Brainwave
Where There is a Need of Evaluation..........
by Achal Kumar Prasad
Competition and fight for survival have forced us to develop and
improve our way of working. This statement holds true for
business too. With the aim of maximizing our profit and
increasing consumer satisfaction we have revolutionized the
management theory and practices. One of the main turning points
was the process thinking rather than working in different
functional area (silo thinking). The target was saving the cost
and increasing effectiveness of work, which is the second way of
maximizing the profit. I put forth the first way as increasing
market share with innovations and qualities in product or
services and playing with prices. Now our businesses have
embraced the process thinking for managing the business.
Disclaimer : The views
expressed in the articles are author’s own views B’Cognizance or
IIITA is not liable for any objections arising out of the same.
The matter here is solely for academic use only.
MBA (IT) II Semester, IIIT ALLAHABAD
Business processes are complex and tightly structured. They pass
through different stages of supply chain and several departments
are supporting them to working proficiently. For managing a
process we pass through different stages like planning,
designing, documenting, controlling and improving as needed.
Once the process starts working we always see if there is
potential for improvement or not. Now here comes the importance
of process audit.
Measuring a process has always been a daunting task for
managers. We use different methodology and scaling techniques
for different objectives. Some of the measurements are regular
for managing it properly and some are done when required like in
effort of improving it. The measurement and variables we choose
for the evaluation purpose solely depend on the objectives and
are critical to the methodology we choose.
Some parameters are measured regularly for putting control over
the process and these are generally quantifiable in nature. As
we go up to the maturity in our processes we check it on
different criteria to make it standard and to reach where we
have benchmarked. Here come the different aspects of the process
including critical skills of man power working on process and
physical and output aspects of the process. One of the most
popular ways of auditing the process was developed by Michael
Hammer (founder of Hammer and Company, a management research and
education firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts). The model he
called as Process and Enterprise Maturity Model was the first to
define the different parameters and critical attributes (Hammer
called them process enabler) for them and then putting these in
four different stages as the maturity increases. We make a
matrix and then analyze where the process stands and where there
is a need of improvement.
Most recently management scientists have found the importance of
knowledge mapping for auditing of any business process. We try
to map or find out the points where the role of knowledge occurs
in the process. We also point out the level of expertise and
research needed for the activity. This helps in maturing the
process in two ways. One with increasing the efficiency with
putting person-job fit employee everywhere and secondly
providing them chance to improve from their own level with
research. This methodology is now an important business strategy
and has developed a new area called knowledge management. This
also helps in identifying constraints to the flow of knowledge,
and to highlight opportunities for leveraging existing
knowledge.
These evaluations help us to know where we are and where we can
move, to improve and to make the process more efficient and
prolific. One of the main benefits we can get through these
evaluations is to form a sensitivity analysis of process.
Sensitivity of different inputs of the process and their
significant effect on the output can be checked and documented
for future and present decision making. We always have been
interested in making cost saving substitution and using new
proficient technology to get maximum effectiveness in process.
Effectiveness in evaluation of processes will lead more
efficient way to improve. So we develop different methodologies
as we need to get critical information for managing, controlling
and improving the processes.