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Category: Business Process Improvement

BPI in Banking and Financial Services in the US & Canada

Financial Services | Business Process Improvement | Enterprise Automation

BPI in Banking and Financial Services in the US & Canada

April 23, 2024
Business Process Improvement in Financial Services in US & Canada

Banking and financial services are evolving at immense speed. Transitioning from traditional, paper-based processes to digital and AI-powered processes is critical to survival. That’s why you need to think about business process improvement in banking and financial services.

Business process improvement comes with a price tag. You need experts on your team, a culture centered on continuous improvement, and a powerful set of automation tools. But these tools offer extensive benefits as well. For example, Accenture estimates that automation and augmentation can help save financial services firms $140 billion and banks $70 billion.

Revolutionizing Banking and Financial Services Through Business Process Improvement

Banking and financial services firms have grown tremendously through business process improvement. Look back at your own organization’s past. You likely had to radically redesign processes to bring about any revolutionary change in your organization. From developing a mobile app for your bank to building your ATM network, all changes were a result of improved, more efficient processes.

The next leg of growth in banking and financial services requires using technologies like AI and natural language processing (NLP) to reduce costs, increase efficiency, and improve customer experience.

These technologies will help you stay ahead of the curve and improve your workflow. However, implementing technologies like AI, Gen AI, and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) requires experience and expertise, so find the right partner for smooth implementation and minimal disruption.

Let’s now dive into how you can plan to improve business processes to prepare your financial institution for the future.

BPI vs BPM

Business Process Improvement (BPI) and Business Process Management (BPM) are two distinct but complementary approaches within organizational process optimization. BPI is primarily concerned with improving the efficiency and effectiveness of specific processes. It involves identifying, analyzing, and enhancing existing business operations to reduce costs, improve service delivery, or increase quality. On the other hand, BPM takes a broader view, focusing on the entire set of processes within an organization. It integrates all aspects of process management—from design and modeling to monitoring and optimization—with the goal of aligning processes with the strategic objectives of the organization. While BPI zooms in on process improvements, BPM includes holistic management of all processes to ensure coherence and alignment with overall business goals. 

Financial Processes That Need Improvement

There’s plenty of room for improvement in financial processes as we know them today. AI and RPA technologies have opened doors to a whole universe of process improvements that were previously unimaginable. Here are some examples of processes you should consider working on when implementing BPM:

Customer Onboarding

Onboarding sets the stage for your relationship with the client. Customers who have a positive experience when opening their bank account are 73% more likely to become the bank’s promoters.

Improving your onboarding process by implementing a fully digitized workflow eliminates the need to manage piles of paperwork, errors, and delays. A frictionless onboarding experience doesn’t just attract new customers; it also builds a solid reputation and loyalty among customers.

Customer Support

The modern customer wants their bank or financial institution to respond within seconds and be available 24/7. Not delivering on these expectations is essentially the same as handing your clients to competitors.

Intelligent Digital Assistants (IDAs), next-gen chatbots powered by AI, “are fully equipped with natural language understanding which aids in understanding and retaining context for polished conversations while carrying out a variety of tasks to fulfill a user’s requirements.” They act as “knowledgable bankers” who not only understand the unique journeys of customers, but are also able to recommend products, offers and next steps based on their knowledge of a customer’s past behavior and financial history.

Risk and Compliance Management

Tailoring business processes to minimize risks and comply with industry regulations helps prevent penalties as well as lower your compliance team’s workload. For example, you can create a digital workflow that provides real-time (or frequent) tracking for compliance requirements as well as detailed compliance reports.

Analytics can play a key role in bolstering your bank’s or financial institution’s risk assessment capabilities. AI-powered systems can ingest massive amounts of data your organization generates to identify patterns. The system can detect anomalies and predict risks using this data.

Loan Approvals

Loan origination systems are often plagued by labor-intensiveness, errors, and a ton of paperwork. Automating your loan origination system can transform your efficiency and the customer’s experience.

If your organization currently uses traditional processes, consider completely reengineering the process. Modernizing your lending process, right from eligibility checks to approval, is important not to develop a competitive advantage, but to survive in an environment where quick approvals and disbursals are the norm.

 

Implementing Business Process Management in Banking and Financial Services

Changing and managing business processes is easier said than done. Your team might need to unlearn and relearn. You might have to deal with reluctance and proactively offer training to help them get up to speed.

