Each process has its own impact on the company business, so it’s also quite important to sort them in order to focus on the best to improve. The criticality may also indirectly lead the way the process(es) will be investigated later. Indeed, the resources and team the business will leverage or just involve could typically be totally different (from how to very low or non-existent) considering this importance. Usually we can sort the process criticality in 3 families :
- Critical: if the business process is not improved the company is clearly at risk. Critical processes are generally the heart of the company business. The most famous ones are:
- Order To Cash (OTC)
- Procure To Pay (P2P)
- Sales Process (According to the salesmanagement.org about 90% of the best and highest performing companies use a formal, guided sales process or methodology)
This list is not exhaustive at all and clearly depends on the company activity business but also its size. We can say at this stage, without an efficient process like this the company could not just work.
- Medium: The company could work without these processes, however without them the enterprise will struggle to stay competitive and to provide an acceptable level of service. Some processes which are most of the time not critical but cannot be sorted as “Nice to have”:
- Client onboarding
- Supplier onboarding
- Customer support (even if considering the company activity this kind of process could be seen as critical)
- Financial planning
- Accounting management
- Low: These processes are generally considered as “Nice to have” but not critical and mostly they are put in place when a critical company size is reached. These processes can be :
- Content promotion (marketing)
- Employee onboarding (HR)