In your strategy meetings, how often do you talk about business process improvements? Even if your leadership team actively works to improve operations, you may have some blind spots. This is where an expert can weigh in.
What is a business process review?
A business process review (BPR) is a service that helps you optimize an organization’s performance. A risk management professional will work with your leadership team to improve the operational processes your business uses every day. As part of the service, the professional will:
Perform a risk assessment.
They will perform a diagnostic review of your business’s operations and identify controls risks. In other words, they will help answer the question: “Do your internal controls keep your business processes running effectively and efficiently?”
Define goals.
They will identify your most critical business processes, then specify what your operations would look like if those processes were optimized. This gives you a road map of where you need to go.
Identify areas for improvement and make recommendations.
After reviewing your existing processes, your team of professionals will note what’s not working. Based on what they discover, their recommendations may be to (a) slightly tweak existing protocols, or (b) reengineer your business processes from the ground up.
Help you update policies and procedures.
This team of professionals will encourage you to update your handbook to include the new and improved processes. Your documents should describe the business processes in detail so that each relevant employee knows their role and understands the bigger picture.
Why is a business process review important?
When performed by the right team of professionals, a BPR can work wonders for your organization. It can fix many short-term problems, but it can also put protocols into place that will serve you for years or decades to come. BPRs can:
- Improve compliance with reporting bodies.
Improving your payroll process, for example, can ensure that you file your tax returns on time, and that you submit withholding payments accurately and timely. - Introduce you to new technologies.
If a BPR finds that your enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is lacking, you may be able to improve inventory management, human resource communication, and customer relations simply by finding new software. - Make you aware of security weaknesses.
Security and access to your systems is of the utmost importance, especially as organization’s tech stacks become more sprawling and cumbersome. A BPR can help you identify user access and segregation of duties concerns within these systems to help you better mitigate risk and feel more secure. - Improve financial reporting accuracy.
Consider the scenario where, during the BPR, the review of your accounts receivable process reveals that manual entries create more errors than you initially thought. By automating some of those entries, you can reduce the likelihood of errors, in turn making your financial reports more accurate. - Mitigate fraud.
BPRs often look at your fraud response to determine if your governance policies and procedures are serving you. If governance in your organization is sparse or if your procedures are incomplete, it may hamper your ability to respond to fraud reports timely. - Gain a competitive advantage.
Businesses that don’t consistently make improvements to their operations may fall behind in the marketplace. BPRs can help you stay ahead of the curve. Improving your processes regularly may help you outpace your competitors and attract more customers.
How do you find the right team to perform a business process review?
Not all accountants or business advisors will be able to perform this service for you. When looking for a professional that fits the bill, here are the traits you should look for.
- They should have a wide range of business management experience so that they know common issues to look for.
- They should be familiar with your industry and all its common pain points.
- They should know (or be willing to get to know) your company and what makes it tick.
Having served a wide range of clients, from small and local companies to larger multinational corporations, the LaPorte risk advisory professionals bring a thorough knowledge of business process to the table. Contact us today to learn more about our BPR service.