Author: Farley Niehues

Here at Neomind’s blog we always talk a lot about process automation and its capacity to provide several competitive advantages. In this material, we would like to explain what macro processes are and the importance of having a broader vision of your business.

Do you want to clear up all your doubts about the topic? Follow along!

What are Macro processes? How to identify them?

Macro processes can be defined as a set of processes and activities that together are essential to achieve a company’s strategic objectives. They are made of processes that occur in different sectors, involving different functions or positions. These processes can occur in a chained or parallel way, but they have some degree of similarity.

Macro processes provide a holistic view and should always be directed by and aligned to the company’s mission, after all, they represent the functions and everything that the organization performs to achieve its core business, that is, its reason of being.

To identify the macro processes it’s necessary to fully understand the company’s environment. Try to answer questions such as: What demands does my company meet? What do we do and what are the steps we follow? Is it necessary to involve more than one sector? Is the work standardized and the quality delivered always the same? What are the impacts that each activity brings to the final result?

When the answers to these questions are clear, there is an understanding of the interconnections and the degree of complexity existing in the company’s processes. The detailed analysis of the importance and impact of processes provides visibility over the existing macro processes.

Macro processes types

As mentioned above, macro processes are related to a company’s reason of being, and therefore vary according to its strategic objectives. However, within the value chain methodology, which allows the company to organize its processes seeking to generate value to the client, macro processes are usually divided into three types:

• Primary or business macro process: it is the set of processes that are related to the purpose of the company’s existence as if it were the heart of the business and everything that is carried out to fulfill its mission;
• Managerial macro process: here are related to the set of processes that aim to monitor, measure, follow up, control, and manage the present and the future of the organization. It relates to management in the strategic, operational, or financial aspects.
• Support macro process: is a group of processes that are not directly related to the company’s core business, which means they do not directly add value to the client. However, they are important because they provide all the support so that the primary processes can be carried out more easily and efficiently.

Only a very detailed view of the company can define which are the macro processes. For example, for a company whose core business is building greenhouses, the processes related to the IT area will be support macro processes, while for a company that provides technological solutions, the same processes of the technology sector would be the primary macro process.

Process Hierarchy

When we are preparing to automate processes, we should take into account a hierarchy that is usually related to their degree of complexity or importance within the company:

• Macro processes: they involve a set of processes, departments, functions, or positions. As its execution directly impacts the results and functioning of the business, it is at the top of the hierarchy.
• Processes: are a conglomerate of highly complex activities that, when interconnected, are capable of reaching a specific goal. It is usually described in the organization chart;
• Sub-processes: are triggered from the processes, therefore, directly related. They have medium or high complexity, and can be distinct or interlinked;
• Activities: despite being routine, administrative, or technical, they have a determined objective, a deadline, and less complexity if compared to the higher hierarchical levels;
• Tasks: the basis of the hierarchy, aimed at the fulfillment of goals, deadlines, and the like; in other words, they’re everything related to the work routine. They are executed to prepare or monitor the execution of processes.

Benefits of Macro Processes

Unlike the narrow vision of isolated processes, macro processes provide a holistic view for the company’s management. The manager is more assertive when he needs to make a decision once he has concrete and structured information regarding the mechanisms used within the company.

A macro process view provides:

• Critical analysis and extended view;
• Identification of problems, failures or bottlenecks is performed faster;
• Faster troubleshooting, providing agility;
• Reduction of rework;
• Economy of financial resources, a fundamental item for a business to maintain and grow organically and healthily;
• Greater integration within the company, if you understand how the interaction and interconnection of processes and sectors takes place;
• Understanding how the work is actually done and the existing relationship between supplier and customer;
• Provides monitoring of the performance of all stages of the process sets.

Besides these advantages, another benefit you get when looking at macro processes is to realize that, not infrequently, tasks are performed in different ways, with the need to standardize processes in order to organize, formalize, and develop a model that must be followed; this, in turn, ensures efficiency and quality, both for the work and the product or service that will be delivered to meet an identified need.

In conclusion

We can conclude that the management by processes and the vision by macro processes, and consequently their standardization, is a very common practice for companies that seek to stand out in the market, ensuring all their resources are used in favor of a common objective, adding value to their clients.

The greatest challenge in its implementation, though, is modifying the predominant culture that is quite ingrained within the companies. The manager needs to be open and encourage the beneficial changes that the standardization of processes brings. Here you can learn all that is necessary to implement a process automation tool.

At first, there may be some resistance from the parties involved, however, when the professionals realize that they will be much more efficient in their activities and that the managers coordinate interrelated processes, sharing a common goal, they end up contributing and being allies so that all possible processes are automated and goals are met quickly and agilely.

Of course, to take advantage of all the benefits, the company needs to have a management tool that is simple, integrative, and user-friendly.

We want to contribute so that your company has enviable management. Want to know in practice how the vision, the management by macro processes, and their standardization can be essential for your business? Test the Fusion Platform for free for 15 days, and see for yourself!

When you go to the doctor, there are a number of activities that must be performed before you are attended to. For example, you arrive at the medical office, pick up a ticket, and wait for a clerk to call you. You go to the balcony, and if you are a new patient, he or he will need to take your medical file, then ask you to sit in a waiting room and wait to be called by the doctor.

