Buckle down, you’re going to have to try and keep your focus on this next topic. Office processes. Wait, don’t go! It’s actually more interesting than you think. You know how businesses like Apple and Ford release new and or improved products every single year? Well, that can only happen if they evolve their internal processes. Why? The evolution of the process for completing a task involves many key essentials. You need to have the right staff, properly motivated, highly skilled and trained in software and machine tool management. You also need the substance i.e. the tools. Whether it be inventory management software, task management or perhaps an industrial drill able to be programmed to make fine cuts or holes in the production line, you need the best of the best. Then you need to have great testing and evaluation processes to make sure your products are statistically superior to last year. The marketing and sales team will take it from here. Without an evolution of the process, you cannot improve as a business. No ifs and no buts.

Form an admin team

Business process management (BPM) is an underlying aspect of business administration. That’s why it’s key for you to form a team that specifically handles BPM in your business. Enterprise monitoring helps their job to monitor, analyze and see where specific IT processes can be improved. This is done because there is so much waste in every aspect of the process that, making changes as improvements are implemented, is vital for saving money. Funds go down the drain not overnight but by a slow drip-drip. Wherever there is a waste, there is also inefficiency. Your team’s goal is to improve processes to the point where they allow employees to work incredibly skillfully and creatively, yet not hamper their productivity. If a business is run smoothly, it will show in all public aspects such as customer service, logistics, product development, and targeted marketing.

Consider the future

Automation is not a new word in the world of business. However, in the process management world, it might just be. Once upon a time, business processes were manually updated but only after careful study. Each task and software was given incremental improvements, that came in overtime. Mistakes had to be made in order for problems to be addressed. They had to be realized by the human eye and mind, in order for them to register. However, not with process management automation, machine learning is set to become a key factor in how we improve businesses from the inside. 

The best part is, machine learning is able to decipher human and machine problems. If there is an error in the code of the software, the process management tools will be able to detect it from recurring errors. These errors may be so small that they don’t affect the overall performance or need of the software thus humans may not pick them up. But machine learning software will correct an error that a fellow machine makes, as well as human input error. One such area under development for this technology is enterprise resource planning. Financial management would be vastly improved if mistakes could be caught while in the process of happening. Think about how much money a business could save if funds were managed by a computer that doesn’t get tired, frustrated or lose concentration? The same goes for project management and manufacturing processes. Automation in BPM in ERP would make your business far more streamlined than perhaps any human could make it. 

Collaboration and coordination

It’s not just the tasks that your employees try to complete that are important for process evolution, but the way they communicate and work together. It’s common knowledge that there are always small departmental rivalries. Whether it’s to secure additional funding by the managers, performance jousting between project teams, or just a general competitive nature between two departments that have strong cultures. Sooner or later, you’ll need your employees to collaborate with each other and coordinate a big project.

Workflows, therefore, become a big issue of concern for processes. Different teams, mindsets, and departments that are working together as cross-functional teams, will run into workflow management hurdles. That’s where channel-based collaborative tools come into play. We have gone from internal email messaging to using software like Slack and Monday. Each one of these programs can be utilized by your employees for various advantageous ends. For one thing, each project team can create private chat groups. They can share files, documents, images, videos, links and text chat messages. Certain programs like Monday, also allow those with titles or rather admin powers in a group, to assign tasks. If one person cannot complete a task because they’re overloaded, your employees can quickly communicate with each other, swap files and switch ownership of the task on the fly. This process of task management has seen a massive evolution over recent years. 

Futuristic machine tools

In the production line of manufacturing plants is where the most advanced evolutions of processes are occurring. For one, 3D printers have slowly become the go-to tool for an intricate small part of any product. It’s apparent that for smartphones and devices like earphones, 3D printing might make the manufacturing of small delicate parts much quicker and lessen the odds of an error that could cause the wasting of material. Speaking of material, synthetic materials are the ‘ink’ of 3D printers but that too will slowly change. As 3D printers become more advanced and made from tougher stuff, we might one day see molten iron or steel being ‘printed’ into unique and complex designs. Where this could apply is up for debate, but no one in the business world doubts that this is where manufacturing is headed.

Monitoring and analytics

For your everyday process and task quality needs, you’ll need a great IT Support network. No matter what kind of software you’re using, you need to know that it’s working as it should be. So monitoring your systems for viruses, software patches, errors in coding or perhaps viruses, is key for your employees being able to use the tools you give them. IT security is, therefore, part and parcel of process evolution. As your business becomes larger, it will become more complex. With more moving parts, there’s more to go wrong. Thus, monitoring the health of your servers, internet, data storage and devices like printers, is paramount for success. 

However, with monitoring assistance, comes analytical monitoring of what goes wrong and why. Although many IT services companies do offer a detailed report feature for customers, it’s vital that you assemble a team to check and assess what errors arise, when, where and why. It could be that software that your employees love to use, also has the most malfunctions. Work might not be getting saved. Tasks may not be allocated so fluidly, the program might freeze or crash, etc. On the one hand, you could communicate your frustrations with the software company or you could cut your losses to prevent projects from slowing down. Analyzing how errors affect your business is also part and parcel of the cutting regime. Just like you cut financial waste, you should cut things that damage your processes.

In order for your business to blossom, your processes must continually evolve. Task management is by far the most important area you should focus your energies. Then the processes of completing those tasks such as the use of different software and machine tools must come under the same scrutiny. Should you add more automation? Yes, clearly this is the way technology is headed.