Your organization is probably divided into separate departments, such as R&D, sales, IT, and accounts. These departments don’t work independently, but should all cooperate to achieve the organization’s goals. To help with this, many organizations have become ‘process-centered.’
A process-centered organization removes the internal divisions and focuses everybody’s attention on the process of satisfying customer demand. Process centering means that all people in the company recognize and focus on their processes. When an order comes to a traditional organization, everyone does their separate part of the process and seems to work in isolation – sales collect orders, manufacturing makes goods, warehousing adjusts the stocks, transport delivers the goods, accounts sends out the invoices. The problem is that no one looks after the whole process, integrates different operations, or even makes sure that customers actually get their products.
In a process-centered organization, everyone has the overriding purpose of contributing to a process that leads to satisfied customers. Everyone works as part of a team, with:
- The single purpose of satisfying customer demand;
- Concentration on the whole process of delivering products;
- Expansion of traditional roles, with empowered employees making decisions and dealing with all types of customer issues;
- Responsibility for all aspects of the process;
- Access to all types of information throughout the organization;
- A matrix or cross-functional management structure;
- A team leader who has overall responsibility for the success of the process.
This emphasis on the whole process of satisfying customers has many implications. One is that your organization becomes more flexible to customer needs. Traditional organizations imagine that operations are smoothest when customers are kept at a distance, if customers become involved they try to expedite their order, change designs, demands difficult adjustments to the products, ask for detailed progress reports and generally get in the way. A process-centered organization welcomes customer involvement, forms partnerships, increases satisfaction with products and gains a huge competitive advantage.
My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.