However, there’s an even greater challenge — implementing the right set of technologies and building the right infrastructure. That’s why you need a partner who has experience helping banks and financial services firms implement technologies to improve business processes.

With that in mind, here’s an overview of how you can implement business process management:

Step 1: Identify Key Processes

The first step is to identify key processes within your bank or financial institution that could use some improvement. The process could be onboarding, loan processing, risk assessment, or customer service.

Consider asking employees — people on the ground executing these processes — how you can improve. Identify their pain points and bottlenecks and prioritize areas for optimization based on your analysis.

For example, if your bank’s loan origination process is lengthy and has high error rates, fixing that should be your priority over streamlining your support processes.

Step 2: Map Your Processes

A process map gives you an overview of the entire workflow and the steps involved in the process, including stakeholders, decision points, and the flow of information. A visual representation of your process helps you understand its current state, identify inefficiencies, and find opportunities to improve the process.

Step 3: Optimize Processes

Once you’ve identified inefficiencies and redundancies, it’s time to eliminate them. The exact solutions to implement depend on the challenge you’re addressing. However, automation and standardization are the first steps towards optimizing processes.

If you’re thinking to yourself, “We’ve already automated repetitive tasks,” that’s not enough. Use AI to automate some tasks you previously thought were best handled by humans.

For example, don’t use scripted chatbots that make customers feel like they’re talking to a robot. Find a partner who can develop a chatbot powered by technologies like AI and Gen AI. AI-powered chatbots can personalize conversations and interact just like humans.

If you’re not using AI, you’re already late to the party — Bank of America has been using its AI chatbot, Erica, since 2016. Bank of America claims that Erica has been able to provide more than 98% of its clients with the answers they need.

Step 4: Monitor and Improve

Optimizing business processes is not a one-off task. It’s an ongoing journey. Measure the results your optimization efforts yield with process metrics like cycle time, error rates, and customer satisfaction.

You can use AI-powered data analytics to gain deeper insights into process performance and find areas that require further improvement.

For example, if you recently optimized your loan origination process, use data analytics to monitor processing time.

Has it improved to the extent you expected? If not, use data to find out why. Is the optimized process still prone to errors? Or is your team still going through the learning curve?

 

The Role of Automation in Improving Financial Processes

Automation plays multiple roles in improving banking and financial processes. Here’s a quick overview of why automation is vital to your business process improvement initiatives:

  • Say goodbye to repetitive tasks and errors: You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars on data entry, reconciliations, and reports. Automation can perform those tasks more efficiently than humans and doesn’t make mistakes. Moreover, software allows you to keep costs under control even as you continue to scale.
  • Enforce standardized processes: You can create all the SOPs (standard operating procedures)you want. But there will always be someone trying to take a shortcut. Automation helps you achieve consistency in executing standardized processes — you can impose rules through your automated system to eliminate deviations from a standardized process.
  • Greater efficiency: Automation helps you multiply productivity. The more productive your bank or financial institution is, the more loans you can process, accounts you can reconcile, reports you can generate, and customers you can onboard without compromising on accuracy.
  • Improved customer experience: One of the biggest roles of automation in business process improvement is tailoring your processes to meet the customers’ needs. Automation allows you to personalize processes, eliminate errors, offer convenience, and deliver fast experiences at scale.
  • Deeper insights: Automating data collection and reporting helps you derive value out of the massive volume of data financial institutions generate. AI-powered analytics help you spot patterns and detect outliers. For example, if there’s fraudulent activity in a customer’s account, AI can pick up on that. Analytics also helps you make data-driven decisions, predict customer behavior, and assess risk exposure.
  • Improved customer experience: Automation allows you to improve customer experience across channels. Your AI chatbot can deliver personalized responses, analytics can help you predict customer behavior, and streamlined onboarding helps you make a great first impression.

Revolutionize Financial Services with Business Process Improvement

Let’s face it. Redesigning business processes comes with risk. However, the risk-reward ratio is in your favor when you use the right technologies and work with a team of experts. Strategic business improvement can transform your customer experience and generate massive cost savings for your business. 

Blanc Labs is committed to helping partners succeed through the use of cutting-edge technologies. Our approach can help you redesign processes in a way that fits your business’s needs. 

