Six Minute Risk Assessment for Business Process Improvement

Boston, MA, October 02, 2009 --(PR.com)-- The dream of all good businesses is to be lean, efficient and highly profitable. The best approach has always been to remove the biggest bane of good business: chaotic processes. Consected announces the new 'six minute risk assessment' for executives and managers wanting to find a starting place for their own business improvement exercise.

All business leaders know that paper documents, manual processes and email destroy employee productivity and present a risk to a business by accident error or through fraud. Automated workflows on the other hand deliver employee efficiency, mitigate risks and provide visibility into operations. To work better, it is essential to improve processes all across your organization, not just focus on a single pain point. Those companies that have been successful know that there is a secret to doing this, in a way that truly transforms the business.

For the majority of companies, the goal of automating a significant number of business processes is still a long way off. The Consected six minute risk assessment provides organizations with a way to get to their business improvement goals faster.

* The Six Minute Risk Assessment
Try this simple test to see where the risk is in your organization – it will take no more than six minutes. Grab two large sheets of paper and just remember that there are no right or wrong answer in this test. Try to treat this like a brainstorming exercise and not to fixate on any one answer. Ready? You may start...

Step 1: Think about the departments in your organization
Time: 30 seconds
Write nothing. Sit and think about all the departments in your organization, the employees working feverishly, and the customer that you try to please, because you are proud to do so and they pay the bills. Visualize the work. Hear the buzz of activity. Feel the pressure of employees doing critical tasks.

Step 2: Write down the key manual processes
Time: 90 seconds
Take a deep breathe and on the first sheet of paper start jotting down the key processes you have in your organization that rely on email or paper documents, and alongside each write down the name of the department the process is in.

Step 3: Identify the most important processes at a glance
Time: 60 seconds
From your long list, pick the top five processes for the amount of time they take, the number of workers involved or the revenue they generate. Circle them, highlight them, underline them...

Step 4: For each process, write down the key steps and who performs them
Time: 3 minutes
For each of the top five processes, write down the major steps that generate forms, emails, decisions or require approvals. For each step, write down the role or group of employees (not individual names of people) that create this data, decision or document.

Your time is up.

* What was the point of the test?

Many business improvement projects are initiated by the manager that shouts the loudest. You have just taken control of the selection process, either by being an executive who has spent some time identifying for yourself where the issues lie in your business, or by being a manager armed with the information required to make a better case to your boss.

To see the how you can use the four step assessment you just completed to start improving your business processes for real, visit www.consected.com/7steps to read the Seven Steps to Escaping Process Chaos.

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