Testing the Business Process - Making Sure it Works

Before you join a health club for a year, you might want to accept a 30-day trial offer and test it out to make sure it meets your needs. Likewise, before introducing a new, improved business process to an organization, you should test it and work out any bugs before implementing the change on a wide scale. You do this by developing a test plan that outlines:

• Whom you should involve in testing the new business process
• What you should test (e.g., the process itself, newly created tools, potential metrics)
• Where you should conduct the testing (e.g., multiple locations, local versus global sites)
• When you should conduct the testing (e.g., peak times to avoid)
• How you will manage the testing process (e.g., will you use specific scenarios)

This phase of business process improvement (BPI) work is similar to user acceptance testing for large system implementations where a team develops test scripts to guide end users through various scenarios in a test environment. The testers follow the directions and provide feedback on functionality that does not work as expected, which allows the technical team to resolve problems before deploying the system on wide scale.

In BPI work you may be the "technical team" and you want to know what you have to fix before introducing the new process company wide. You may find a technical bug in a tool you created, like a spreadsheet, or you may uncover a usability issue. You should resolve all issues before proceeding with implementation.

Create a test plan that outlines what you need to do, to confirm that everything works as planned, and fix any bugs before introducing the change. Testing the business process evaluates how well it performs, so that you satisfy your project goals whether you want increased productivity, a reduction in errors, or something else.

At the end of this step, you should feel comfortable that the business process and tools work as planned. Testing the business process is the eighth step to improving the effectiveness, efficiency, and adaptability of your business.

Business Process Automation Improves Workflow

Managing the workflow within a company or organisation is one of the key elements to ensuring things run smoothly. Business process management includes controlling and improving areas of data capture such as document management, scanning and purchase to pay.

These varied business processes are often integral elements of the workings of a large organisation. For instance purchase to pay, or invoice processing, involves the handling of invoices from arrival to dispatch. This function is something that is key to all businesses and a great deal of time and money can be saved by switching to an automated invoice processing solution.

Other everyday office procedures that can be managed by an automated process include email archiving, mailroom and HR solutions. Setting up these computerized systems can be relatively simple and involves the implementation of data capture software, which is available from business process management consultancies. Once this software is in place then substantial savings in time and resources spent on particular operations can be achieved.

Before certain documents can be managed in an automated software system, there needs to be an efficient way of scanning them to collate the information. Data capture consultancies can provide automated scanning systems in order for companies to scan the required information themselves. Some larger consultancies also provide their own in-house scanning service to quickly scan high volumes of data and take the burden away from the client.

This type of business process outsourcing is common, with consultancies taking on high-volume processing for large organisations. This means that companies don't have to invest in document scanning equipment, but can place the handling and collation of documents with a third-party. These scanned documents are then captured as digital data which makes them more flexible for sharing and easy storing.

This type of mass data capture, which takes away the need for storage for mountains of paperwork in corporate departments, contributes to a paperless office and a more functional and efficient workflow. Many companies are moving towards running departments that rely on these type of automatic business process systems.

In today's computer orientated corporate world it makes sense to streamline and manage office processes by using the latest data capture solutions and software. Workflow automation may involve careful planning and advice from a specialist consultancy, but the benefits gained in terms of time and cost savings are worth the initial investment.