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Industry:
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Prodacapo Process Manager
Process mapping, improvement
and re-design |
Article from Prodacapo Newsletter
Creating uniform and efficient business processes in four countries
Scribona is the Nordic countries' largest distributor of hardware and software, as well as solutions for IT infrastructures. The company has offices and operations in four countries and collaborates with more than 6,000 dealers and system integrators.
Five questions to Bo Jacobsson, head of Processes and IT Solutions at Scribona:
1. What's the background for your project?
“Just like all other companies, we face the challenge of dealing with the demands both from our customers and suppliers, as well as the demands we place on ourselves for increased efficiency in our processes. From having had more or less four different ways of working – one in each Nordic country – we are now creating uniform Nordic processes,” says Bo Jacobsson.
2. What are you hoping to achieve?
“That we have a uniform and efficient way of working throughout the Nordic countries. This shall result in overall increased efficiency.”
3. How are you going about it?
“We've created a Nordic process group with a representative from each country and from each common Nordic function, such as purchasing, product administration and finance. There are seven persons in the group. Working together, we surveyed and documented the present situation for the most important processes. We then verify the processes and routines by comparing how work is conducted in the organization in practice in the respective functions and countries. This enables us to see where and why we have deviations from a process, and where changes need to be made.
“When this first phase is finished, we'll shift to continually refining our processes. Primary responsibility for further efforts is with the Nordic-common functions, which also become ‘process owners' for their respective processes.”
4. What advice would you give to others who are facing the same challenge as Scribona?
“One piece of advice is to not get too deep into the details of process work; we've chosen three levels. Also go over the roles you have today and appraise them. Here too, you shouldn't go too deep and describe all roles in the organization. That's why we've chosen three levels. Additionally, prioritize which processes you begin with. We've started with the processes that are most business-critical; those that affect customers the most.”
“Beyond that, my advice is that one should be very careful when verifying the current situational descriptions of processes. If you get onto the wrong track at the beginning, this can result in over more mistakes with time, and besides the added work, this can lead to distrust in the organization. It's also important to keep in mind that a process change entails a change from what is natural everyday behavior for individual employees. It's therefore important to be clear as to why and what one is trying to achieve with a process flow change.”
“We've received valuable assistance from Prodacapo in getting it right from the beginning in our process work.”
5. And lastly, what is your opinion about the Prodacapo's system?
“It's relatively simple. Simplicity is one of the reasons we decided to work with Prodacapo. Time spent getting underway is short, and now that we've worked with the tool for awhile, we see that it fulfil our needs.”
“Another reason for choosing Prodacapo is that from within the system, we can obtain a good overview of the processes and click down from comprehensive processes to the underlying in a tree structure.”
“Finally, a big advantage with Prodacapo is that we can communicate process maps and information to all employees via our intranet. It's important to make the material accessible to the organization. The more the organization participates in the work, the better the ideas that come forward.”
“Our work with our processes is going as planned,” says Bo Jacobsson in closing.
Learn about Prodacapo Process Manager software »
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