The topic of business process improvement projects comes up often when we team with our clients. In today’s competitive environment, it makes sense for an organization to improve business processes as the foundation for improving the performance and overall bottom line of the business.

But success can be elusive. In today’s competitive and volatile economy, the companies we talk to are pressured to balance business process (BPI) initiatives against challenging schedules and workloads.

We always make the case that BPI should be woven into ERP selection and ERP implementation. We know this because we have seen many organizations improve the efficiency and success of BPI by improving the efficiency of internal and external teams, especially during ERP selection and implementation.

Why Business Process Improvement Initiatives Fail

BPI programs often start quite effectively, with excitement and focus. But typically they lose steam or worse yet, fail to have a lasting impact as participants gradually lose motivation and fall back into old habits. Initiatives are usually all about the techniques. The team is quick to implement tools such as Six Sigma to tackle problems or to remove processes that don’t add value to the final product. But again, very often, improvements don’t stick.

We see seven common pitfalls plaguing business process improvement projects.

Allowing too much complacency – very often the BPI team has not established, or proven to the rest of the organization, a sense of urgency for the BPI initiative.

Failure to create a powerful guiding collation – executive sponsorship is key to success. If there is not strong executive management support and sponsorship, the groups left holding the bag – including business process owners, the IT department and functional area managers– feel like they heading upstream into a long and difficult effort.

Underestimating the power of vision – here again, if all the parties share the vision and goal of the initiative, success is more likely.

Under-communicating the vision – Communication and education is key for success of business process improvement.

Failure to create short-term wins – it’s difficult to sustain motivation if any gains are a long way out. Instead, empower employees for broad-based action to see immediate improvements.

Declaring “victory” too soon.

Neglecting to firmly anchor the changes in the corporate culture.

If you have concerns about the process, reach out to us for more information at 954.340.2990.