How process mapping will help your business succeed

What is process mapping? 

Process mapping can help create a business process or a process flow diagram that defines a sequence of events in the workflow ahead and is often a visual representation. Subsequently, process maps allow leaders and project managers to bring teams together, help people understand where they fit into a project, and how their work impacts others—ultimately driving toward an end result with SharePoint consulting services.

Process maps typically define a new process, document or improve an existing one. With process mapping software, anyone can create a visual representation of a project.  

Benefits of process mapping  

With the power to visually see and understand a process from start to finish, areas for improved efficiency will quickly appear. In addition, a process flow chart can help you: 

• Provide process documentation 
• Show a visual project from beginning to end 
• Share details visually that can be understood at a glance by leadership 
• Highlight unknown unknowns like complexities and redundancies 
• Break processes into steps using easy-to-understand symbols 
• Show how team members are interconnected, which can help facilitate more meaningful interactions 
• Give your team a frame of reference  
• Highlight potential problems and solutions 
• Empower you (and your team) to make more informed decisions 
• Create a library of flow charts that you can use, reuse and repurpose as new projects arise 
• Ask and answer more strategic questions  
• Deliver better products and services to clients 
• Provide documentation compliance and audit  
• Quality management systems (QMS) 

Ways of using process mapping

Whether you work in an industrial setting, an office, a warehouse or a healthcare facility, process mapping can help your team better understand how things work and where they fit in. The benefits will help everyone feel more connected to their jobs and valued. Let’s take a look at the two ways of using process mapping, so you can decide which is right for your project.  

Process flow 

A process flow diagram shows the relationships between the major components of a project or industry. It can help you establish standards and procedures and used as a guide for tasks. Moreover, it can help ensure that your teams follow the steps of a workflow in the prescribed order.  

Process flow diagrams document a process, improve a process, or model a new one. When process flow diagrams are created with process mapping software, they can contain clickable symbols that expand and provide additional detail on each phase of the process. So, before you set up a workflow or business flow chart that includes tasks, you might want to outline your overall process in a flow diagram. 

Business process 

Business process mapping gets down to the details of your process. It shows, from start to finish, what needs to happen to reach the end of a process. The procedure includes who needs to be involved, what they need to do, when they need to do it and how their tasks go to completion. It gives your team members a why, a reason to believe and insight into the greater goals. It shows them their role, why they’re essential to the process and how your team will work together to complete the project.  

Like all process mapping diagrams, business process mapping uses symbols to indicate touchpoints along the way, and those symbols can expand for additional details. 

Types of process mapping  

Because different businesses and different projects have their own unique needs, using the same style of process flow chart over and again probably isn’t the best use of the tool. Thus, there are several types of process mapping for more specialized needs. Let’s take a look at the different types of process mapping, so you can decide which is right for your project.  

Detailed process mapping 

Detailed process mapping delivers the minutiae of a project in the form of a process map. By providing a technical look at the exact steps, including the inputs, outputs, metrics and people needed to complete the process, you can mitigate confusion, show dependencies and help your team prepare for what lies ahead (and stay focused after the project begins). Detailed process maps usually link to the high-level, main, or primary process map.