Processes are what connect your organization to the outcomes you require.  Just like a manufacturing process yields a widget; a business process yields a business outcome.  ERPs are enablers and facilitators of the process. 

KALM understands that one of the most important elements to running your organization and achieving your business outcomes is optimizing your processes.  At KALM we have a team of individuals with specific experience in working with you to make your existing processes and in modifying or, where necessary, building processes.  Process standardization yields tangible outputs including cost reduction, time effiency, and improved understanding and communication, internally and with your customers.  Process work is valuable to start at ERP Selection to aid you in evaluating how well an ERP suits you.  It does not end there though.  Process work represents an opportunity to improve the efficiency of your operations and remove any friction from the ERP supporting you.  Standardizing your processes is about building within those processes mechanisms that provide for consistent address of uniformity, efficiency, and quality.  

KALM adopts a straightforward method of analyzing and optimizing processes.

• Identify the process:

Determine which process(es) needs to be analyzed and standardized. Often a ‘process’ may actually be composed of several smaller processes.  Isolating processes is important.

• Document the current process:

Map out the existing steps, including inputs, outputs, relationships, and decision points. Distinction should be made between system-based process and people-based process.

• Analyze the process:

Identify areas for improvement, such as bottlenecks, redundancies, or variations in execution.  Here there may be an opportunity to look to your ERP to see where increased automation may be possible or where onboard features could be further leveraged.

• Develop standards:

Define clear guidelines, procedures, and performance metrics for each step of the process. 

• Implement the standards:

Implementation is all about people.  It is imperative to train employees on the new process and ensure adherence to the established standards. 

• Monitor and review:

Continuously track performance against the standards and make adjustments as needed.  Accept and expect that there is a change period, a period of adoption where there may be resistance to the change – intentional or unintentional.  Also, this step may reveal small modifications as the process is seen in action within the business operations.