The benefits of creating process flow maps

The main reason for businesses and organisations to avail of process mapping is to enhance efficiency. Process maps provide an impeccable insight into a particular process, encourage teams to brainstorm ideas to improve processes, provide documentation of processes and enhance communication. They definitely identify delays, repetition and bottlenecks which makes it essential for every business to have a detailed process flow map structured out.

Some prominent reasons why businesses should develop process flow maps:

• Transfer of Knowledge

One of the most vital ways to use a process map is to make it available to everyone in your organization. The more they are shared, the more people will benefit from it. They can make the person accountable and responsible for every activity, thus encouraging transparency among all.

• Documents Your Business Process

A process flow map documents your process in a format that is easy to understand and follow. Subsequently, this also provides you with a blueprint for how the entire process is performed. This is sometimes known as “AS-IS” or the “Current State”.

• Creates Alignment

Process maps help you create alignment within the flow of your work. They successfully demonstrate the steps of a process in a manner that can be easily understood by all.

• Helps Adopt Best Practices

A well-documented process makes it a lot easier to adopt and agree on consistent best practices. However, this works best when the process maps are shared through a process library.

• Promotes Collaboration

The creation and the following of a process map promotes a great deal of collaboration among everyone in the team. Everyone gets to see potential bottlenecks in the existing plan and comes together to suggest improvements.

• Provides Opportunities for Improvement

The capture phase of process mapping lets you spot any opportunities for improvements available. You can discover if any of the processes you are trying to make use of is being duplicated in some other part of the organization or if a particular process is not being implemented adequately.

Just like it takes several months to create a 2-hour long movie, there is a lot of deliberation and distillation that goes into demonstrating a great process flow. What I like most about a process flow map is that you see the ‘bigger picture’ of the entire process where you can absorb the whole process and understand so much of it instantly. It requires a lot of thought and effort to generate a simple process flow that demonstrates a business process, encompassing multiple teams and departments.

Ultimately, organizations which transform inputs into outputs manage to exceed or meet consumer expectations. The business that manages to do it the best ways are invariably the successful ones.