In order to improve the management level of the enterprise, we must first straighten out the existing management system of the enterprise. Because only by "clarifying" can we manage in a targeted manner and do a good job in the follow-up continuous optimization. The integration of the existing management system of the enterprise is inseparable from the process management, because only by dredging the business process can the job responsibilities and work content of employees be clarified, and a good foundation can be laid for the follow-up management work and continuous optimization work.
In order to use process management to integrate the management system of the enterprise and solve the problem of management system islands, it is necessary to first build a unified process management organization within the enterprise. For this process management organization, the enterprise can set it up separately, or it can hand over the power and responsibility of process management to an existing department of the enterprise, and the department in charge of process management must assume the responsibility of integrating the existing management system of the enterprise with process management.
Whether it is a special process management organization or a department entrusted with process management rights and responsibilities, its main task is not to design the business process of the enterprise, but to integrate the existing management system of the enterprise with process management to achieve standardization. Specifically, its main responsibilities are five points, as shown in Figure 1 8: First, standardize the process description;The second is to improve the process management structure;The third is to standardize the release mechanism of the process and system;Fourth, the change of standardized management process;Fifth, standardize the monitoring of the implementation of the process.
Figure 1 The main responsibilities of the process management organization.
For example, if the enterprise chain management organization wants to change the delivery process, before implementing process management, the organization can directly hand over the modified process to the delivery department and ask the delivery department to change it.
After the implementation of process management, the first chain management organization must first submit an application for a change in the delivery process to the process management department, and after the process management department receives the application, the personnel related to the change in the delivery process will be brought together to negotiate the change plan of the delivery process. After the personnel of each department reached a consensus on the change of the delivery process, the process management department unified the new delivery process and supervised the implementation of the new process.
Through this method, the problem of enterprise management system islands can be effectively solved, and the implementation of new processes can also be effectively guaranteed, which can be described as killing two birds with one stone.
If the enterprise does not set up a separate process management organization, which departments of the enterprise can assume the responsibility of process management?From a practical point of view, enterprises usually assign process management responsibilities to the enterprise management department, the internal control department and the department, which can carry out overall management by themselves, as follows.
1) The main function of the enterprise management department is to formulate various rules and regulations and assessment systems to help enterprises achieve standardized management, and have inherent advantages in system integration. Based on this, it is only natural for enterprises to assign the responsibility of process management and system integration to this department.
2) With the popularization and application of information management system in enterprises, the system and enterprise management system are continuously integrated, and the department is gradually integrated with the realization process of enterprise strategic objectives and the application process of tactical planning. In the wake of this convergence trend, many companies have repositioned their departments with process management responsibilities and renamed them "Process and Information Management".
3) The main purpose of the establishment of the internal control department of the enterprise is to comprehensively manage the risks of the enterprise, and it is one of its responsibilities to control the risks of various management systems of the enterprise. Therefore, some companies also entrust process management to this department, such as PetroChina.
In the face of the same process, due to the different description subjects, different time points of description, and the lack of a set of standardized description language, the process description results will naturally be quite different.
For example, if you describe the process node of "** business inquiry", there are also cases where it is described as "asking for materials from ** business", and there are also cases where it is described as "asking ** business for quotation". It is not surprising that the job title is described as a "Purchasing Assistant" or a "Procurement Operations Assistant".
However, different people will have different understandings of these two different job descriptions, some people will see these two job descriptions as one position, and some people will separate them and treat them as two positions. If an IT developer develops a system based on two different descriptions, there is a big problem, because there is a big difference between "one position matching one set of permissions" and "two positions matching two different sets of permissions".
In addition, due to the lack of normative language in process descriptions, ambiguity often occurs when discussing the same process problem in various departments due to description biases and comprehension biases. Even if there is a consensus on a process issue, this consensus is based on "self-understanding", and there will be disputes when it comes to implementation.
In order to avoid these problems, the first task of the process management department is to standardize the process description language and supervise its implementation and execution. Taking Haier Group as an example, the process and information department of Haier Group formulated a unified set of process description specifications before carrying out process management, turning "each speaking its own language" into "Mandarin", reducing the probability of communication ambiguity and greatly improving the quality of internal communication.
No matter how complex the management system of the enterprise is, how diversified the management concept of the enterprise is, there is only one set of business processes, and this set of business processes should cover all the management systems of the enterprise, and the end-to-end combing of its system can be carried out. As long as the work of the employees of the enterprise is carried out on the basis of this set of process manuals, all the requirements of the operation of the enterprise can be met.
For the integration of the management system, the formulation and improvement of the process manual and job responsibilities is an important sign of its success, and its main purpose is to integrate the complex management concepts of the enterprise with the help of business processes, so that it can play a role in the process of each process step, implement various management concepts, truly achieve the goal of fine management and standardized management, optimize enterprise management, and improve the quality of enterprise management.
The main purpose of the enterprise to formulate various rules and regulations is to clarify the responsibilities of employees and standardize the way employees act, but the executors of various tasks are deeply affected by the islands of the management system, and have a unclear understanding of their own responsibilities and work content, which greatly reduces the effect of employee implementation.
Business process management provides a good idea for solving the above problems. Business process management has made great changes in the input and output of the entire management system. In the past, the relevant system documents of each management system were outputs, and their function was to guide employees to carry out their work;Nowadays, these system documents are inputs, and their function is to establish a complete process system, realize the integration of the management system with the process system, output process manuals and job responsibilities, and provide guidance for the work of enterprise employees.
Without the help of the information process management platform, it is difficult to complete the task of integrating the management system with process management only by relying on manual management. Specifically, the functions of the information process management platform mainly have two points: one is to gather all the business processes to be established, modified and released by the enterprise, so that they can be implemented;The second is to generate process manuals and job responsibilities to provide guidance for employees to carry out their work.
After the establishment of the information process management platform, under the role of technology, different management systems can be coordinated and effectively integratedUnder the role of information technology, with the help of function settings, authority settings and workflow settings, process management can be standardized and fixed, the integration efficiency and quality of the management system can be effectively improved, and the efficiency of process design, change and query can also be higher.
For example, under the role of the information process management platform, Siemens, PetroChina and other companies have greatly improved the efficiency of process management and the quality of process management, which has effectively proved the application effect of information process management platform.
*: Zhihu @ Zhang Zhengping.