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Business Process Improvement vs Business Process Reengineering 

Financial Services | Banking Automation | Business Process Improvement

Business Process Improvement vs Business Process Reengineering 

April 8, 2024

Your business’s ability to change goes a long way toward contributing to long-term success. But how do you decide whether to make small changes over the long term or if a situation calls for a radical change?

To determine this, you must understand business process improvement (BPI) and reengineering (BPR). In this guide, we explain the meaning of BPI and BPR and when to use them.

What is Business Process Improvement?

Business process improvement is an ongoing process where you make small, continuous improvements to make processes more efficient.

BPI is like fine-tuning your car’s engine to make it run smoother and faster. You start by examining the engine’s current condition. Then you find areas that could use some maintenance and perform that maintenance to improve efficiency. Of course, BPI requires careful planning and execution, so it’s always smart to have a BPI specialist by your side.

Continuous improvement and data-driven decisions are key aspects of BPI. Instead of blindly chasing market trends and investing in expensive tech, you start with introspection. You use analytics to validate the need for change. And you make small changes over time to minimize disruption.

What is Business Process Reengineering?

Business process reengineering is a comprehensive process redesign exercise that helps a business improve efficiency and overall performance significantly.

Business Process Reengineering is the radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in productivity, cycle times, quality, and employee and customer satisfaction.

Bain & Company

There are times when your business might need a radical change, such as: 

  • When you want to build a competitive advantage 
  • To prepare for rapid growth 
  • After a merger or acquisition 
  • Organizations restructuring

Of course, this is an inclusive list. You might choose to reengineer a process to improve productivity, comply with new regulatory requirements, or introduce new technology. However, BPR is a far more extensive process than BPI. It requires effective change management and stakeholder engagement. 

BPI vs. BPR

 

While BPI and BPR share some common objectives — improved efficiency and optimal resource utilization — they differ in some key areas. Here are three key aspects where BPI and BPR differ:

Level of Change

BPI is about continuously asking yourself, “How can we make this better?” even when there’s no urgency to change a process. The focus is to identify inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and areas of waste within your current processes. For example, if you’re an online retailer, BPI could involve streamlining your order fulfillment process to reduce delivery times or using a more robust CRM to improve client relationships.

BPR involves a complete overhaul. It’s like tearing down an entire house and building it from scratch. Suppose you’re a retail company that wants to improve delivery times. But instead of optimizing the order fulfillment process, you redesign the entire supply chain, from sourcing to delivery.

Be careful, though. Companies often overwhelm themselves by overestimating their capacity for change. It’s hard to determine if a process redesign is viable without understanding your capacity for change. As David Michels and Kevin Murphy explain in their HBR article:

The current business landscape is evolving so rapidly and unpredictably that executives are full of questions about change. How much? They want to know. How fast? How sustainable? And sometimes, just how? In our experience companies can’t hope to answer these questions unless they understand their own capacity for change.

Harvard Business Review

Time Frame

Implementing BPI takes less time than implementing BPR. Think of BPI as a series of quick wins. You zoom into your process, find areas for improvement, make changes, and repeat. The exact time frame may differ based on the adjustments you want to make and could take weeks or months.

BPR is a marathon, not a race. It requires redesigning the process from scratch. A successful redesign might involve significant investments in technology and training. This requires careful consideration and meticulous execution. Naturally, redesigning and executing can take a long time, typically months or even years.

Risk and Disruption

There’s a significant divergence between BPI and BPR regarding risk and divergence. Since BPI involves making small changes, the level of disruption and risk is relatively lower.

Employees are less likely to resist these small changes because BPI builds on existing structures and practices. Plus, the changes are implemented gradually, so the transition is smoother and causes minimal disruption to your business’s day-to-day operations.

On the other hand, BPR involves challenging deeply ingrained practices and questioning conventions. Employees might have to step out of their comfort zone to execute changes of that magnitude, so there’s greater risk and disruption. Before you move forward with BPR, ensure that you and your team are prepared for that change.

We believe that most firms do not proactively manage change risk in a way that’s commensurate with the benefits of success and the costs of failure. Effectively managing change risk is a necessary ‘muscle’ to reduce, preempt, mitigate, and manage the challenges that come with (intents of) transformation, without bringing decision paralysis or stifling innovation in the organization.

‘Managing Change Risk’, Oliver Wyman

BPI vs. BPR: What Will Work Best for You?