• What is Process Standardization?
• Why to standardize processes?
• Advantages of Process Standardization
• How to standardize processes?
  • Communicate the teams
  • Do process mapping
  • Document the processes
  • Conduct training
  • Monitor constantly
• How the processes should work in practice

Now imagine that there is no order in the activities and everyone acts the way they want to. Some patients arrive and go straight to the waiting room, others knock on the doctor’s door and some speak to the clerk first. Can you imagine the chaos? It’s precisely to eliminate chaotic situations that best practices on how to carry out processes (in our example, the medical attendance process) are established. We call these best practices Process Standardization.

What is Process Standardization?

Process Standardization describes a set of rules that an organization’s employees must follow in order to complete a given task. Its objective is to organize and standardize work processes.

Consider this: there are better and worse ways to perform every activity in your company. Therefore, any process, task or procedure can (and should) adopt standardization, such as answering the phone, hiring new employees, registering suppliers, etc.

Why standardize processes?

Standardizing processes means eliminating inefficient and conflict-prone alternatives. It’s through standardization that one seeks the best way to perform an activity. Some benefits obtained include:

• Reduction of errors and losses;
• Development of a training culture;
• Greater transparency; and
• Cost reduction.

Standardization also makes the process and its responsible parties well-known from end to end, ensuring that those involved have a better understanding of its inputs and outputs. In addition, standardizing processes is a competitive advantage because it eliminates failures, optimizes internal processes, and improves products and services’ quality. To better understand the importance of this subject, read on:

Advantages of Process Standardization

Perhaps the most obvious advantage of Process Standardization is that it improves clarity regarding the flow of activities, reducing the potential for ambiguity and guesswork. Precisely by describing steps and instructions for accomplishing a task, standardization eliminates wasted employee time trying to figure out what should be done next.

When an organization cares about Process Standardization it’s looking for the best way to perform an activity. It is understood that they’re looking for efficiency, which means that standardizing processes increases the productivity level of employees.

Furthermore, once your company has a standard way of doing things, it is easier for new employees to learn how to do them. Since the work is done in a predefined way, Process Standardization helps ensure quality, especially since it minimizes the chances of crucial details being overlooked.

Keep in mind that whenever there is a standard to perform activities, the chances of errors will decrease and the customers are the ones that will be happy with this. By the way, another of the benefits of Process Standardization is the improvement in customer service. Besides establishing standardized processes to talk to customers and methods to centralize information, if your organization is more productive and efficient, your customers will feel the results.

How to standardize processes?

We understand what Process Standardization is and what its advantages are. Now it’s time to get down to business. Below we have listed the step-by-step actions for you to start standardizing your company’s processes today.

1. Communicate the teams

Transparency is fundamental. And because of that, the first step is that each leader should gather his team and explain Process Standardization, showing its advantages. Since the employees will have to deal with changes in the execution of activities, it is important to explain to them that these changes will help them to be more productive and avoid waste and rework.

2. Do process mapping

Mapping identifies all steps, involved parties, objectives, decisions, and the overall flow of an existing process. This is the crucial step in Process Standardization because it is with it that the inputs and outputs, the existing activities, how they are performed, the tools, the people involved, and the objective will be evaluated. It’s also in this step that the process will be designed or redesigned.

In cases of existing processes, the mission is to look critically at each process and analyze whether there are inconsistencies or redundancies. But not only errors should be observed at this stage. It’s also important at this point to check for improvement opportunities in order to optimize the results of both the process and the company.

To be able to see the process as a whole and draw it, it is essential to create a flowchart. This can be done manually, but it is best to use a Business Process Management (BPM) tool. If you need to know more about how to map processes, we recommend reading Process Mapping: Where to start?

3. Document the processes

After the processes have been mapped out, it is essential to have all of them documented. This documentation is essential because it will describe how the process should run in the company. This will be very useful for training new employees.

We emphasize that the documentation should serve as a guide, and should be simple and easy to understand for those who need to analyze it. The ideal is to use a well-known standard graphic notation, such as BPMN. Access our guide!

4. Hold training sessions

Your employees are aware of the changes. Now it’s time to show them what these changes will look like in practice. Hold training sessions and introduce an overview of the process, showing the importance of each person doing their job on time.

There may be some resistance here because so far there was no procedure to follow. This is normal, and the important thing is to always be open to dialogue. Soon enough, everyone will realize the benefits of Process Standardization.

5. Monitor constantly

When working with processes we have to understand that they are meant to optimize and simplify. So always keep an eye out if something needs to be enhanced or if there are inconsistencies or opportunities for improvement.

Again, it is always important to keep an open dialogue. It is natural that improvements will be proposed, and this is very valid. Remember that processes are about continuous improvement, so always monitor them!

And how are the processes supposed to work in practice?

Ok, we have seen how a process should be standardized. Now we need to understand how this workflow will work in practice. The activities in a standardized process follow a chain of tasks, with defined responsibilities and deadlines.

The best thing to do is to count on a tool that handles both the execution of the processes and their control. This is where the Business Process Management (BPM) solution comes in. Basically, BPM manages the entire process, automating the steps and thus eliminating productivity loss.

In conclusion

Standardizing processes is creating standards and criteria that employees in an organization must follow in order to complete a given task. Its goal is to make the company more productive and thereby increase the profitability of your business.

To learn more about Process Management, here are some suggestions:

• What is Process Management (BPM) and what are its benefits?
• Process Mapping: where to start?

We hope this article was helpful to you. If so, feel free to share it with your colleagues. Until next time!