Business Process Improvement Summarizing the Work

Once you have gone through the 10 steps to improve a business process, what should you do next? Should you immediately move on to the next challenge in your process inventory? Not if you want recognition for a job well done!

Taking time to summarize what you accomplished will help you to gain visibility in your organization. Gaining recognition though on improving a business process does not come as easy as getting a compliment on a new haircut or a new piece of clothing because the new process may not immediately stand out. You have to take some initiative to let management know what you have accomplished, and that becomes the challenge.

An executive summary is a tool you can use to present your work to senior management in the natural course of business without it looking as if you want a pat on the back. While executive summaries differ quite a bit, they should address whatever you identified as the main concerns when you began the improvement effort. Remember what caused you to start the improvement effort on a particular business process and start with a compelling statement that grabs the reader's attention. The six sections of the executive summary include:

  1. Project focus
  2. Goals
  3. Summary
  4. Key findings
  5. Deliverables
  6. Appendix

Write your summary with the reader in mind and remember that not everyone will have the same level of understanding of the business process. In the project focus, lay out the business reason why you did the work (the business problem); in the goals, cover the key outcomes you hoped to achieve; in the summary, provide a high-level overview of the work and any analysis you completed; in the key findings, outline the discoveries you made along the way; in the deliverables, cover what information is available where; and include more detailed information in the appendix.

Including statistical information in the summary section will help position you as a business person and provide some thought-provoking data for management to consider.

Profit Minus the Price Tag: Business Process Outsource

Business is always an aggressive activity. You must not be behind any competitor nor get even with, you need to be ahead. There should be balance between what you lose and gain, what you sacrifice and profit. There are a lot of strategies in business, but you need to choose the best and within your business's means. Recently, this kind of business is not like more of a trend but rather a saver to a substantial amount that a company will spend, and this is through outsourcing. Business process outsourcing has become a strategic partner to explore and innovate unto the consumer's needs. Business process outsourcing becomes a streamline of a business, which optimizes business performance. Through outsourcing, competitive differentiation in the market is also created. The growth of outsourcing has sky rocketed the business market recently.

Business process outsourcing is the contracting of business task to a third party service provider. Business tasks included are payroll, outsource financial and administration (F&A) processes, human resources (HR) functions, call center and customer service activities and accounting. The third party service provider does the tasks that are not directly the core idea of the company. The service provider manages and runs every phase of the outsourced area. Outsourcing is a money saving strategy. It saves the expense of hiring in house staff plus the high salary and benefits. These expenses are all eliminated through outsourcing. The area outsourced is the focus of the provider, any problem that will arise will be the concern of the service provider and not of the company's, hence, the company can focus on its more important area of business. The area handled is not primarily important yet very vital in the total function of the company. There are different kinds of outsourcing. When a third party service provider is contracted outside the company's country, it is called offshore outsourcing. It is near shore when the provider is in a neighboring country then onshore if it is within the company's country. Another offshoot of O is Knowledge Process Outsourcing. It includes activities that highly require skills, education and expertise to handle.

Business process outsourcing is dramatically growing. Offshore outsourcing continues to grow worldwide. A lot of companies especially the small ones are into outsourcing because of its advantages. This allows the company to hire high quality knowledge at a lower cost. This is an advantage for companies to save money and increase profits at the same time. In a very aggressive market with fierce competition, outsourcing becomes obligatory. This is gaining more without the price tag.