Business Process Assessment: Is it a Software or People Problem?

Written by Keith Perkins | Fri, May 31, 2013

A Business Process Assessment is a great way to discover new ways to work more efficiently and increase profitability.

In previous blogs we defined what a business process assessment is and the steps to conducting a business process assessment. A business process assessment (BPA) is a great way to discover business process challenges related to people or process. To get started with a Business Process Assessment our previous blogs explored; how to assess whether or not your current ERP system will live up to your company's future growth goals, how and why it's important to create a business process project management committee, the importance of committee leaders representing each department, how to develop a comprehensive business process analysis document to measure and assess the existing business processes, how to define your milestone and project projections and how to prepare a project time line. In our last part of our blog series we will cover how to determine if your business process challenges are human or process related to software.

"Let's separate the people from the problem" is a phrase a Sage man would say! In order to do this, we will take into consideration technology, people and company organizational goals. If the business process challenges are human related, then it may just be a matter of training. If the challenges are software related and cannot be addressed with your current systems in place, then you will most likely benefit by replacing your software systems. This part of the business process assessment targets results and goals of organizational tasks.

First, we consider the current company technology business processes within each company department by reviewing the following:

Automation Design
Execution
Integration
Documentation
Measurement

Second, we consider your people who are involved with the business processes:

Strategy and Leadership
Performance Training
Management Measurement

Each criteria above is measured on a 5 point scale with 1 being the lowest and 5 being the best. A score of 5 means the department has reached maximum efficiency, therefore the process cannot be improved. A score of 2 would mean business process improvement is needed.

This part of the business process assessment reveals business process performance problems, process management problems, performance improvement targets, measures against improvement efforts and assists to identify training needs.

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