Process Re-design
Three people and a bit of luck is a workaround, not a process.
Every business collects workarounds over time: approvals stuck in email threads, the same customer detail typed into three different systems, a step that makes sense for one reason: it fixed a problem from two managers ago. None of it is broken enough to stop the business, and all of it is expensive. Process re-design finds those workarounds, follows them to where they started, and rebuilds the process so it runs on purpose instead of on memory.
What this looks like day to day
Process re-design covers rebuilding how work moves through a business, sized to the process causing the problem. Past work in this space has included:
- Mapping a current workflow end to end before touching anything, so the fix targets the real bottleneck
- Cutting an approval chain down from five steps and three people to something that runs without a meeting
- Removing duplicate data entry where the same information gets typed into more than one system
- Redesigning a process around the team running it, not around a diagram that looks tidy on a slide
- Deciding whether a process needs a redesign first or would benefit from automating the process as it stands
- Choosing between off-the-shelf workflow software and a custom-built tool, based on how much the process varies from a standard one
If a task in your business runs on a person’s memory, a spreadsheet nobody else understands, or “that’s how we’ve always done it,” it sits under this service.
Where it overlaps with our other work
Process re-design is one piece of a bigger picture. A broken process creates a lot of the data mess that Information Management and Data & Analytics end up cleaning up: the same customer detail in three systems is a process problem before it’s a data problem. Fix the process and the data gets easier to trust.
How we approach it
We start by mapping how the work happens in practice, not how the org chart says it should. That mapping alone tends to surface half the problem before we change a single step.
Led by the people who diagnose the problem and build the fix
This work draws on both leads. Mic Zagami spent three decades leading technology and engineering teams before founding Square Agency on the belief that businesses need senior judgment, not another vendor relationship. Adam Marinovic has led integration projects connecting systems and teams through to delivery, the exact skill a tangled process needs once the redesign has to go live. Between them, the team that diagnoses the problem is the same one that builds the fix.
Common questions
What’s the difference between process redesign and automation? Automation speeds up a process as it exists today, broken steps included. Redesign fixes the process first, then automation makes the fixed version faster. Doing it in the other order locks in the same problems at a higher speed.
What’s the ROI of process re-design for a small business? McKinsey research on process improvement found businesses cutting operating costs by up to 30% within two years of fixing the processes behind them. In a small business, the return can show up in weeks: fewer hours spent on a task that used to eat a whole afternoon, fewer errors from typing the same data twice.
How long does a process re-design engagement take? Depends on how many people and systems the process touches. A single approval chain might take a couple of weeks to map, redesign, and test. A process crossing several departments and systems runs longer, and we’ll tell you which one yours is before you commit to anything.
Do I need to redesign the process, or can I automate what I have? If the process works but runs at the wrong pace, automation alone can help. If people are working around broken steps, skipping approvals, or keeping a shadow spreadsheet to make it run, automating that process locks the workaround in at a faster pace. Fix the process first.
Should I use off-the-shelf workflow software or build something custom? Off-the-shelf works well when your process looks like most other businesses’ processes. Once you’ve got a genuine quirk, an approval rule, an industry requirement, a legacy system, that off-the-shelf tools force you to work around, custom starts to earn its cost back.
Talk to someone who has fixed this before
If a process in your business runs on memory, luck, or a spreadsheet nobody else understands, book a call. We’ll tell you straight whether it needs a redesign or something simpler.