Choosing between BPI and BPR is a crucial strategic decision. There are multiple factors to consider, such as:

Need for Change

What’s the current state of the process and its inefficiencies? Fundamentally flawed or outdated processes call for BPR. Eliminating fundamental flaws or updating your entire process with incremental changes can take a long time — not practical. However, BPI is a more suitable choice when the process is relatively sound but has some areas of inefficiency.

Suppose you’re a software development company. You’re struggling with lengthy approval cycles, siloed communication, and inconsistent quality standards because of an outdated development process. This warrants a complete process overhaul — you can’t afford to compromise on quality for long, can you?

Alignment With Strategy

Does the process align with your strategic goals? If a process no longer meets your business’s evolving needs or is preventing you from achieving your goals, it’s time to reengineer the process. Conversely, if your process is fundamentally aligned with your strategic objectives, but requires optimization to improve efficiency and customer satisfaction, BPI is the way to go.

For example, BPR is a better choice for an ecommerce company that wants to differentiate itself through personalized customer experiences and finds its current sales process rigid and transactional. But BPI makes more sense if the process is already customer-centric and requires additional personalization.

Risk Appetite

Assess your risk appetite before reengineering a process — can your business accept the disruption that comes with dismantling a key process and reimplementing it? For example, if a small manufacturer plans to transition from traditional batch production to lean manufacturing, the cost of implementing the new process and the halted production can translate to a major cost for the business.

Available Resources

BPI is less resource-intensive than BPR. Even when you’re running low on cash or don’t have the expertise to implement a radical shift in your process, you can make small improvements to your process over time.

 

 

Enhance Business Processes with Blanc Labs

Blanc Labs helps businesses like yours not only choose the right way forward but also offers comprehensive assistance to implement incremental changes strategically or re-engineer processes from scratch. If you need help navigating a change in business process, get in touch with us.

What is the role of a Business Process Improvement Specialist? 

Financial Services | Business Process Improvement

What is the role of a Business Process Improvement Specialist? 

February 16, 2024
Business Process Improvement Specialist in Canada

What is the role of a Business Process Improvement Specialist in Canada?

Business process improvement (BPI) involves analyzing current processes, identifying room for improvement, and redesigning processes to make them more efficient. The problem? Analyzing processes, using data to find inefficiencies, and redesigning and implementing processes with minimal disruption requires skill and experience. That’s where a business process improvement specialist steps in. 

You might tackle various challenges when working to improve your processes. According to Capgemini, the most prominent business process management challenges are functional silo culture and fragmented budgets. 

Redesigning processes while tackling these challenges can be overwhelming, but specialists are equipped with the experience needed to make the transition smoother. In this guide, we discuss the business process improvement workflow and how a specialist can make things easier for you.

The Need for Business Process Improvement before Automation

You’re investing in automation to improve business processes. Before you put money on the table, it’s vital to learn how this investment will impact your business’s efficiency and bottom line.

At its core, business process improvement is about driving efficiency and improving performance through streamlined operations. A critical analysis of business processes and workflows enables you to identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies, allowing you to focus efforts on automating the right processes.

Business process improvement is undeniably mission-critical to make your business future-ready, but it’s also important to:

  • Develop a competitive advantage: Prioritizing continuous improvement and standardizing processes can help build competitive advantages like cost leadership, differentiated products or services, better quality, scalability, and agility.
  • Improve efficiency: Zeroing in on processes you can automate or streamline improves efficiency and output. For example, you can use technologies like intelligent document processing (IDP) to streamline invoice processing. This frees up your finance team to focus on more strategic tasks like cash flow analysis.
  • Elevate customer experience: Modern customers have some ground rules. They want fast responses, consistent experiences, and personalized interactions. Modern lenders provide hassle-free digital experiences to SMB clients, where document collection is a single step and approvals take hours and not weeks.  

“The fact is that consistency on the most common customer journeys is an important predictor of overall customer experience and loyalty. Banks, for example, saw an exceptionally strong correlation between consistency on key customer journeys and overall performance in customer experience.”

The Three Cs of customer Satisfaction, McKinsey & Company

  • Foster a culture of innovation: Striving for continuous improvement encourages critical thinking, offers your team a platform for experimentation, and rewards innovation. For example, if you’re a financial institution trying to automate your loan origination process, a culture of innovation would encourage employees to take charge of every step, from process analysis to pilot implementation.

