On a day to day basis at work, you may find yourself going through the same steps. Whether that is generating reports, creating a campaign, launching a website or any of the other processes that involve repetitive steps these meticulous steps must be accurate. Inaccurate processes lead to poor results. I think we can all agree that we have dealt with unhappy customers, missed deadlines or improper setup stemmed from errors in implementation. This is why it is so important to improve your processes by providing proper BPM (business project management.)
Fewer than one-third of projects are completed successfully within an organization. You are probably thinking to yourself that number is a very low statistic. Don’t fret, there is a solution! Having a project manager on your team is helpful, but a skilled project manager can reduce your expenses, help grow your business and streamline the workflow with established step-by-step methods.
Through my project management experience, I have created a solution to help others complete projects efficiently with complete transparency. Some call me a hero, others call me Jessica.
Implementing Your BPM
“If you only fix the symptoms, the problems will continue.”
1. Create timely and efficient goal setting.
You can do so by being SMART. SMART, also known as Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-Bound. This can help keep your projects on time and ready without over exhausting employees.
2. Create step-by-step documentation of well-established actions of each department.
This could be for any procedure that requires repetitive steps. Also involved in this is separating your processes by creating formal and informal processes.
- Formal processes consist of more critical steps that can affect the clients’ service you are providing
- Informal processes entail a set of steps that help meet deadlines and notes needed to implement the formal processes
3. Scheduling internal meetings to help fine-tune each process.
Each department/employee has their own way of doing things, so why not take time with the people who implement their tasks to better understand the process. During the meeting, you should identify errors that led to poor results and discover at what point the project went wrong. Remember, processes that don’t work lead to numerous difficulties. For example:
- Customer complaints on poor service or quality
- Missed deadlines
- Missed steps
- Duplicated work due to lack of communication or improper steps
- Employee frustration
- Inefficient work
- Loss of income
4. Input your processes into a project management system.
There are plenty of project management focused softwares that will help organize you and your team’s tasks. Here is a recommended list of tools:
Once you have input your processes it is essential to thoroughly walk through each one with each designated department.
In Conclusion
Effective business product management gives you the ability to accurately track completed work for a client, what’s outstanding, and even what was out of scope. Gone are the days of bending over backward just to find out you overlooked a critical task in a project. Once you have established your processes and act SMART there should be nothing in your way to delivering and achieving excellent BPM results!
