QM Knowledge: Process Management

According to a classic understanding, process management is an important component of any management system. A common definition is that process management is a method for designing, controlling and continuously optimizing all of a company's processes, including business processes. Process management is important and useful for all organizations. Well-integrated processes help to optimize the use of resources, reduce costs and increase customer satisfaction. There are therefore many benefits of process management for the entire business process.

Successful process management makes organizations flexible and responsive, enabling them to react better to changes in the market by continuously improving their services and products in line with market requirements.

Processes must be systematically identified, measured, documented, implemented, and controlled. Potential for improvement, responsibilities and action steps are derived from this. This framework establishes fixed and monitorable standards and specifications for the processes. Process management systems contribute to strategy-compliant control of processes.

A central goal of process management is the improvement of processes. However, continuous optimization of processes is only possible if they are fully known and recorded. Process modeling increases the overall understanding of the entire system and the interrelationships.

Process management enables weak points in processes to be uncovered and processes to be redesigned. In addition, interfaces are improved, and duplication of work can be avoided through clearly defined competencies and responsibilities. The standardization of processes creates clear guidelines for employees and thus also opens up advantages in the induction and training of employees.

The improvements brought about by process management are aimed at making workflows and processes within a process-oriented organization so efficient that the defined corporate goals can be achieved. Process management can therefore help to improve performance throughout the company. An optimal process organization is aligned with the company's goals and strategy and supports the organization in maintaining its competitive edge.

Processes are the model-like description of tasks and activities in an organization in terms of their content and temporal dependency. A process supports a company-related goal that is aligned with the strategy.

Process characteristics are that they take place regularly, consist of several individual steps and support a corporate objective, i.e. have a purpose that is aligned with the strategy. Processes are often carried out by different people, departments or divisions based on a division of labor. Processes run across the entire organization and often involve several organizational units. A process deals with information (input) and leads to a desired result for the company (output).

In practice, a common distinction is made between core, support and management processes.

• Core processes: These processes are business processes with a high proportion of value creation. They support the value chain from order entry to delivery. They represent the company's core business and are usually critical to competition. Core processes include, for example, production, sales, and project management.
• Support processes: These processes support the core processes by providing resources, but do not contribute to value creation themselves. Support processes include, for example, controlling, accounting, or building cleaning.
• Management processes: These processes ensure the interaction of all processes and provide a goal-oriented structure. Among other things, management processes are responsible for the development of corporate strategies, visions and corporate goals and their implementation. Examples of sub-processes include organization, leadership, and corporate planning.

As part of the process documentation, process characteristics must be defined and the processes from input to output must be visualized. To define process characteristics, a number of decisions must be made, such as who the process participants are, which resources are consumed, or which media are used. In this way, an actual state is mapped, which serves as the starting point for planning process optimization.

The newly defined processes should also be visualized in order to maintain an overview when managing the developed processes and to have a good basis for communication. In this way, process sequences can be recorded graphically in an understandable way, but with all relevant details. The overview should contain information about the objective and purpose, inputs and outputs, applicable documents, and key figures for evaluating effectiveness, risks and opportunities. There are standards for process visualization. For example, ISO 9001 standards such as process flowcharts or so-called process maps are suitable for process visualization.

So-called process flowcharts depict the relationships between the individual task steps of a process and thus visualize how the process is structured and to what extent the individual steps fit together. The representation of the process flow helps with planning (actual state) and visualizes the results (target state).

Every process has process key performance indicators that can be used to measure success. Measuring process quality and process performance is very important for process control. By measuring and evaluating the results, the extent to which the company's goals have been achieved can be checked. Inefficient processes can be adjusted again if necessary.

However, traditional business indicators do not do justice to the processes. Therefore, according to ISO 9001, process indicators must be used to adequately assess the performance and efficiency of the processes. These process KPIs are important measurement parameters in process management. Individual KPIs must be found for each process to support the company's objectives.

The advantages of process management are obvious: process management can play a major role in making company processes highly efficient. In this way, the organization continuously develops for the better and maximizes its potential.

However, as all processes need to be kept under control at all times, a software solution should be used to support process management in order to save money, time and personnel. With the help of the software, all workflows and structures are digitized. The risk of a process being interrupted when information is passed on at an interface is reduced, as important information such as the status of tasks or the interrelationships between individual processes is transparently available to everyone involved.