Episode 1: Define the Deliverable of the Business Process.
1-1. First, envision the output
For example…
When you send data to a printer, you get a printout.
When you give a vending machine money and your wish, you get a product.
What exactly is the output of the business process (workflow) you are in charge of? This can be a difficult question to answer, even with processes we perform daily.
Some examples…
When you make an inquiry at an information desk, you get an answer.
When you inform a salesperson of what you want, you get an estimate.
When you submit a job application to HR, you may go through various exchanges in between, but in the end you get an acceptance/rejection letter.
There may be complicated transactions involved within an organization, and some things may be concluded arbitrarily by one member, but there is always some sort of processing followed by some sort of output.
When designing business processes, it is important to first grasp each process objectively and think of what the output should be.
1-2. Define the final output.
"The materials are the input, and the balance sheet and Profit & Loss statement are the outputs."
Although this is a bit extreme, it is, so to say, a correct statement. However, the moment you try to grasp processes too macroscopically, you begin to lose the efficiency of the discussion. The greatest aim of BPM is consistent improvement, and we want to talk about improvement in units that appropriately divide the company.
This brings us to the question: What is the optimum way to divide a company? Let’s use a website production company as an example.
We can think of various deliverables in a website production company, such as estimate sheets, websites, setup manuals, etc. Naturally, it is not conducive to define a business process for every single possible deliverable.
For example, the website and setup manual are both managed by the production team, and created at the same stage in a one-on-one work environment. These should be thought of as outputs of the single Website Production process. In this case, a data CD could be envisioned as the final output of the Website Production process, and the website and setup manual can be created at various tasks within the process.
This is why it is important to define the deliverable-the final output-when establishing business processes.
