Best Process Improvement Tools for 2025

As Henry Ford once said, ““Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than trying to solve them.” In business, problems can show up as big or small. 

You may be able to run your business as usual, even with some issues cropping up. But, if you’ve considered how much better your business outcomes, employees, and customers would be if all processes were running at their optimum levels, then you are likely in the market for process improvement tools. 

Process improvement tools and techniques work in favor of helping you to achieve your business goals. We’re going to share which process improvement methodologies are useful.

Coming Up

What are Process Improvement Tools?

Process improvement tools are techniques that businesses can employ to evaluate their existing processes and locate areas that are ripe for improvement. You can think of them as frameworks, or blueprints, for how to assess current processes and design improved processes to achieve better results. 

Although they are called process improvement tools, they are more so methodologies. However, software and technology do exist to execute these techniques more successfully (which we will cover shortly). 

What are the Benefits of Process Improvement?

If you were able to get a little bit better every day, at whatever you set your mind to, wouldn’t you agree that’s something you’d want to do?

Process improvement enables this sentiment for businesses, resulting in benefits like:

1. Increased Efficiency

Continuous improvement methodologies highlight where there are inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and key person dependencies. When you alleviate these challenges within your business processes, tasks flow smoother.  

2. Improved Customer Satisfaction

At the end of the day, customers mean everything- they are the ultimate decision makers. By servicing them better and anticipating their desires, you can foster a healthy relationship with your customers. 

3. Elevated Innovation

Inherently, continuous process improvement nurtures a mindset of getting better and doing your best. With these sentiments, employees are likely to be creative and come up with great, innovative ideas. 

4. Better Quality

Many process improvement tools are focused on the quality of outputs. As a result, companies can minimize waste, errors, and elevate their production of goods and service offerings. 

What are the Common KPIs for Process Improvement?

KPIs, or key performance indicators, are metrics that you can track to ensure that your process improvement tools are working effectively. Depending on your business goals and process focus, here are some KPIs worth monitoring:

Human Resources

• Average recruitment time 
• Employee satisfaction 
• Cost per hire 

Finance

• Accounts payable process cost 
• Internal audit cycle time
• Budget creation cycle time 

Customer Service

• Tickets per customer
• First response time
• Volume by channel 
• Average handling time 

General

• Cycle time 
• Productivity (output/input) 
• Capacity quality 

What are the Best Process Improvement Tools?

There are several business process improvement tools to consider and evaluate, depending on your needs. Let’s take a look at some of the most popular process improvement techniques: 

1. Six Sigma

In 1986, an American engineer working at Motorola named Bill Smith developed the Six Sigma method. The goal is to reduce the amount of variations for end products. It works by utilizing statistical data as benchmarks so business leaders can assess their processes. The benchmark to consider a process optimized is less than 3.4 defects per one million cycles. Ultimately, the intention is to improve the customer experience by minimizing inconsistencies. 

2. Lean Manufacturing

Another process improvement tool that’s used in manufacturing is lean manufacturing. It stems from Toyota’s manufacturing and follows these five principles: 

1. Identify value: Determine who the value is for, whether it’s internal or external stakeholders. 

2. Value stream mapping: Make use of a visual tool for value stream mapping, which diagrams your current and ideal workflow from start to finish. 

3. Create flow: Remove waste made apparent in step two and design a better workflow. 

4. Establish pull: Move work through each stage as the prior stage is complete – this is what keeps a workflow running smoothly through the life cycle. It also ensures that an output is only created when there’s customer demand. 

5. Continuous process improvement: Lean project management doesn’t stop once you improve upon a single process. It’s a continuous endeavor, which means that you can keep making small, incremental changes over time to improve value in the long-run. 

3. PDCA

Speaking of iterative improvement, another process improvement technique is the PDCA cycle, or Plan Do Check Act. In simple terms, it is the application of the scientific method to quality control. Here’s how it works step-by-step:

• Plan: Identify the problem you wish to solve. 
• Do: Test and implement a plan on a small scale. 
• Check: Evaluate how your “Do” stage worked out. 
• Act: If the results are as desired, implement the change on a larger scale. Repeat! 

4. Gemba Walks

Gemba Walks stems from a Japanese term, Gemba, meaning “the place where things are happening.” In a business setting, this refers to your employees, as they are the people who get things done on a daily basis. Gemba Walks entails leaders meeting with employees informally to understand how their day-to-day work is faring. Gemba Walks is effective because it ties together leaders and employees to share ideas, thoughts, and innovative initiatives. 

5. 5 Whys

The 5 Whys is centered on identifying the root issue of a challenge. Stakeholders will continuously ask, “Why did this happen” or “Why did this go wrong” roughly five times until they dig down to the heart of an issue. Something special about this technique is that it is focused on the process’ imperfections, rather than identifying any human errors. 

6. Total Quality Management (TQM)

Total Quality Management (TQM) is a popular methodology, especially in supply chain management. It’s customer-focused and involves continuous improvement over time. TQM involves your entire team, all with the goal to benefit your customers. By continuously collecting data, you can analyze processes. Rather than having to do this manually, you can utilize finance automation software like SolveXia to connect and combine data for analysis. 

7. Kanban 

Kanban is a workflow management system and visual scheduling system that aims to optimize workflows. It’s another technique that was born out of Toyota’s Product System. Kanban’s visual method entails mapping out your workflow on a Kanban board, which consists of columns that represent stages of work (To Do, In Progress, Done). To ensure that work gets done within a set timeline, you can set Work in Progress (WIP) limits, which is a maximum number of work items that can exist in each workflow stage at one time. The card’s movement across each column displays how processes are flowing and progressing. If you notice there are places where processes get stuck, you can adjust the process to improve performance. 

What is Process Improvement Software?

The exciting news about process improvement is that you don’t just have to rely on people and processes. You can implement technology, or continuous improvement software, to facilitate and optimize your process improvement methods. 

Process improvement software offer features like:

• Centralized data management
• Collaboration with real-time communication 
• Data analysis 
• Reporting 
• Workflow automation 
• Standardization 

How to Choose Process Improvement Tools?

Choosing the right process improvement tools will depend mostly on your business goals, as well as your resources. 

Get started by defining your intentions and reviewing which processes need the most attention. Then, evaluate the different process improvement tools to decide which makes the most sense for your circumstance. 

Additionally, consider which process improvement software you can make the most use of. Choosing a solution like SolveXia means that you can accomplish a lot with just a single tool. Not only can you improve your processes and measure analytics, but you’ll also be able to seamlessly automate key business processes to reduce errors, save time, and prevent bottlenecks. 

You can leverage a tool like SolveXia to automate processes such as: reconciliation, rebate management, regulatory reporting, and more. By doing so, you can expect to complete processes 85x faster with at least 90% fewer errors. 

What are the Key Factors to Successfully Implement Process Improvement?

Process improvement tools provide a great direction for any business and an array of processes. In order to successfully implement process improvement, remember these best practices:

• Start small and take it step-by-step 
• Assign managers and stakeholders to lead the charge forward 
• Make it simple, especially when you’re involving new technology 
• Leverage software to automate processes and evaluate results
• Foster and nurture an environment of improvement and openness to change

Closing Thoughts

Process improvement tools are useful guides to help your business perform better. But, they don’t exist in a silo. They require buy-in, your team’s support, and an overall aligned vision of how these changes will benefit everyone involved. With the right process improvement tools and technologies in place, there’s a lot to gain. 

If you’re interested to learn more about how a tool like SolveXia can automate your processes, enhance efficiency by 85x, decrease errors by 90%, and support process improvement, we invite you to book a demo.