What is Business Process Transformation? Tips & Steps

With every passing day, businesses grow more competitive. A surefire way to retain your competitive edge is with business process transformation, a relatively new term for a seasoned practice.

We’re going to share how you can take your very own business transformation steps with little extra effort, thanks to the aid of finance automation software and more.

Let’s get to it!

Coming Up

What is Business Process Transformation?

What are the Steps of Business Transformation Process?

What are the Benefits of Business Process Transformation?

What are the Challenges of Business Process Transformation?

What are the Types of Business Process Transformation?

What are Approaches of Business Process Transformation?

How to Measure Business Process Transformation Success?

Closing Words

What is Business Process Transformation?

Business process transformation is the act of redesigning and restructuring business processes in an effort to achieve operational efficiency.

In almost all cases, business process transformation is performed with the aid of digital solutions, such as finance automation software, which removes the need for manual work and replaces it with streamlined workflows.

Business process transformation can help to accomplish:

• Reduce costs
• Improve customer satisfaction
• Gain a competitive edge
• Boost productivity
• Enhance employee satisfaction

What are the Steps of Business Transformation Process?

The business transformation process isn’t always linear in practice, but the action steps to get it up and running is very straightforward. Here’s what it involves:

1. Define Goals

Of course, the way you go about your business transformation will depend on your business goals and what you’re looking to achieve. Be sure to describe your business goals with measurable metrics, and be as specific as you can be.

2. Establish Baseline Metrics

Think about what metrics you’ll want to measure in order to define the success of the new process once you implement it. For example, you can measure cost, time, number of mistakes, etc.

3. Include Stakeholders

Bring your team into the discussion, as well as stakeholders who will be affected by any positive changes. It’s helpful to have different perspectives involved who can shed light on processes that may need improvement.

4. Map and Analyze the Processes

When you’re improving a process, you have to have a firm grasp on how it currently runs. Visual tools like process mapping can make this a breeze.

They allow you to see where road bumps currently exist so you can remove bottlenecks and reduce delays. Automation software inherently resolves these issues as the process moves along its steps without stopping points.

5. Model and Phase the Implementation Process

As you’re ready to optimize a process, don’t rush into implementation before you test it out and see the results.

With automation software, you can outline a process and run it on a small scale to then analyze the changes. If all looks good to go, then you can deploy the change in phases so everyone is on the same page.

6. Set Live and Monitor

Once everything is running smoothly, you can set the new process live. When you do, remember to continuously monitor the processes to ensure it continues to run optimally. If there’s room for improvement yet again, you can run through this same phased approach.

What are the Benefits of Business Process Transformation?

Doing things the way they have always been done can be the reason you start to fall behind.

With changing business environments and digital transformation, staying stagnant is no longer going to cut it.

Business process transformation is a strategy that helps you to stay ahead of the curve and opens up continuous opportunities for business process improvement.

Here are the benefits you can expect:

1. Increased Productivity

With new technologies and automation, you can remove key person dependencies and bottlenecks.

You are able to streamline workflows and free up your team’s time to focus on high-level tasks. In fact, the addition of specific finance automation software can lead to 85x productivity gains.

2. Boost Profitability

All things equal, if you were to make your existing processes more efficient, you would be able to cut costs and increase profits. That’s a win-win for any business!

3. Make Better Decisions

Additionally, if you’re going to use automation software as part of your business transformation process, then you gain access to deep insights. With real-time analytics, you can make more informed and timely decisions that work in favor of your business.

What are the Challenges of Business Process Transformation?

Oftentimes, companies tend to stick with their existing processes because they are working. However, there’s always room for improvement. The fear of adjusting or changing things shouldn’t stop you from trying.

To quell the fears associated with business process transformation, it’s helpful to understand the reasons why they tend to become challenging, which include:

1. Alignment

A lack of alignment between operational processes and the overall strategic model can cause the processes to fail.

2. Engagement

In order to make overall organizational changes, all employees need to be on board. To make this happen, clear communication is required.

Similarly, everyone should understand why the change is happening and how technology is there to help them perform better, rather than to replace them.

3. Measurement

It’s also critical to continue measuring the outcome of changes and monitoring the processes’ outputs. This is not only important from the standpoint of business gains, but it also matters for compliance reasons. Automation software helps minimize compliance risk because it stores all your data securely and can make it easy to run audit reports.

What are the Types of Business Process Transformation?

Business process transformation can fall into three notable categories, namely:

1. Organizational

Organizational transformation is for processes that involve the company’s operations and structure. The focus is on the employees here.

2. Digital

Digital transformation is about how technology is to be adopted and implemented within the business to add more value for customers, employees, and stakeholders.

3. Cultural

Cultural transformation tends to be the most difficult because it’s focused on a mindset shift for a new corporate culture.

4. Management

Management transformation has to do with the hierarchical structure within a business. It may remove extra and unnecessary middlemen from being involved in decision making to boost efficiency, for example.

What are Approaches of Business Process Transformation?

Once you’re ready to approach business process transformation, there are a few ways you can go about it. These include:

1. Pilot

In this approach, you’ll design new processes while you continue to run your existing processes. If the sample (pilot) approach works, then you can expand it to run with it.

2. Cold Turkey

If you want to be radical and cut the existing processes at once, you can try the cold turkey method. However, remember that this way leaves barely any room for error, so you have to be highly confident and methodological in its application.

3. Phased

A phased approach means that you add new technologies within your existing structure and then develop their use department by department.

When selecting automation software, it’s helpful to have a solution that integrates with your existing tech stack, so you don’t lose out on any data or process flows as you transition.

How to Measure Business Process Transformation Success?

Once you’ve begun the business transformation process, you can keep an eye on key metrics to ensure that everything is going as planned. There are a few ways to measure your success, such as:

• Saved time
• Greater sustainability
• New innovations
• Increased revenue
• Improved customer satisfaction
• Higher employee satisfaction
• Customer conversion growth
• Better reputation

As mentioned, when you use a finance automation solution, you can access analytics to measure your own processes’ progress.

Not only will you gain internal control, but you can also use the solution for multiple use cases, like: reconciliation, expense management, regulatory reporting, and more.

With the aid of a finance automation solution, you can transform your business radically to achieve more, in less time, with fewer errors.

Closing Words

Regardless of the industry in which you operate and the business goals you’re trying to accomplish, business process transformation has benefits for all involved.

When you implement it with foresight and the right tools by your side, you will witness gains in productivity, profit, and people’s happiness. Finance automation software makes this all possible without much extra effort, so it’s a win-win for everyone!