Business processes can be described at a very high level to encapsulate the whole purpose of an organization or at an atomic level to describe a single step in a simple task. Both will have the same basic structure. They will describe a resource that is consumed, an action that is taken on the resource and the resultant resource that is then delivered. The output from each process becomes the input for another process and how all of the lower level processes are assembled and linked determines whether the higher level process is successful or not.

When planning a business, the top-down approach is usually preferred - defining the ultimate high level process needed to achieve a business objective and then decomposing this into understandable steps with further and further decomposition of each step until all of the atomic level processes have been described.

These basic processes are initiated either by a human or by a machine and maintaining the balance between these two is the key to developing successful business processes. Machines do what they are programmed to do - great for repetitive processes, lousy at original thought. Humans on the other hand have an immense ability to adjust to circumstances on the fly, changing the process ever so slightly to fit the changed conditions.

Too much automation of a changeable process makes the business rigid and unable to grow, too little automation of a stable process will lead to inefficiencies, errors and eventual failure. As with everything, a balance is required. stpsolutions has the skills to recognise what should and should not be automated; to identify the areas of change that need to be controlled and to communicate change within the overall context of the high level objective.

In so many cases, senior management believe a process is undertaken in the way that it was planned at the outset and fail to realise that each member of their team has moulded a particular part of the processes to fit with their own skills and interpretations. Over time, the team changes, the altered processes get passed on to a new member by word-of-mouth as the de facto standard. These are then re-interpreted by a new team member without the breadth of vision as to where the process fits and before long the actual overall day-to-day process looks very different to the original plan. With a good, innovative team this can have the positive effect of honing and refining the business process into something better. However, changes having the negative effect of disrupting other processes are often diffcult to identify in isolation and only become apparent when the cumulative effects begin to harm the business.