Business Process Improvement Workflow

Before you take the first step, see if you can get a business process improvement specialist on board.

Their experience and expertise go a long way in minimizing workflow disruption and efficiently designing and executing new workflows. With that in mind, let’s talk about how you can improve business processes.

Process Mapping

Process mapping involves creating a visual representation of your current business processes. You map every step, interaction, and decision point in your workflow from start to finish when mapping a process.

This map gives you a starting point to understand how the current process works. Identifying bottlenecks or ways to make a process more efficient is easier when you can view the process rather than just verbally discussing the steps in a process.

Root Cause Analysis

Time to play detective. Root cause analysis involves digging deeper into finding the underlying reasons behind a specific problem or inefficiency. For example, if you’re a financial company experiencing delays in processing customer payments, here’s what finding the root cause might look like:

  • Why are employees encountering difficulties processing the payments? Probably because employees are spending time fixing errors in payment records.
  • Why are there discrepancies in the payment records? Maybe the outdated system is causing technical problems or employees need more training.
  • Why are we using outdated systems and not investing in training? Lack of budget.

 

This is how root cause analysis takes you to a problem’s roots. In the example above, the finance team could request additional funds in the next quarter to invest in a system upgrade and training to process customer payments faster.

Blanc Labs’ Business Process Improvement Framework

Cause and Effect Analysis

Use techniques like fishbone or Ishikawa diagrams for a visual representation of the cause-and-effect relationship between factors impacting your business processes and problems.

Categorize problems into multiple buckets like people, processes, equipment, and external factors. This will help you gain insights into various elements that impact your business processes and prioritize the ones with the biggest positive impact.

Statistical Process Control

Numbers don’t lie — statistical process control (SPC) helps you understand your process through numbers. SPC enables you to identify trends, detect abnormalities in the process, and make data-driven decisions to improve your process.

Design of Experiments

Once you’ve identified a problem, you need a systematic and structured way to identify potential improvements and test them. Experimentation helps you do exactly that.

It’s the same as stress-testing your processes under various scenarios. You design an experiment, manipulate relevant variables, and measure their impact on the business process. This enables you to understand the impact of a change before you fully implement it, allowing you to minimize disruption.

How BPI and Intelligent Automation can improve the Borrowing Experience for Small Business Owners

BEFORE
AFTER

A Frustrating Lending Experience

Small business owner_loan approval

Alex applies for a loan with a traditional commercial lender to expand her cafe into a local chain. The onboarding process is frustrating and time-consuming, with lengthy paperwork and no guidance. The lender’s inaccurate reporting and static risk assessment results in conservative loan terms that fail to acknowledge her business’s recent growth and the positive trends in the local market. This jeopardizes Alex’s ability to secure an ideal property for her new location and erodes her confidence in the lender’s support for her business growth. Throughout the process, Alex experiences an impersonal service, devoid of the understanding and support crucial for an entrepreneur.

Small business owner_loan approval

A Transformative Lending Experience

Small business owner_lending

Six months later, Alex chooses a lender with a digital platform and automated loan decisioning for her next expansion. With streamlined onboarding, automated data extraction, and intelligent chatbot, the experience is transformative. Real-time updates, automated tracking, intelligent document processing, and dynamic risk assessment make loan processing efficient and user-friendly. Alex secures her loan promptly and finds the perfect location for her new café. The chatbot also offers personalized customer experience, making Alex feel valued.

Small business owner_lending

The Role of a Business Process Improvement Specialist

Process mapping, analysis, and re-engineering require a specialist. A specialist has the knowledge and experience required to minimize workflow disruption and effectively realize process efficiencies. Here’s how a business process improvement specialist helps:

Pain Point Discovery

Think of business process improvement specialists as Sherlock Holmes. They come in, zoom into your processes, and find pain points that hinder efficiency.

They don’t just observe. They conduct interviews and surveys, ask the right questions, and listen attentively to discover areas that are inefficient, error-prone, and not aligned with organizational goals. The discovery phase is vital — it sets the stage for targeted improvements.

Process Analysis

When the specialist finds room for improvement in a process, they pull up their sleeves and start dissecting it.

