What are the optimal core business processes for confectionery company?

Problem

ConfectioneryCo. lacked clarity of its high-level company core business processes. This was due to the recent changes in the company management, which often lead to misalignment between functions. ConfectioneryCo. sought to define these processes, understand the business logic behind each and define process owners, their responsibilities, and their KPIs.

Situation

ConfectioneryCo. planned an ambitious growth for the coming years. But it faced a foundational growth challenge, its high-level business processes were not clearly defined. Due to this lack of clarity, there were increasing process variances and inefficiencies. Thus the management sought to standardise its processes, and in order to achieve this, it sought to first establish its core business processes and secondly create a detailed process map for one of its business functions to act as a benchmark for future all other processes documentations.

Key research questions

The key research questions in the project were:

1. What are the optimal core business processes for confectionery companies?
2. What is the impact of the change in core processes on the organisation?

Our approach

SprintlWorks team conducted a three-phase project:

Phase I: Identification of core processes

In this phase, the SprintlyWorks team conducted interviews with company senior management to understand the current operational logic. Next, a peer benchmark was conducted to understand the rationale for total core processes as well as the business logic behind each. Based on that a process framework and highest level core processes were developed. Additionally, the SprintlyWorks team also developed first-level insights into process owner roles and responsibilities as well as their input and outputs.

Phase II: Identification of sub-processes

During the second phase, the SprintlyWorks team selected the Delivery core process at ConfectioneryCo. to further detail it. The sub-processes of Delivery were identified and their key purpose defined. Next, key company stakeholders were interviewed to identify the job-position who will be responsible for the process as well as their input and output.

Phase III: Identification of process activities and activity map development

In the final phase, a sub-process under Delivery was selected for an in-depth process mapping. At this step, the key-value chain events were first mapped in the form of swim-lanes. In the swim-lanes, further detailed data points were added namely, process owner position, target, scope, responsibilities, suppliers, input, output, and customers.

Results

ConfectioneryCo. finalised on a core process framework for the company. Additionally, the in-depth sub-process map provided ConfectioneryCo. with a benchmark for other process documentation. With the help of SprintlyWorks’ on-demand workforce ConfectioneryCo.was is able to streamline key decisions within the company and reduce process variance by 25%.