Process Improvement Analysis
When you own or manage a business, it’s up to you to ensure that the business runs as smoothly and profitable as possible. However, over the months and years, it’s possible for financial effectiveness to become compromised in areas, and your company is wasting resources and funds, where it could improve.
It can be challenging as an owner or manager to recognize these areas. These are processes that you helped to put in place. They once ran efficiently, so it’s hard to see when they become inefficient, even when you’re looking for areas to make improvements.
When you’re ready to make changes and need help identifying these inefficiencies within your own systems, process improvement analysis is the way to go. This analysis can help you identify areas that can be improved upon to save you money.
What Is Process Improvement Analysis?
Process improvement analysis is an audit of your company’s processes to identify areas of inefficiencies that cost money and to locate areas in your process that don’t add value. When you opt for a process improvement analysis, you can use the information to remove inefficiencies and or completely remove them.
This analysis can also help your company identify areas where improvements can help increase your profits. A process analysis examines many areas within your business, including finances, research, budget cuts, and the hiring process.
This analysis starts by learning more about your company’s operations and the unique things that make your company different from others. With this information in hand, the auditor begins to identify value-adding and non-value-adding items within your company’s current processes.
Finances
From rental property payments to bank fees, your company’s finances can be a treasure trove of inefficiencies. A process improvement analysis looks at all the money that comes into your business and where it goes in the form of payments to creditors, payroll, and more.
The goal is to find ways to save your company money on bills that you need to pay weekly, monthly, quarterly, and more. There might be some processes within finances that don’t add value, but there aren’t alternatives that would add value.
Also, it’s possible that you might need to create a new process that does add value to your company. For example, you might need to audit your shipping bills, where inaccuracies might lead to higher costs that you don’t need to pay, or you might need a process to determine if you can get a lower interest rate on a business loan.
While some of your finances are fixed, such as rent or mortgage payments, the possibility exists that there are processes that can save your company money. A process improvement analysis identifies these, so you can make financially beneficial decisions.
Research
From new products to new services and potential clients, research is an essential part of any business. The trick is to ensure that the research process produces results that pay off in new revenue streams for your company. It’s possible that you don’t have a process in place for research yet.
The process for researching a new product or service needs to have a clear map of the way it works. This includes potential new clients. In any process, including research, there are always some steps that the research team takes when moving forward on a new product or service development.
During a process improvement analysis, it might be as simple as creating a process map, so you can see the necessary steps in the research process, or you might need a diagram that highlights cause and effect to determine where the process can be improved.
A process improvement analysis identifies any research steps that are unnecessary or need improvement to become cost-effective. You want to make all of your research dollars count.
Hiring
When you have a spot open in your company, or you create a new position, you have a process in place to hire a new worker. This might include things, such as placing ads, reviewing resumes, conducting interviews, checking backgrounds, and more.
A process improvement analysis ensures that you’re adding value to your business for each step. For example, when it comes to reviewing resumes and interviewing candidates, it might use enough man-hours to make it more cost-effective to use an employment recruiter.
Your company might benefit from software that identifies keywords in resumes to ensure that you only review the information on viable candidates. The process improvement analysis can determine the portion of your hiring process that can be streamlined for efficiency.
Any recommended changes to your hiring process will help your company save money and also help you find the best-qualified candidates for an open position. A process improvement analysis is designed to help you make the necessary changes to make this a reality.
Budget Cuts
You can use the process improvement analysis to analyze the budget cuts that your company has already made as well as to identify where you can make budget cuts. It’s entirely possible that some budget cuts that you’ve already made weren’t as cost-effective as you thought they were.
Your company’s budget affects each and every department in your business. The process improvement analysis starts by examining your budget, and the process you use to create it.
The process analysis helps you to define your budget, and the people, profits, and processes that support your budget. You also need to create a system, where you can determine how well the budget is doing for your company’s overall success.
In some cases, you need to walk back earlier budget cuts or increase the budget of certain departments to ensure the overall success of the company. The process improvement analysis ensures that you have the right process in place to make budget cuts when it becomes necessary.
A process improvement analysis can help your company grow by improving the value that the company’s processes offer. This type of analysis needs to be repeated throughout your business’s life to ensure that the process continues to offer the most benefits. At t McNurlin Hitchcock, we can conduct a process improvement analysis to help your company flourish. Contact us today.