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Digitizing business processes is no longer an option but a necessity for businesses that want to remain competitive. The health crisis has shown it well: those who anticipated fared better.
Why digitize your business processes now?
The acceleration forced by the health crisis
The health crisis transformed exceptional teleworking into the norm overnight. This abrupt transition revealed the organizational weaknesses of many businesses. What was only a remote project has become a survival challenge to maintain efficiency, ensure remote collaboration and guarantee business continuity.
The new challenges of hybrid work
Working remotely, whether with your internal teams or external partners, brings to light issues every day that went unnoticed when everyone bumped into each other in the office. Collaborative governance is becoming more complex, managing cross-team processes more difficult, and communicating with external partners more risky.
Unfortunately, there is no magic solution that would transform your organization into a perfectly oiled machine with a wave of a magic wand. On the other hand, a well-thought-out methodological approach makes it possible to optimize each technology without creating a “gas factory” full of APIs that do not communicate with each other.
Our 3-step method to digitize your processes
Step 1: Analyze your business model
Before talking about tools and technology, digitalization is above all an exercise in reflection. You need to find new ways to create value by re-examining your business model in an increasingly digitized context.
This global transformation requires three main areas to be taken into consideration. First of all, your customer relationship in terms of your business model: how do your customers interact with you today? Then your internal organization : what processes slow down your teams on a daily basis? Finally, your partner ecosystem : how to optimize exchanges with your suppliers, service providers and other external partners?
Step 2: Model with the OSSAD method
Going back to basics can sometimes be good. Questioning the key functions of your organization is a kind of marked path to highlight new work procedures.
La OSSAD method is excellent for understanding organizational complexity and for simply modeling your processes. This approach makes it possible to distinguish between the “Why”, the “What”, the “Who” and the “How”.
Let's take a concrete example: a commercial company “sells” is its job, it's the What. On the other hand, the way in which it will perform this sales function is described in the form of a work process and therefore highlights the Who And the how. To properly identify and reinvent work processes, it is therefore important to know where they come from, to know what objectives they meet.
Pay attention to processes that do not serve any specific purpose: they are a great opportunity to clean up and put an end to procedures that have become obsolete.
Step 3: Evaluate each process
For each process identified, several essential questions must be asked. First, can we describe this process?
Is it a structured process with clear rules, a structured process but with specific exceptions, a semi-structured approach with predefined segments, or a completely unstructured approach that needs to be completely revised?
Second, can the process be influenced by the emergence of new information? Could this information affect or vary the actions to be taken during the execution of the process?
It is also necessary to ask ourselves about theautomation : can some tasks be robotized through a workflow? Does the process involve actors internal and external to the organization? Is it intertwined with other processes and can its path be interrupted?
Finally, what data sources does the process use? Does it use structured information such as internal or external databases, and unstructured information such as documents or emails? And above all, how are you going to manage this process and with what measurement indicators?
Starting with a pilot project: the key to success
Identify your candidate process
The best way forward is to pick a target and start with a candidate process to the exercise. Above all, you must think about placing the profession at the heart of the system. This pragmatic approach makes it possible to minimize costs, validate new approaches and anticipate future needs.
To do this, it is essential to answer this question:
“Within my organization, what is the problem or the crucial point that it is becoming essential to address in view of the operational and customer risks involved?”
The benefits of the pilot approach
Starting small has a lot of benefits. You minimize financial risks by testing your approach on a reduced perimeter. You validate the relevance of your technological choices before generalizing them. You involve business teams in the design, making it easier to adopt later. And you learn from your mistakes on a less critical project before tackling strategic processes.
Efalia expertise: your digital transformation partner
Chez Efalia, we support public and private companies every day in this digital approach. Our expertise in business process management is at the service of our customers to support them in this transformation.
We have the tools and the methods, our customers have the knowledge of their processes. This binomial makes it possible to quickly converge to a business application by co-construction thanks to our BPM and low code development solutions.
This revisit of processes is inevitable. Our conviction is that current tools make it possible to understand complexity with simple, business-oriented approaches, to compose rich, flexible and scalable digital applications without heavy development.
Technologies at the service of your transformation
The current solutions of BPM (Business Process Management) and development Low-code have evolved considerably. Today, they allow you to quickly create tailor-made applications that adapt perfectly to the specificities of your business.
The advantage of low-code is that it allows business teams to actively participate in the design of solutions, without the need for advanced technical skills. Developments are faster, modifications easier, and maintenance simplified.
Conclusion: digitalization, a profitable investment
Digitizing business processes is no longer optional. Current technologies are mature enough to respond to digital transformation issues, provided the right methodology is adopted.
The right tools, combined with a structured approach, transform your organizational challenges into sustainable competitive advantages. The important thing is to start somewhere and start with a well-chosen pilot project.
The time has come for businesses to review some processes, or even reinvent others. Technologies are there to support you in this transformation, but it is your business vision that will make the difference.
You want to digitize your processes ? Do not hesitate to contact us to discuss your project and discover how we can support you in this transformation.
