Mapping business processes: it's never too late.

At the start of a digitalisationHelping your organisation work smarter with technology, not as an IT project but as a way of working. project there is one step that often gets skipped in practice: mapping out the business processesThe steps you go through to get something done, from quote to delivery.. Everyone knows it is useful, but nobody makes time for it. The project has to keep moving, the processes live in people's heads anyway, and the supplier doesn't ask about them either.

Recently I was working with a food company of around a hundred employees where things had gone exactly that way. The project, a new warehouse management and traceability system linked to the ERPA single system that brings together core processes such as inventory, accounting and orders. and to scanning and labelling hardware, had been running for about four years. A few pieces of process had been mapped here and there, but the full picture existed nowhere, and go-live was two months away. So I mapped the processes anyway. In all honesty, there wasn't really time for it, and there were doubts about whether it was still worth the effort. The fact that it did pay off is exactly why I'm writing this down.

What BPMN flows are

BPMN stands for Business Process Model and Notation. Behind that mouthful lies a simple idea: a standardised way of drawing a process. It shows who does what, in what order, where decisions are made, and what happens when there are exceptions. The result is a diagram that your managing director, your warehouse staff and your software supplier all read in the same way.

That last point is the real strength. A process that exists only in people's heads exists in as many versions as there are heads. A process on paper exists in exactly one version, and you can discuss that version until it is right.

How we went about it

We mapped some twenty core processes, together with the process owners and by simply watching how the work gets done on the shop floor. For each process we recorded who owns it, what falls inside and outside its scope, and which systems are involved. We chose Visio as the drawing tool, not because it is the best, but because the company already had a licence for it. The tool matters less than the conversation you have around it.

Why it still pays off just before go-live

You might think there is no point two months before go-live. The opposite turned out to be true. Precisely because the system was largely in place, mapping the processes immediately exposed where the design still had gaps: processes that weren't fully covered, specifications that were missing, issues nobody had thought of yet. Each of those would have become an incident in production. Instead, they became items to fix before go-live.

The biggest insight lay in the gap between how things work today, largely on paper and in Excel, and how they will need to work in the new system. Where that gap is widest, the impact on the shop floor is greatest. By making it visible, we could focus the training and support exactly there, instead of giving everyone the same general training.

Every exception you put on paper before go-live is an incident you won't have to firefight after go-live.

It also changed the acceptance testing. Instead of clicking loosely through the system, the team had a visual blueprint for checking step by step whether the system covers every action. That lowers the risk of the switchover, because the sequence is set out explicitly. And for the first time, the suppliers had something concrete to fall back on, rather than scattered assumptions about how the company works.

What it gives you in practice

• One shared language. The business and its suppliers look at the same diagram instead of at each other's assumptions.
• Gaps become visible before go-live, when changing course is still cheap.
• Targeted acceptance tests. The flows are a blueprint for verifying step by step whether the system covers every action.
• Training where it counts. You can see where the gap between today and tomorrow is widest, and focus your training and support exactly there.
• A firm footing for your suppliers. A fixed reference instead of scattered assumptions about how your company works.
• A living reference. If you keep them up to date, the flows stay valuable for training, support, further improvement and even audits.

Start where you are

Would it have been better to create those flows four years earlier, at the start of the project? Without a doubt. It is a standard part of how we approach a project, and in a digital audit we map them as a matter of course. But the second-best moment is simply now, wherever you are in your project.

Is there a project under way at your company without the processes on paper? Take the digital quickscan to see where you stand, or give us a call for half an hour. We'll look together at whether mapping your processes could still make the difference for you too.