Business Process Re-engineering does not have to be done by expensive consultants. Anyone who knows your business from the inside can be shown simple techniques to improve how you do things. Often those on the shop floor are best placed to highlight problems and recommend improvements.

Review and Question
Two simple techniques which can be used to understand how your business is actually operating and where improvements could be made are Process Mapping and Asking Why 5 Times.

For Process Mapping, get some key people from the processes involved to articulate what happens at every stage in a process and where any 'proceed/do not proceed' decision points are. It is a good idea to write each step on a post-it note and lay them out on paper, marking out where decision points loop back to when a 'do not proceed' occurs. From here it is much easier to spot areas for improvement and reduce steps in the process, often bringing major decision points to the start of the process will save a lot of rework further down the line.

Asking Why 5 Times is a sure way to get to the root of a problem. Failing to look past the immediate point at which a problem shows itself means the right measures will never be put in place to prevent it happening again. Consider the following example where order fulfilment might have appeared to be the problem stage in the process.

• Q. Why was the fulfillment late?
A. The item was late coming into the warehouse.

• Q. Why was the item late coming into the warehouse?
A. The lorry was late leaving the factory.

• Q. Why was the lorry late leaving the factory?
A. There were no drivers available.

• Q. Why were there no drivers available?
A. Too many drivers were on holiday.

• Q. Why were too many drivers on holiday?
A. Mr. X hadn't organised his staff resource properly.

So you may find that your order fulfilment services themselves are working perfectly and the problem lies much earlier on in the process. It pays to keep asking Why? until you are completely satisfied that you have arrived at the root cause. Only then can you address the issue and resolve the problem. Importantly for staff morale it means that parts of the business which are working to the best of their abilities within constraints beyond their control are not bearing the brunt of the blame when the impact of a problem is realised.

It is useful to combine Asking Why 5 times with the process mapping to anticipate where else problems may occur that could have damaging impacts further down the line. Importantly the process mapping exercise can highlight where steps can be removed from a process to make it more efficient and often this means bringing decision points to the start of the process. So whether you have a perceived problem with your order fulfilment services or in another part of your business you can take quick steps to get to the source of the problem and improve the overall process.

Author Bio
Jennifer writes on order fulfilment services and other business processes and customer service for a variety of websites and blogs.