Understanding Business Processes

Your business has structures, hierarchies and its unique, hard-to-define, “culture” – you can draw the structure, explain the hierarchies and maybe get a grip on culture, but if you don’t understand business processes, you will not optimize outputs or manage change successfully!

This Anderson training course explains the business process perspective and how to apply it to improve productivity, profitability and employee satisfaction. It is a different paradigm for understanding what makes your business “tick”. This intensive training course uses a “model company” case study showing how to apply the Business Process paradigm, analyzing both the “hard” – operational – and the “soft” –cultural – factors, enabling you to deliver profitable change in your enterprise.

By attending this Anderson training course, delegates will be able to:

• Understand the distinctive business process perspective and “toolkit”
• Analyze their businesses from a process perspective
• Diagnose problems and identify improvement opportunities
• Take a strategic “value-chain analysis” view of their business and
• Improve its aglity and change-readiness

This Anderson training course is suitable for a wide range of professionals who want to understand and improve their business’ processes to deliver better results. For example:

• Headquarters staff in complex organizations across all business sectors and public administration
• Senior leaders in Marketing, Finance, Operations and HR functions
• Senior Programme and Project Management staff
• Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) leaders aiming to grow their businesses
• Junior managers seeking to develop a coherent view of business organization and improvement and acquire a toolkit of lasting value

• Introduction – The Process Perspective – what is it?
• The intellectual roots and linkages of the perspective to TQM and “Lean”
• Historical cases of its application
• Relationship to other strategic business management processes
• Resources and facilities required to implement the approach
• Practical effect of adopting the process perspective

• Using the approach to understand and analyze the business of an imaginary client described in student case study material
• Process Effectiveness explained and examined
• Process Efficiency explained and examined
• Creation of a process “atlas”
• Formulation of the desired end-state
• Analysis of the corporate “terrain” in which process improvements must operate

• The “horizontal” view of businesses as distinct from the vertical silo view
• “Swimlane” analysis of business value chains
• Engaging and motivating the organization’s resources
• Business Process analysis as part of Total Quality Management and “Lean”
• Measurement and Display as an aid to understanding
• Building a process-thinking culture

• Porter’s Five Forces analysis
• SWOT and Force-field analysis
• The Boston Matrix
• The Ansoff Matrix
• The Communications Matrix^©
• The Balanced Scorecard

• Communicating the approach to stakeholders in the business
• Building the process approach into the business plan
• Stepping stones, trip-ups and milestones
• Designing “breakthrough projects” to transform key processes
• Continuous improvement of the process
• The “proof of the pudding”

Anderson Certificate of Completion will be provided to delegates who attend and complete the course