Your organization is full of process. A process to onboard new employees, sell a service, build a product, file taxes, or order more printer paper. Why is process improvement important? From a BPM perspective, everything you do can be framed as a collection of interconnected workflows. Now certainly, you want to have good processes for all the things you do – but in every company, there is a select collection of business processes that define who you are, what you stand for, and contribute directly to increasing customer value or reducing operating cost.
These core business processes drive new customer acquisition, grow relationships with existing customers, and help you run a smooth and efficient operation. This is at the heart of who you are, everything else you do can be considered supporting. That isn’t to say those things aren’t important, or even in some cases critical, but they are not part of what makes you different from your competitors. It’s not the reason that customers go with you over the other choices. And this understanding is the first step to picking the target for process improvement.
When considering targets for business process automation, this core vs. supporting distinction should be at the forefront of your mind. Are you targeting a core, differentiator process, or a supporting process? Real process improvement gains can be made in both areas but your approach to the problem should be slightly different.
Supporting Processes:
Generally speaking, these processes are reasonably generic – most companies tackle some kind of new employee onboarding, or departmental accounting, for example. Building a custom application from the ground up for the sake of process improvement in these scenarios can sometimes feel like your reinventing the wheel; wasting time and money to boot. Many times a better solution is to use an application framework. These frameworks act as a project kick start, allowing you to focus on personalizing, rather than redefining. A framework will typically have most of the central features already built out and functional, while providing you room to attend to minor variations.
This isn’t an endorsement to go out and fill your IT department with an assortment of shelf solutions that each target a specific need, but rather to leverage an application platform, like Appian, in two modes. For supporting processes that mode is to utilize pre-built solutions from the Appian AppMarket to quickly reach your application goals, allowing you to spend more time and energy on your core.
Core Processes:
Your core processes set you apart from the competition, whether that’s in terms of operating, customer engagement, or delivery. These are the business processes that define your value proposition. Using a generic template or framework for process improvement doesn’t make sense here – it has to be a custom fit, a tailored solution that delivers your specific brand in an exceptional way. Now is the time to implement a custom application, built from scratch, capturing your business exactly the way it’s done.
Within weeks, we can guide you through the process to quickly prototype and build your custom solution in Appian. Giving you the flexibility to both rapidly get into production with a mobile ready custom application, while also establishing the sound foundation and to be able to change and grow with your business.
Let’s Take the Next Step
Partner with Princeton Blue. Let us showcase both our custom and framework solutions to you and your company for process improvement. Contact us or you may reach out to us directly at (908)369-0961.
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