Business Process Re-Engineering (Transformation)
Safely Transforming Your Business Operations
Changing business operations can have a profound impact upon an organization and such large-scale transformations should not be taken lightly. For more than 40 years, Procept has provided business tranformation consulting services to our clients, including some of the world's largest corporations and government organizations. Procept’s highly-experienced team includes Certified Management Consultants (CMCs) who have decades of experience in helping organizations through:
- Digital transformation — Creating efficiencies through digitization and automation by leveraging IT systems
- Agile transformation — Creating a culture focused on efficiency, speed, and waste reduction
- Mergers — Bringing two organizations together to use one set of common business processes and systems
- Process modernization — Updating business operations to comply with changing regulations, standards, and industry practices
- Process optimization — Using lean principles to eliminate waste
By taking a business case-driven, results-focused view, our consultants stay focused on the big picture, which helps them identify and manage risks to achieving those objectives. With risks under control, your transformation initiatives will cause less stress, roll out more smoothly, and achieve better results.
When dealing with Procept, you are working with some of Canada’s most experienced business process consultants.
Click on the tabs below to read about some of our focus areas.
Overview
In our experience, many process change engagements do not start as such but subsequently require process consulting services; for example, when we develop a business architecture for a client, we design and implement changes into the organization’s structure, processes, policies and regulations. We typically include activities such as business process mapping, business requirements elicitation, documenting new business practices and organizational redesign because it is often impossible to present a solution to our client’s problems without these consulting services.
We have experience delivering business process transformation consulting services for public, private and non-profit-sector clients such as eHealth Ontario, CIBC, Teranet, Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), and two U.S. intelligence agencies. Whether it is creating new delivery processes for the Government of Nunavut, Bruce Power, or Ontario Power Generation; introducing redesigned business processes at Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation; developing new governance processes at Barrick Gold; helping an industry shared-services provider create a common set of business processes and systems that will govern all of their business units; or helping a major Canadian municipality establish its first Project Management Office (PMO), Procept consultants have helped our clients achieve their desired business outcomes.
Organizational Change Management
Before we implement any transformation, we must first anticipate the level of disruption and resistance that will be triggered by the changes. Part of this is determining the organization's readiness to accept the changes, while another is preparing a plan to help roll out the changes in a way that minimizes the disruptions and resistance.
Our readiness assessments provide crucial input into our change adoption planning for process transformation projects. These assessments include analyzing changes to IT systems, governance systems, performance management systems, reporting systems, and/or process-based changes as well as knowledge, skills, engagement, and organizational culture assessments. We have done this since the 1990s for large private and public-sector organizations including Bruce Power, Ontario Power Generation, Government of Nunavut (where we proposed extensive changes to how they fund and manage their capital and operational projects), Government of Ontario (various ministries and agencies), Siemens, IBM, TD Bank, CIBC, RBC, Scotiabank, Teranet, Disney, and two US intelligence agencies, out of a list of dozens of clients.
Assessing the impacts of process change requires analyzing various user groups and other impacted stakeholders, looking at skill levels, operational practices, available supports, resistance levels, and other factors. Understanding the impacts of changes to a governance system requires broader analysis that may include assessments of political factors, impacts of legislative requirements, and possibly union issues. For example, when one of our consultants was involved in creating Ontario’s Lobbyist Registration System back in the late 1990s, he performed an impact assessment that identified unexpected stakeholder groups that could derail the change without proper engagement. The ADM adopted the recommendations and created an advisory panel that brought the stakeholders on board, allowing their voices to be heard and their recommendations fairly considered, reducing change resistance and leading to a successful rollout.
An example is some assessment work we have done for Vale, the Canadian mining company. As part of a larger initiative to reverse losses is several of its operating units, Procept was engaged to assess a dozen operational units to understand the gaps between as-is practices and the to-be state. Based on these assessments, Procept created an extensive list of recommendations that is guiding senior management in restructuring, process changes and standardization, performance metrics, training and development, and staffing. We included proprietary survey and competence assessment tools tied to custom-coded data analysis algorithms and data visualization scripts to produce our reports. We also used conceptual models from the OCM body of knowledge to make sure we considered all relevant change factors.
Process changes don’t work unless you get buy-in from those who will be affected by the changes. Procept has an extensive change management consultancy that helps organizations (such as TD Bank and Economical Insurance) better understand change resistance and how to over come those changes, prepare change management strategies and plans (such as eHealth Ontario and CIBC), and coach teams to help them through difficult changes (in organizations such as Apotex and Loblaws).
Procept is a Premier Partner of the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA), which it has supported since its founding including through helping run the non-profit organiation and helping develop international standards for business analysis. Our consultants have held positions such as co-lead of the Change Management Institute (2017-2019), founding member of the Association for Change Management Professionals (2011), as well as founding and managing the Organizational Change Practitioners group on LinkedIn (LinkedIn’s largest CM group with 60k+ members). And with several consultants holding the Change Management Professional designation (and being one of a select few organizations with accredited CMP exam prep trainers), decades of change management experience, and an impressive list of clients of our CM services since the 1990s, Procept is a solid choice for your initiative.
Process Agility
Given the high pace of VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, change, and ambiguity) in the world today, many organizations are trying to become more “agile”. This involves either transforming the organization to begome more adaptive, through process simplification and innovation or a transition to an agile and/or bimodal project delivery framework and supporting agile culture. For the former, we compile an agility profile identifying the core business processes that are “speed bumps” within the organization and the IT hot spots associated with them where the goal is to get a better alignment of business processes, technology and organizational structures. The latter takes a structured, disciplined approach to agile in compliance with corporate governance and regulatory requirements.
The diagram below shows some of the aspects we are asked to facilitate as part of organizational agile transformations; it highlights the importance of both process and cultural changes to achieve the transformation, along with changes to supporting IT systems. To successfully make holistic process transformations, we employ organizational change management (OCM) practices to ensure a successful outcome.
Since 2001, Our consultants have helped many major organizations through agile transformations including Bank of Montreal, Canadian Medical Protective Association, eHealth Ontario, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, IMS Health, Royal Bank of Canada, TD Insurance, Teranet, Toyota, the Government of Ontario (various departments, ministries, and agencies), and more.
In its December 2021 “Agile Edition”, CIO Review magazine again recognized Procept’s leadership by naming it the “Most Promising Agile Service Provider” including the announcement in its feature cover story.
IT Systems Support
Business process transformations often require the use of supporting IT systems. This is especailly true when looking at digial transformations. Many of Procept's transformation consultants learned the trade at organizations such as IBM, HP, and EDS where they led large-scale enterprise transformations that were either driven by (or supported by) IT systems. We have experience leading systems development and integration projects to get these IT systems in a position to support the broader business transformations.
In recognition of our pioneering and ongoing work in helping organizations prepare their IT systems and processes to support business process changes, CIO Review magazine recognized Procept as one of the “10 Most Promising IT Service Management Consulting Companies” in 2019, noting that Procept was the first consultancy in Canada to offer ITIL v4 consulting and training services in Canada. Procept also was the first to introduce ITIL in Africa through its Nigerian subsidiary.
While some organizational change management (OCM) consultants have only mastered the people side of change, Procept has you covered by also having deep IT consulting expertise that allows you to rest easy knowing that both the business and systems sides of your change initiative are covered.