What is called Process? Why does the process become a business showstopper?

Would like to share my experience from my various experiences of such nature of engagement, how to see the process? how do we add value to that?

Every one of us would have come across this situation, we always feel why we need more process and why not direct execution when it's solving the purpose.

The process is always good to have for the following reasons,

1. Audit control

2. Accountability

3. Visibility

4. Transparency

5. Empowerment etc.,

While we claim with all these good things why the process is becoming the showstoppers for many businesses and many organizations are spending millions of dollars on their various category of spending to streamline this process. Because this carry more values to attain their vision.

The key failure of the process,

1. Repeated tasks and approvals for the same nature of the request.

2. No defined SLAs / Else SLA not being followed/ Only SLA followed till specific steps of the process based on the grade.

3. Legacy- The Process is being driven to showcase the importance of the legacy roles in the system which won't add much value to the output.

4. No backups or no priority set.

5. People attached to the process don't have awareness of the actual outcomes or the Business values.

A lot of such examples can be driven as to why the process lost its efficiency. Many startups are getting success in the market because they design their process for the actual purpose. When the same firm becomes a big organization, the process will start swallowing with the stated top 5 excuses.

The process is a simple concept of Inputs & Outputs. Because of too much complexity, today's organization brings a set of individuals to improvise the process to make it more complex by spending "X" value. After the management changes or a few years later, the same firm will invite another set of individuals and spend "2X" value to redefine the process from Complex to Simplest way.

While we keep talking about all the standard frameworks such as Six Sigma, ITIL, COBIT, TM-FORUM, etc., though the content or approach of the process is different, the most common point all these standards will teach us that "Processes are customizable for the nature of the business need".

Process Re-engineering to be more focused on Automating or simplifying the steps by adding more system-based validity rather than adding more complexity in this.

The process is only efficient if that solves the purpose. Otherwise, it will become an example of a "Process successfully executed without productive outcomes"

Even failure is part of the process alternate or exceptional outcomes, its mandate for both physical and logical resources inside the process to minimize that exceptional path". This can only happen if the resources understand the actual acceptance criteria of the process.