experience-based ones, bridging operations and customer journeys in one single framework.
In a Nutshell:
Process governance is an essential aspect of any organization as it helps to ensure that business processes are efficiently carried out and well perceived by the people interacting with them and aligned with the goals and objectives of the organization
Overall, effective process governance involves a combination of clear definitions, defined roles and responsibilities, the right technology, engagement with stakeholders, people needs and experiences, continuous review and updates. By focusing on these key components, organizations can ensure that their business processes are efficient, effective, and aligned with their goals.
This is the final post of our series.
Did you like this post? Follow SAP Signavio Community for more content like this, and subscribe to our Product News Subscription Center to be always up-to-date on the latest product news at SAP Signavio.
Today’s process and journey professionals are challenged with focusing on people experience including customers, employees and suppliers and govern enterprise process management activities, managing process lifecycles and ensuring that processes are reviewed regularly – while establishing process ownership and automation potential within the organization. Although the concept may initially appear to be complex, some structured steps can significantly increase inherent simplicity. Please continue reading for a deeper understanding.
The key components of process governance include the following:
- Defining critical business processes
- Establishing roles and responsibilities
- Implementing the right technology for monitoring and improving processes
- Engaging with stakeholders
- Continuously reviewing and updating processes
Overall, these key components can help ensure that an organization's business processes are aligned with its strategic goals and objectives. They allow a consistent and efficient process execution and free up resources to elevate customer centricity by including experience-driven analytics and mining results.
Defining critical business processes
The definition of critical business processes involves identifying the specific processes and journeys that are critical to the organization's success and defining them in clear and specific terms. Critical business processes are the most essential activities that a company must carry out to operate effectively and achieve its goals. These processes often involve the management of key resources such as financial assets, human capital, and information, and are typically vital to the overall success of the organization. Examples of critical business processes include inventory management, supply chain management, and customer relationship management which ideally includes experience-driven process and journey analysis. Ensuring the smooth and efficient functioning of these processes, resulting in end-to-end customer journeys is crucial for a business to survive and thrive in today's competitive marketplace. Therefore, it is important for companies to carefully design and continually review and optimize their critical business processes to stay ahead of the curve and remain competitive.
The definition of these processes is a key management task, but all critical processes and journeys should be mapped and modeled based on common standards within a process management solution. We shared best practices in step 4 (better model customer journeys) and step 5 (better model your business processes) within our blog post series.
Establishing roles and responsibilities
This involves defining the specific individuals or teams who are responsible for each process or journey, as well as their specific responsibilities and authority. In between process management solution administrators, process and journey owners, collaborators and business users, roles and responsibilities must be defined and documented clearly. A clear access strategy based on need-to-know-principle is industry best practice and can be taken one step further with role-based dashboards. Enterprise process management solutions offer options for process administrators to create dashboards tailored to specific user groups or roles.
SAP Signavio dashboards tailored to specific user groups or roles
Process and journey modelers can be provided with specific insights to their roles helping them to understand process performance and people experience better. We recommend adding journey experts as part of the diagram approval workflow to add their review based on customer, employees, and supplier experience.
SAP Signavio adding journey experts as part of the diagram approval workflow
Implementing the right technology for monitoring and improving processes
Choosing the right technology is highly influenced by your business goals and transformation targets but it should include setting performance metrics and regularly reviewing and analyzing data to identify opportunities for improvement. Both operational and customer excellence should be included into the journey and process performance analysis to not only achieve best practice, but also to have your customers choose you over other options in your market. It also involves conducting regular audits to ensure that processes are being executed in accordance with established standards and procedures.
SAP Signavio unites a proven transformation methodology with enterprise process transformation technology and tailored value accelerators combining:
- Process and experience-driven mining and analytics,
- Journey and process design and governance, as well as
- Process automation paired with
- Change management capabilities.
Engaging with stakeholders
Assuming the right technology in place the next step involves engaging with key stakeholders, such as customers, employees, and regulators, to understand their needs and concerns and incorporate them into the organization's processes. This marks the crucial interaction between process governance and people interaction with your processes and ultimately the resulting experience.
Lowering the impact of the human factor within security and compliance requirements is strongly bound to global zero-trust principle mandates across various industries. This translates into the limitation of so-called human factors like forgetting to review processes regularly, typos, missing approvals, untraceable changes, or over privileged users seeing more than what is essential to their role and many more.
Involving multiple stakeholders should be standardized through process governance workflows by adding additional approvers and configure the approval form to fit individual business and compliance needs. In addition, all changes being made to processes and journeys should be tracked including information on who made what change and allow the option to revert to earlier version in case needed. The impact of all changes should be analyzed by process analysis and mining initiatives in strong alliance with experience-driven metrics which we like to call journey to process analytics to guarantee best possible results for all people interacting with the sum of process. As a micro change in one process might affect a customer journey on a larger scale, we recommend to auto inform journey owners and modelers about recent changes on their journey’s linked to processes (journey to process change alerts).
Start approvals from SAP Signavio Collaboration Hub (coming soon)
An open and transparent communication throughout your entire process and journey landscape is highly beneficial and supports stakeholder involvement. Make use of comment and notification services within a process or journey to share information with your peers concerning upcoming changes, ideas, perceptions, or incoming customer feedback.Make your people part of your process management strategy to foster the wisdom of the crowd while tracking and documenting all steps.
Creating seamless journeys also requires different teams in your organization to work conjointly and engage with customers at various touchpoints. Hence, journey and process governance is equally critical to ensuring consistent experiences.
Continuously reviewing and updating processes
Last, but not least we get to the most important key component. This involves regularly reviewing and updating processes to ensure that they are aligned with the organization's strategic goals and objectives and are being executed in a consistent and efficient manner. As mentioned,you should extend the level of pure process excellence and governance to include customer experience (CX) levels.
Depending on your industry annual audits are recommended including a full audit track around process compliance. We recommend internal audit reports every 6 months utilizing documentation and reporting capabilities. On top of that you can assess the maturity of processes and add CX dimensions into the maturity, “how mature this process when it comes to CX touchpoints” and adjust accordingly based on your journey to process analytics data.
Setting up approval process approval and assessment workflows involving process owners and modelers and if needed business users adds another level of automation. Reviews can be easily forgotten. We recommend to preschedule them to enable process owners to report on assessment level and progress for all crucial processes. Looping back to the very beginning of our series we like to remind you that only “what gets measured, gets managed” (P. Drucker), but also that “when one measures a target, the measure becomes the target” (M. Strathern).
Measuring and monitoring Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is a key challenge in organizations. To facilitate a holistic perspective for process-driven and customer-centric companies, SAP Signavio journey to process analytics integrates operational process metrics with experience-based ones, bridging operations and customer journeys in one single framework.
In a Nutshell:
Process governance is an essential aspect of any organization as it helps to ensure that business processes are efficiently carried out and well perceived by the people interacting with them and aligned with the goals and objectives of the organization
Overall, effective process governance involves a combination of clear definitions, defined roles and responsibilities, the right technology, engagement with stakeholders, people needs and experiences, continuous review and updates. By focusing on these key components, organizations can ensure that their business processes are efficient, effective, and aligned with their goals.
This is the final post of our series.
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- Check out our journey to process analytics Community page
- Join the Early Adopter Care program (EAC)and become one of our first customers to enjoy the full journey to process analytics capabilities.
- Learn more about journey to process analytics by watching our webinar series recordings.
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