Client Case Study

Mapping Key Business Process Flows

Discover how Project4 Learning Lab and our client understood how their key product delivery processes work through our ‘Finding Flow’ program.

Our client is a rapidly growing software services business based in the UK. Over the past 5 years, they have successfully grown at an exceptional rate from a £43m revenue business to over £100m revenue business today.

In July 2023, our client approached Project4 Learning Lab to help them map and understand some of their key end to end product and service delivery processes so that they could accelerate the delivery of value to their customers. We proposed our "Finding Flow" program, to engage team members to collaboratively map and document these business processes and then to critically evaluate where opportunities exist to simplify and standardise the processes and handoffs between teams.

Through "Finding Flow" workshops, Project4 Learning Lab engaged our client’s teams to rapidly map the processes for delivery of their Microsoft Cloud Solution Programme (CSP) product and Cloud service offerings. We facilitated sessions to understand key impediments to flow and structured a plan for “Taming Turbulence” that would result in many of these impediments being removed through a rapid, incremental transformation programme.

During the course of the engagement Project4 Learning Lab provided the client with a platform for enhanced collaboration to understand how the end-to-end business processes work and how to continually improve them. For the first time, team members had visually collaborated to produce a digitised set of process maps for their key products and service offerings as well as a map and set of recommendations to accelerate flow and future-proof them as the organisation continues to grow.

Proposed Programme

Finding Flow

A 1-day workshop to engage a team in identifying barriers to flow within or between selected business processes, to select interventions to address the barriers, to identify key measures to show that the interventions are making a difference, to create a plan to implement first interventions.

Challenges Identified

Flow Fog

A lack of clarity over how work is flowing or status of work (can lead to storytelling, lack of data driven decisions, incorrect focus, which can lead to being predictably late).

Familiar Faults

Teams are "solving" the same problems today as the ones that they "solved" yesterday.

Process Variability

High variability in the way that processes are performed and in process outcomes & performance (e.g. cycle time, quality, cost).

Normalised Deviance

Mistakes are possible, likely and are expected and accepted.

Our 4 Step Process

Release Valve ®

1Finding Flow

Finding Flow

We held “Finding Flow” workshops with our client’s teams to understand and rapidly map their end to end business processes for Microsoft Cloud Solutions Programme (CSP) product and Cloud service offerings.

Challenges & Complexity

The teams said their main challenges were that they had little / no documented and standardised processes to work to. They had little understanding of what other functions did within the process. The teams said that they were continuously working to compensate for process variations and fixing repeat issues or mistakes.

As our client has grown at a rapid rate it has promoted a very entrepreneurial culture; a key factor of its success to date. With this culture, processes very often take a back seat and this was the case with our client, with any processes that did exist being very siloed in their definition, with little integration across the enterprise and not standardised and documented in a way that people could work to them consistently.

Despite everyone's effort, process variation was high, leading to mistakes and rework and lack of predictability and ultimately high levels of frustration within the teams.

Digital Process Mapping and Impediment Analysis

Using an i-Obeya virtual room to facilitate process mapping, we collaborated with all functions across the processes to digitally map and understand the end to end process and identify the key areas of the process that could be impeding flow of work.

Throughout the mapping process we systematically identified, logged and analysed the impediments to flow, using a 3C (Concern, Cause, Corrective Action) method. This allowed the teams to focus on the reasons why the impediments existed and to identify potentially effective solutions that would overcome them.

Framework for Transformation

We aimed to quickly achieve meaningful results by eliminating workflow impediments and engaging the team in solution development. To achieve this, we conducted sessions with cross-functional teams to address each impediment, evaluating the effort and impact of potential solutions.

The team pinpointed over 100 potential solutions for implementation, ranging from straightforward actions like sharing process maps for easy reference to complex system overhauls requiring significant investment. To prioritise these solutions for quick, impactful improvements, we categorised them into 'quick wins', 'major projects', 'fill-ins', and those not viable.

Delivering the Transformation

As part of our overall recommendations, we advised that, as more than half of the solution ideas were ‘quick wins’, the business forms a cross functional transformation team and give the team space and time to work on the definition and deployment of the quick wins, using an agile sprint approach to deliver change every 2 weeks. This would greatly enhance the collaboration approach in developing the processes and empower the team to own the solutions, hence resolving some of the process variation issues observed, whilst maintaining an entrepreneurial approach.

Results

Through our engagement, we were able to map highly complex business processes, understand the impediments to flow in those processes and structure an improvement journey that would deliver rapid incremental process change.

Enhanced Transparency

For the first time, our client had a visual map of end-to-end business processes for two of their key products and services and a collaboratively defined set of transformation initiatives that will help accelerate flow and improve operational efficiency and control. Moreover, the collaborative way in which we engaged the team has facilitated a greater understanding of how the business works among key operational leaders and has identified key areas of risk that the business is exposed to. Across the product and service offerings, over 50 impediments to flow were recorded and analysed with the teams.

50 Impediments identified and analysed

BENEFITS ARISING FROM THE PROJECT

Once the transformation team is launched and starts delivering on the improvement initiatives, our client expects to see a rapid increase in productivity through standardising and simplifying how work is delivered through these two key processes. This will flow through into a direct benefit on operational cost. The team identified over 100 possible solutions that could be investigated and implemented.

100 solutions that could be investigated and implemented

NPS^®

Achieved Net Promoter Score of 56

They are not only consultants, but also mentors who care about the success of their clients. I highly recommend Project4 Learning Lab to anyone who wants to learn faster, achieve more and make a positive impact in their organisation.

Emma, Head of Business Process and Change