Process Optimization 1.0 – The Basics Explained

Process Optimization 1.0 – The Basics Explained

Process optimization (also: Business Process Management) and the automation of business operations that often goes along with it are on everyone’s lips. Every company knows how important this topic is, but it is rarely truly tangible.

What exactly does process optimization mean? Where do you start, and at what point do you stop? Which steps do I have to take, and is it even worthwhile for my company size? When does it make sense to bring external know-how on board?

We would like to shed some light on the supposed darkness on our blog and support you with our experience in the field of process optimization and automation.

Let’s start with the basic basics.

Process automation and process optimization are often used synonymously, but by definition they are two not entirely identical terms.
Process optimization is fundamentally understood as the “improvement of business processes with regard to their effectiveness, efficiency and/or service orientation. The improvements can relate to the input, the processing, and/or the output of a process.”
Using higher-quality materials in the manufacture of products can therefore be a process improvement that affects the output—i.e., your product.

But what exactly is process automation?

In business terms (also business process automation or workflow automation), process automation refers to the digitization and technological support of complex business processes. In other words, the integration and application of software in companies in order to minimize human intervention as much as possible. Process automation is therefore to be understood as a sub-area of process optimization. A process can be optimized with the help of technologies and software, but it does not necessarily have to be.

In production, process automation is clearly visible: factories in which more robots than humans work and manufacturing increasingly runs autonomously are nothing new. Especially in administrative areas of companies, however, it is often still difficult to recognize optimization potential and to use robotics or software optimally.

By now, it is standard and only sensible to optimize processes with the help of software. Today, process optimization in the usual sense only takes place in very rare cases, since manual, constantly recurring operations are not only improved but directly automated in order to achieve maximum efficiency, time savings, and cost savings.

We explain the advantages of automating business processes here in our blog post.

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