Use a Positive Process Culture to Gain Competitive Advantage

Japanese companies are famous for their commitment to process improvement, which flows through the whole organisation, from senior management all the way through to the newest recruit.

They have used their world class processes to secure a real competitive advantage – to the point that their companies dominate entire industries.

What is a positive process culture?

It's where:

• There's a team perception that ‘our processes are damn good and are worth managing as an asset'.
  
  
• Processes are known and documented – we need to do this to keep improving them.
  
  
• Processes are owned just like other assets.
  
  
• Process Owners accept the responsibility of ownership and proactively contribute to process improvement – without stewardship, processes can quickly stagnate.
  
  
• We know how our processes ‘fit together' in the overall end to end process - changing one process can affect many others
  
  
• Process Stakeholders are known and work together to improve processes.
  
  
• End to end Owners work with each other to improve processes.

Where are most organisations today?

• We recognise processes are important BUT
  
  
• We have some documents on the network called ‘processes'
  
  
• The processes we have are out of date

'Standard processes aren't followed and can't be improved, because they aren't known.'

The ‘Gap' in the way we manage our businesses

So how does Promapp help build a positive process culture?

Promapp is a simple tool that enables process owners to manage and improve their own processes. It's focus is on continuous improvement, not just on the ease to post a process.

• All processes are stored in one place, an on-line repository.
  
  
• Processes are useable: easy to find and easy to understand.
  
  
• Changes and updates are simple enough for Process Owners to do themselves.
  
  
• Changes and updates are automatically logged and automatically notified to stakeholders.
  
  
• Simple improvement suggestions and change logging to track improvements.
  

'Our customer experience is delivered by our people and processes. BOTH are assets that need to be managed to grow and improve.'