IT-guys. Naming for those who know what goes on behind the screens of monitors and mobile phones. They speak a strange language full of English words and abbreviations. They are not understood, and they often do not understand real-world problems.

Analysis

The area of IT that tries to build a bridge between IT people and others is called Analysis. A good analyst needs to be both IT and understand the people in their chosen area of the real world. We call it her domain. Understanding is a crucial step to getting the job done, i.e. the order to improve, simplify and develop the real world, for which the IT guys then get paid and can buy everything they need to live. Thus, new computers, monitors, headphones, pizza, and coffee :-).

Process analysis

Analysts use best practices, methodologies, and graphical representations of the situation, which are diagrams. Analysts in all countries understand each other by standardising the graphical elements used in the diagrams. The Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) is a widely and successfully used standard for process description and analysis(currently in BPMN version 2.0). It is umbrellaed by the world-renowned Object Management Group (OMG).

Example of a BPMN diagram showing both the main steps that precede and follow the analytical discipline Called Process Analysis:

Explanation of the graphic elements used and the process depicted:

Example of process analysis – Car service

To illustrate the activities described, we will use a simple story from a long-term collaboration with our customer. For many years, we have developed and operated systems for warehouse management, car sales support, and customer care.

• In addition to selling cars, the customer also provides car servicing services. Almost everyone has a car, and nearly all have had some unpleasant, costly car service experience.
• The customer has identified a serious problem: they are losing customers, car sales, and, ultimately, money due to dissatisfaction with service.
• The employee was tasked with calling customers to determine their satisfaction with the dealership’s service so that the problem could be identified and eliminated early.
• As the customer operates eight garages, this task kept her fully occupied, and she even missed some of the interventions that needed to be checked.

We were called in to help.

Process mapping and documentation

We set up a meeting with the Marketing Director and captured the current status of the process:

1. The inspection worker logs into the system where the service interventions are recorded and searches for the service interventions submitted for the previous day.
2. If it finds one, it searches the sales system for the car for each intervention using the registered body number and the customer to whom the vehicle was sold. It compares this figure with the customer who has had the car serviced.
3. After preparing the documents, he called the customer and asked questions from the prepared survey. He asked them to rate their satisfaction with the school system, among other things, on a scale of 1 to 5.
4. He records the results of his survey in a prepared MS Excel spreadsheet, Which she sends to her supervisor at the end of the day.
5. If a customer is depressed or dissatisfied and is an important customer, escalate the problem to their supervisor.

We have identified the problems and weaknesses of the process:

1. The worker allocated and checked satisfaction with the service, forgetting some customers, especially if they didn’t call the first time.
2. Getting the background information for a customer call is laborious and time-consuming.
3. The resulting daily customer satisfaction reports are impractical and opaque.
4. Management wants to use the employee for other activities, which is impossible now as she is fully occupied with this process.

Process analysis, new process design

We organised a meeting with the system operator where service interventions are recorded and found out the possibilities of exporting service interventions. We designed a process with automated possible steps and a control mechanism in place:

1. Service interventions are exported from the service system once a day.
2. The CRM system automatically searches for the car and the customer in the sales system for each service intervention. If one is found, the data is paired with the data from the service system.
3.  A job is created with prepared data about the serviced car and the customer and assigned to the user responsible for checking the service interventions.
4. In the morning, the control worker finds the task for each service intervention in the CRM system. She arranges them by customer and priority, and after a successful call, she records the satisfaction found in the task. (such a task will drop from the list)
5. If the task is not processed within 24 hours, a task will be filed with the Director of Marketing to urge resolution.
6. Satisfaction results are recorded in the CRM system.

Process implementation, happy end…

1. A job is scheduled to extract service interventions from the service system and export them to a CSV file at midnight on each working day.
2. Copying this file to the input directory will start the defined Camunda BPM process, which will perform the automatic steps described above And establish the corresponding user roles.

Once the process is commissioned:

1. Control Officer:
   • In the morning, she has an overview of what’s ahead of her and can plan her day.
   • It has the necessary data ready for each intervention and does not have to be searched for.
   • She doesn’t forget the customers she hasn’t reached.
2. All customers are called and allowed to make a complaint if necessary and are taken care of.
3. Marketing and management view colourful reports in the CRM about increasing customer satisfaction.

This is what process analysis looks like in practice. If you need to improve your processes, please contact us.

Roman IT-guy

If you need help from experts with process implementation or setup, do not hesitate to contact us.

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