Before addressing process optimization, we have to be clear about what it consists of.
The optimization processes have written hundreds and hundreds of articles in recent years, but do we know exactly what is this process? What is the famous agile methodology that is named in almost every article on process optimization?
Is technology the most important thing to optimize the business processes of our company? In today’s article, we offer you the simple, direct and clear answers to these three interesting questions. Can you come with us?
What Exactly Is Business Process Optimization?
Before approaching an optimization of business processes in our company, the first thing we have to be very clear about is exactly what that activity consists of, what is a process optimization and what will it do for us in our particular case.
We clarify it in three lines:
Today, optimizing business processes consists of fully automating all the steps that make up the production, distribution, sale, customer service, marketing, advertising, transport, etc., the cycle of a product or service.
From this point of view, business process optimization would have not only one objective but several :
- To face without technical or human errors the continuous changes that take place in the daily life of a company (changes in the market, in tastes, in consumer trends, in the emergence of new technologies, etc.).
- Increase the effectiveness and efficiency of each and every member of the business organization chart, from the first to the last.
- Streamline the automatic and repetitive processes that occur in the different jobs and tasks that our work teams carry out, either individually or collaboratively.
This last point, that of streamlining business processes, gives us the opportunity to answer the second question of this article: what is the famous agile methodology? What role does this methodology have in a typical business process optimization? Go for it.
Agile Methodology To Optimize Business Processes
As we did in the previous section, we will start by understanding what exactly is the so-called agile methodology.
The Agile methodology is defined as a set of working created to optimize the reach of the milestones that make up a complex project. The agile methodology emerged at the beginning of the 20th century to try to automate and speed up the implementation of IT projects and software development and its objective is very clear: to lose the least possible time in each phase of work, to minimize the incidence of errors or deviations from the objective (human, technical, administrative, logistical errors, etc.) and, thus, achieve the project’s final objective as quickly as possible and with the best possible (economic) profitability.
As you can imagine, this agile methodology was perfect to tackle the technological development of that early 21st century, a few years in which a minute more or a minute less made the difference between novelty and antiquity, between success and failure.
Little by little, the good results of implementing this agile methodology in business processes related to the technology sector, convinced entrepreneurs to test this methodology in their own production and distribution cycles, logically counting on the full potential of new software and management tools that, precisely, had been developed thanks to this useful agile methodology.
Technology As A Tool And Means, Not As An End
We would not like to end this article without clarifying a point that, we believe, is often unclear in articles and books written on business process optimization. It’s simple: the technology used to streamline the milestones of a project, minimize the incidence of errors and optimize the resources we have is not the ultimate goal of that optimization, but a means to achieve it.
What does this mean? We summarize it in the form of points:
Agile methodologies allow adapting the way of working to the conditions of the project, achieving flexibility and immediate response to adapt the project and its development to the specific circumstances that are being demanded in the environment in order to achieve a reduction in implementation costs and a considerable increase in productivity.
Agile is a methodology in which the client is made to participate in the achievements and progress of the project in order to have all their experience and knowledge of the product (something highly positive in order to achieve the desired objectives).
Additionally, this type of agile methodologies helps to improve the motivation and involvement of the work teams since they allow all team members to know the status of the project at any time, accept or reject proposals and decisions, etc.
The work software, the global office solution or the automatic system that we choose to fully improve the work system of our company is not the most important part of the process; It is one more simple tool that we can and should use to improve the working conditions of our leaders, managers and, of course, of our valuable human team, those great professionals who will do their job better if they have an office suite for process optimization truly adapted to your expectations and needs.
