The Power of Business Process Improvement: 10 Simple Steps to Increase Effectiveness, Efficiency, and Adaptability

Susan Page

Language: English

Published: May 14, 2010

Description:

Are you baffled by why your department makes the same errors--repeatedly? Would you like to focus your employees' limited time on more valuable work? Are you struggling to resolve an issue you know little about or make sense of overwhelming new responsibilities? The answer to all of these com-mon challenges, and many more, is business process improvement (BPI). If you think BPI sounds complex, like a job for a quality management or reengineering guru, think again. A process is simply following a series of actions to bring about a result--something you do every time you make yourself breakfast. In The Power of Business Process Improvement, you'll learn how to put this navigation skill to work to solve real problems in real time. A seasoned business process analyst, Susan Page goes straight to the core of what every business professional needs to know about BPI. What's more, she demonstrates how to apply BPI to any department or dilemma with the ultimate goal of making the whole business more effective, efficient, and flexible. Along with a pragmatic and engaging approach to BPI, The Power of Business Process Improvement presents a proven 10-step formula. You'll find a roadmap to guide you from the first crucial step of prioritizing the processes that need fixing to the final step of ensuring that a business process continually delivers value to the business. At every step, you'll also find specific techniques, tools, case studies, and a helpful estimate of how long the step will take to complete. Arranged in a results-oriented progression, the steps to BPI will help you: -Eliminate duplication and bureaucracy. -Explain what a process costs. -Clearly define process boundaries. -Establish internal controls to reduce human errors. -Test and rework the process before introducing it to your superiors or customers. -Implement the change. With The Power of Business Process Improvement to lead the way, you'll reap the rewards of increasing your responsiveness to customers, increasing the productivity of your employees, and enabling your company to adapt to changing needs and stay competitive. "When you have the expertise to examine and understand how business processes work, it sets you apart from the rest," Susan Page assures, "because you have the power to demonstrate the value that the process delivers, its importance to your company, and the effect that a single change can produce." Susan Page is an experienced business process improvement consultant who has worked with the computer, banking, and entertainment industries. She has worked for a major entertainment company in Orlando, Florida, for the past 12 years, and is currently a manager of Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS).