How To Engage Teams in Continuous Process Improvement

On October 17-18, 2023, SSON hosted the Process Mining & BPM Digital Summit. The summit aimed to demonstrate to attendees how to “do more with less” through process optimization.  
 
The second day of the Summit began with “Empowering Change: Engaging Teams in Continuous Process Improvement.” For this session, SSON was joined by Mercedes O’Connor, the Senior Account Executive at Nintex. Mercedes disclosed how organisations can benefit from utilising governance roles to ensure their business teams are engaging with Business Process Management (BPM). 
 
The beginning of the session included a poll, in which attendees were asked to identify their biggest CI project challenges. In response to the poll, 44% of participants cited resistance to change as their biggest challenge, followed by 22% who mentioned a lack of time, 11% with other issues, 11% struggling with unclear objectives and metrics, 6% facing inadequate support, and 6% noting insufficient training. 
 
 
 
This poll set the foundation for the session, as Mercedes “was not surprised” that resistance to change was the most prominent factor amongst participants. For Mercedes, engaging people who are tasked with learning a new process management tool is an extremely effective way to combat resistance to change. As Mercedes puts it, “people are our change agents, not technology.” 
 
The Governance Roles 
 
According to SSON Research & Analytics, “72% of SSOs/GBS said processes not being sufficiently standardised is their biggest obstacle to date”, which is where BPM can facilitate continuous process improvement.  Previously, CI was simply a “project-based activity, with teams focusing on specific areas for improvement.” However, overtime SSOs have leveraged BPM to gain an improved knowledge of business workflows, which ultimately helps grow a continuous improvement mindset within the organization. 
 
Considering this industry trend, Mercedes walked attendees through an in-depth study of the different governance roles. Mercedes illustrated how this unified model, that distributes process management throughout the organisation, can assist in reaching operational excellence.  

 
 
Executive Sponsor: At the top of this business model is the Executive Sponsor, who is responsible for defining a strategic vision for processes and making it clear to everyone that a process culture is essential. Although this position is considered a low activity role, they are vital in implementing a process culture in the workplace.  
 
Lead Process Champion: Next is the Lead Process Champion, who manages the organisation’s process management framework. This individual is responsible for achieving the strategic vision, set by the Executive Sponsor. The role requires someone with strong influence and organisational knowledge, who can coordinate group champions when necessary.  
 
Group Champions: The Group Champions are slightly more complex, as they can be split into two sub-categories: Group Owner and Active Champion. The Group Owner is typically a department leader or manager. They are accountable for all the processes within their group and are responsible for approving major changes to processes within their group. Whereas the Active Champion delivers the culture set by the Executive Sponsor, by ensuring organisational process standards and expectations are met. They ensure process reviews are taking place and set expectations around improvements.  
 
The Process Owner: The Process Owner is a team leader. They are responsible for ensuring the process is effective and easy to understand, with the authority to make and approve process changes. They maintain awareness of wider end-to-end process changes.  
 
The Process Expert: This individual is a subject matter expert on a captured process. They are responsible for updating the process when changes occur and responding to submitted improvement ideas and feedback.  
 
Process Participants: Finally, Process Participants are the end users of each process. These individuals want and need simple, helpful process guidance to enable their day-to-day operations, as they are the ones who often experience process pain points first-hand. Due to this, they are encouraged to provide valuable process feedback.  
 
If you would like to continue learning about how to utilize BPM to optimize your business processes, SSON have an array of helpful content such as the “Guide to Driving Continuous Improvement With BPM and Process Tools.” Alternatively, you can watch the session “Empowering Change: Engaging Teams in Continuous Process Improvement” above.