Lack of insight into your process? Here’s how to regain control

It frequently happens that an organisation has (too) little insight into its processes. This makes it difficult to identify improvements. In this blog, Karen Messchendorp, senior BPM architect at BPM Company, explains what common reasons for this lack of insight are, what the disadvantages are and what you gain when you do have clear insight into your processes.

Common reasons for lack of understanding

Many organisations have little understanding of their processes and how they are interrelated. Processes may not be sufficiently documented, so it is unclear how a process was built and what the starting points were when it was built. It may also be unclear on the basis of which rules certain decisions are made in a process. Sometimes processes get mixed up or they use complicated calculation models that are inaccessible to employees. So if you don’t understand your processes and their interrelationships, you don’t have access to quality management information either. Without it, it does become very difficult to achieve your strategic, tactical and operational objectives.

Problem: incomplete records at emergency center

In the past, I worked at a large emergency call center providing emergency assistance worldwide. Its customer contact center receives countless calls every day from travellers who are stranded or need help with illness, an accident or some other unforeseen situation. These callers do not always have their travel insurance details to hand, but they do need help quickly. The customer contact center staff understand this, but this caused the finance department to regularly receive bills for assistance provided with incomplete customer and insurance details. In order to still send the bill to the correct insurer, a lot of extra work had to be done and the department was larger than necessary.

Solution: work with cases and business process management

By working with cases and business process management, you can land the right responsibilities in the right place, making you work less ad hoc. At this emergency center, we created a solution that provides insight into which information is still missing per customer case and which department needs to complete this information. Now the customer case can only be forwarded to the finance department once the customer contact center has completed all the necessary information. Incomplete customer cases end up in the workbox of the department that has to carry out the work. At quiet moments, which are also plentiful at a customer contact center, the right department can add all the necessary information and perform the appropriate actions. Only then is the case forwarded to the next department. This way, you ensure that the right department retrieves and processes the necessary information in the right order and that the process is transparent and bump-free.

Want to know more?

Wondering how Pega helps you gain more into your processes and possible improvements? Feel free to contact us!