Mapping your business processes – what is it good for? 

Digitalisation and automation are two topics that are under constant discussion in many industries today. Digitalising and automating your business processes can have many benefits. Together these adaptations can combine to increase your competitiveness as a company.    

Before proceeding with the automation or digitalization of a process, you should first do the groundwork and get to know the process in question. While it may be tempting to start the automation work right away to move forward quickly, in practice it may take longer for you to implement a good solution. A broken process that is automated is still a broken process.

By mapping your business processes before you begin, you can:  

• Challenge the processes and think about them in a new way 
• Discover points of friction and unnecessary elements within the processes
• Increase the transparency of the processes and how they are handled 
• Capture exceptions to common rules and routines   
• Highlight different stakeholder perspectives on the business process 
• Increase commitment among your employees‍

Avoid starting from the systems when mapping 

An important tip we want to leave you with is to avoid starting mapping your processes directly from the systems. If you begin with mapping from the systems there is a risk that your organisation could confuse where you are with where you want to be. Instead, we recommend zooming out and only looking at the process from a business perspective. Think carefully and holistically about the process that you intend to digitalise – is it optimally set up? Stress test your ideas and take the opportunity to think outside the box – challenge the way you have worked in the past.  

Meta Bytes has helped countless companies to map their business processes and we have learned a few things along the way. So do not hesitate to contact us if you have questions or if you need help before, during, or after your process mapping. You can also have a look at our step-by-step guide where we share our top tips for mapping business processes.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or if you need help during or after your process mapping.