Process Mapping with Intentions to Implement into SAP?

Every day our staff goes to work to execute processes. Whether it is an inventory process, a maintenance process, or an analysis process, they are doing sets of serial tasks with a degree of logic and decision points. These processes may be officially documented and very formal or they may be informal. It may even be something they have done for many years that has become automatic and requires little thought, over and over, day after day, year after year.

Despite the successes of our staff, we often speak of “digitally transforming,” these processes by implementing them into systems such as SAP. You wish to drive further efficiency into your processes and “going fully digital,” may be a wise move. Your organization has a solid foundation with a reasonable level of asset management mastery that not only covers the operational aspect of your equipment, but also the approach you use to control and leverage your data. You are in a good situation to take the next steps… move all or significant parts of your processes into SAP.

As a side note, the transformation of our businesses from paper to digital is nothing new. What is new is the scope of what can and should be made digital. What was not even considered a candidate for digitization 5 years ago is now just another record in a database waiting to be retrieved for analysis. A casual picture of a leaking valve from a smartphone, texted to a supervisor, is now a critical maintenance record that a machine can interpret and take actions with!

Start with an assessment

Given the goal of transformational change to excellence, it is best to start with an assessment and any assessment needs to cover far more than just computer systems. In fact, the People and Processes you rely upon to run your business are either your greatest assets or greatest roadblocks. Evaluating the readiness of these crucial elements for change is a key task to perform before starting this process.

Assessments should cover all the areas that play a role in the focused processes. Be sure to reach out just a little beyond the process at hand to ensure you touch everything. It is often surprising how much one of the departments you didn’t even think about has an impact on a process. Make your own list to start with, but here are a few to consider:

• Asset / Reliability Management
• Work / Maintenance Management
• All supporting elements such as Management, Purchasing, Inventory, Safety, Planning, Contracts, Finance, IT, etc.

Let me give you an example. One client’s shipping process ended when the sticker was placed on the box which was then set out on the loading dock to be picked up by the bases’ internal delivery service. However, there was no notification to the delivery service that a package was awaiting, so packages would sit for days, upsetting the awaiting party. “I could have walked over to the warehouse and gotten it sooner!” Look just beyond the process at hand to see what might be lurking to damage any efficiency you think you created.

Assessments expose gaps between the current work-stream(s) situation and what could be considered best- or most efficient processes. A good assessment will also show what to keep… and there is usually quite a bit. Have confidence that your People and Processes are operating your business well. What may be needed are some focused refinements to your SAP software tools to help your people operate even more efficiently.

Where does process mapping begin?

Sorry folks… the next step of process mapping begins with the willingness to document what is currently being done and then making documented refinements from there. What’s the point of documenting processes, especially the simple ones you ask? It comes down to the need for clear communication amongst more than just one person. How can we expect to understand what a process is and that it is the right process for the organization if it is not written down? Does the process need to be extremely detailed and prescriptive in some cases? Yes. But, in most cases no. This is your starting point towards mapping (or adopting) best practices for your company.

Let’s pause a moment and consider best practices. They are a very good thing if they are applied in the correct context. What some industry standard touts may work in some places, but not others. They can lead to waste of many kinds. We bring this up because no matter how you go about something, it needs to suit your context and be in support of… you guessed it… your corporate goals.

Don’t forget to map in those departments who have established manual processes where they use some software tools to facilitate those processes. Perhaps they continue to rely upon a significant amount of manual data capture, analysis, and reporting. By taking advantage of their foundation of good processes and the established sources of data, the business will be able to ascertain where they can improve, and which SAP tools can be used to move them into a truly digital environment for their business data.

Now, into SAP your processes go.

There is nothing wrong with trying out changes before deploying them into production. This is where proof of concepts or pilots have great value. If you have significant changes to make, why not put them into action with all involved to see how effective and practical they are? Give yourself and your teams time to absorb and carry out the changes before making them permanent.

Having development or test instances of the SAP components you use on a regular basis is very important here. Processes can look good on paper, but when filtered through the cold logic of a script or system configuration, they can look quite different.

This brings up a good point: Whomever is responsible for your SAP configuration (whether internal staff or a contractor) should be part of the ‘process mapping’ process. They are not involved so they can continually tell the staff that their process “won’t work,” but rather their involvement will bring out the ‘out of the box’ and built-in functionality that might cover what the process is demanding. SAP, like any other EAM system, has vast amounts of features and functions that might simply be able to be used as is. Knowledgeable SAP professionals can easily point these out to the process teams, potentially saving many hours and dollars shoehorning processes into the software.

Regardless of the degree of configuration, always give yourself an out. Permanence and complexity equate to increased cost of maintenance of the SAP solution over time. Strive for a flexible solution so that when your needs change, the solution can change quickly as well.

Next step is to translate your proven (and documented!) refinements into design requirements for the SAP software tools so they can determine the need: implementation or just refinement. Again, you may have discovered that some of your existing SAP tools can be changed simply to make great strides forward. You may have also discovered vast amounts of SAP functionality that can easily replace many of your current processes, manual or otherwise.

Now you just work on the implementation plan. Most all of the decisions and choices have been made. Your teams have exercised the ideas and refined (or dropped!) them accordingly. Focused SAP elements and tools have been chosen as well as the vendor who will come alongside you. Of course, it is best if this same vendor has been with you on this journey already.

Wrap-up

Every organization is at a different stage in their journey to excellence and digital transformation. Some are well underway and nearly as excellent as they can be. Others recognize the need and simply need a place to make the decision and begin. No matter where they are on this evolutionary path, TRM has the People, Processes, and Technologies to help you make progress and get the full value from your SAP solutions.