5 stages of building operating processes for businesses

Currently, most leaders and employees are interested in business operating processes. In this article, let's clarify this concept with 1C Vietnam as well as learn the 5 stages of building effective operating processes for businesses.

1. What is the operating process in the business?

An operating process in an enterprise is a system of steps performed by many employees and departments in an organization to achieve a specific goal. Each step in the process represents a task assigned to an individual or small group. This is the basis for implementing business processes and automation in business management.

Operating procedures in a business are specific steps to perform work effectively

2. The importance of building operating procedures in an enterprise

Building operating procedures is necessary and brings clear benefits to organizations and businesses, including:

• Identify important tasks related to business goals.
• Enhance working efficiency.
• Improve communication and interaction between individuals and departments.
• Establish an approval process to ensure accountability and optimize resource use.
• Prevent chaos in daily operations through good work management.
• Standardize a set of processes to ensure the ability to complete tasks that are truly important to the business smoothly.

Building operating procedures helps businesses optimize the work process

3. 5 stages of designing and building business operating processes

Building and managing operational processes in an enterprise can become easier if you follow the business process management life cycle model (BPM Life Cycle) consisting of 5 specific stages as follows:

3.1. Phase 1: Design - Process design

For the process design stage, businesses need to comply with the following 4 main contents:

3.1.1. Determine need, scope and purpose

• Regarding needs: Determine the need to use operating procedures.
• Regarding scope: Scope includes the main processes that will be included in the operating process.
• Regarding purpose: Determine the purpose of creating operating procedures (for example, to manage activities in the enterprise).

To establish a process, it is necessary to clearly define the need, scope, and purpose

3.1.2. Standardize the process as descriptive text

The next step, businesses need to standardize operating procedures in the form of descriptive text. This description should be made according to the 5W1H – 5M model.

Model 5W1H includes:

Why: Determine the goals and requirements of the job. These are questions that businesses need to answer before starting to build processes.

• Why is it necessary to build this process?
• What does this process mean for the organization and department?
• What if you don't?

What: Determine the detailed content of the job. After clearly defining the goals and job requirements, managers can determine the content of work that needs to be performed. How can this work be described in specific steps?

Where: Where to do the work? Which department is responsible for inspection? Specific delivery location?...

When: When is the work done? When is the handover and ending time?,...

Who: Who is the main responsible person at work? Who is the examiner? Who is the work support person?…

How: Method to do work. In this step, the process description needs to detail the steps to perform the work, types of related documents, standards and operating methods.

5M Model: Identify resources

Many processes often focus on the steps and results of work but lack emphasis on resource management and distribution. In fact, effective resource management and distribution is always considered an important factor to ensure the process is carried out effectively.

Resources include the following 5 elements:

• Man (Human Resources): Does the person performing the job have enough qualifications, experience, and qualities?…
• Money: What is the budget needed to do this job? How many times will the budget be disbursed?…
• Material: What standards are needed to become a raw material supplier? What are the standards for raw materials?…
• Machine (Machine/technology): What are the standards for production machinery? What technology do machines need to do the job?…
• Method: By what method will the work be performed?

Identifying resources is an important factor in ensuring the process is carried out effectively

3.1.3. Identify control and inspection methods

Once the standardization of operating processes for the business has been completed, managers need to determine methods to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the process, as well as find out what steps need to be optimized and how to improve.

About tracking method:

• Unit of work measurement.
• Measurement tools.
• At what points need to be monitored and controlled?

About the evaluation method:

• What steps need to be checked?
• How often to check?
• Who checks?
• Which step is the most important?

3.1.4. Complete the set of procedures in written form

Businesses need to synthesize and record all of the above information in written form to ensure that employees and relevant departments can monitor and deploy effectively.

In addition, the text needs to add additional annotation information such as:

• Methods of implementation.
• Necessary tools and documents.
• Relevant departments and divisions.
• Possible risks.

It is necessary to synthesize information in written form to make inspection and monitoring more effective

3.2. Phase 2: Modeling - Process modeling

In this phase, the theoretical contents of phase 1 will be illustrated in the form of images including steps, tasks and participants.

Purpose of this phase:

• Look at the process to evaluate the effectiveness of the output product.
• Determine which stages need optimization and improvement.
• Helps employees grasp operational processes and operate effectively.

Businesses can apply many ways to model processes, but one of the most popular methods is using Flowchart. Flowchart, also known as flowchart or process diagram, is a graphic tool that helps represent steps in a process with simple images. A flowchart includes the steps or tasks to be performed along with the conditions that can change the outcome.

The content needs to be illustrated in image form for easy management

3.3. Phase 3: Execution - Deploy the process

After completing the construction and modeling phase, departments can begin implementing each phase according to the proposed process.

Archiving implementation activities is very important, not only helping managers control work progress but also detect problems and adjust necessary activities.

Managers can use tools to track work progress, see who is working on which tasks, and manage workflows effectively.

After successfully building and simulating, businesses proceed to implement the process

3.4. Stage 4: Monitoring - Monitor and evaluate the process

After implementing activities, this stage helps managers evaluate not only from a specific process but also the entire operating activities of the business.

In the process of evaluating goals and outputs, businesses need to pay attention to 3 main indicators:

• Output quality of products and services: Depends on the goals, initial measurement method and the person who receives the output results.
• Time to perform work and time to deliver results to customers/recipients.
• Cost includes:

• The cost difference between inputs and outputs.
• Costs due to errors and damage.
• Cost of profits obtained from output results.

This phase involves monitoring the processing of each business process including collecting information and statistics to evaluate performance. The goal is to detect bottlenecks or errors in the process and recognize differences between model predictions and reality.

Monitor and evaluate the process to come up with reasonable improvement methods

3.5. Stage 5: Optimization - Adjust and optimize the process

Based on the assessment indicators in phase 4, businesses can identify shortcomings and limitations in current processes. This allows the business to design and adjust (back to phase 1) to achieve better results in the future.

Adjust and optimize projects to bring greater efficiency

In the above article, 1C Vietnam shared about the concept of operating processes, their importance as well as 5 stages of building effective processes for businesses. In addition, to manage processes more smoothly and simply, businesses can use Office software 1C:Document Management. Developed on a modern technology platform, 1C:Document Management supports managing and automating processes from simple to complex in a streamlined way, helping businesses operate quickly and accurately. Contact 1C Vietnam now for advice and implementation of effective operational process management tools for your business.