They map every step, decision point, and interaction in your process and use techniques like value stream mapping, data analysis, and flowcharting to take a closer look at how the process currently operates and where bottlenecks and inefficiencies lie. This lays the groundwork for informed and data-backed decision-making and process design.

Opportunity Analysis

Insights from process analysis equip the specialist to shift focus to opportunity analysis. They consider the benefits of addressing a pain point and improving the process versus the cost — do the monetary benefits of redesigning the process justify (and exceed) the cost of making those improvements?

Cost-benefit analysis requires input from multiple experts. For example, if a process redesign could improve customer experience, what would be the benefit, in monetary terms, of improved customer experience? The specialist might need insights from multiple teams like sales and accounting to understand the monetary impact.

They also consider the risks of redesigning the process. Will the redesign require significant changes? How long will it take the employees to get through the learning curve and achieve full efficiency? The specialist understands these risks and identifies ways to mitigate them.

Implementation Design

After factoring in the costs and risks associated with redesigning a process and verifying the viability of a process redesign, the specialist transitions into creating and implementing a more efficient process design.

The redesigned process might involve one or multiple changes like a more efficient workflow, new technology, or a redesigned organizational structure. For example, the specialist might use enterprise automation solutions to automate repetitive tasks, potentially multiplying your team’s productivity or include GenAI to enable the next level of customer service.

The specialist develops a detailed implementation plan including the details of redesign, clear timelines, responsibilities, and performance metrics. They collaborate with stakeholders during this phase to ensure buy-in and alignment with organizational objectives.

Business Process Improvement Integration

Process improvement isn’t a one-off activity. To truly reap the benefits of process improvement, the specialist must integrate the improvement initiatives into the organization’s culture.

The specialist can help you develop change management strategies to inculcate a culture rooted in continuous improvement; this is vital to engaging employees across the organization and encouraging them to contribute ideas that drive change.

For example, the specialist can train teams to build applications quickly using low-code platforms. This enables teams to solve problems independently and quickly. Of course, there are many ways to develop a culture of continuous improvement depending on factors like industry. For example, Bill Keen, CEO of Keen Wealth Advisors, explains:

By owning mistakes and building processes to prevent the mistakes that do occur from happening again, you will build trust among your customers and a culture of continuous improvement among your staff.

With training and efficient feedback mechanisms, you can sustain process improvements for a long time and ingrain them in your company’s DNA.

Business Process Improvement with Blanc Labs

We firmly believe that transformation happens over time and that process improvement is an ongoing journey. Our approach helps you practically redesign processes effectively and consistently, and in a way that fits your business’s unique needs.

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From Chaos to Clarity: Achieving Operational Excellence through Business Process Improvement

Financial Services | Business Process Improvement | Enterprise Automation

From Chaos to Clarity: Achieving Operational Excellence through Business Process Improvement

January 18, 2024
Business process improvement at work_Blanc Labs

Generative AI and Automation: Are you implementing them effectively?

The emergence of exponential technologies like Generative AI has sparked enthusiasm among companies and executives, who see the potential for enhancing operations and adding significant value to their businesses. In a PWC survey¹, 86% of U.S. executives projected AI’s transition into a ‘mainstream technology’ within their companies in 2021. Moreover, 25% of businesses utilizing AI anticipate revenue growth.

However, as highlighted by Gartner², a concerning 85% of AI projects ultimately fail to meet their expected business value. Among the numerous factors contributing to these shortcomings, common culprits include misaligned expectations, inadequate planning, and limited comprehension of the technology and its practical applications. When all these factors are considered, they collectively underscore a single underlying issue: an inadequate understanding of the process.

The Cost of No Change

Every business, regardless of its size or industry, operates within a complex web of processes. These processes, when left unoptimized, can lead to chaos, inefficiency, and missed opportunities. Employees may find themselves bogged down in manual tasks, information silos, and redundant workflows. Meanwhile, customers may experience reduced satisfaction due to prolonged or unclear processes and excessive touchpoints, potentially leading to attrition. This chaos not only hampers productivity but can also erode customer satisfaction and profitability.

 

¹ PricewaterhouseCoopers, “PWC 2022 AI Business Survey”, online: PwC
²“Gartner says nearly half of CIOs are planning to deploy artificial intelligence”, (13 February 2018), online: Gartner

Array’s research³ reveals alarming realities within organizations:

Financial Costs:

Inefficiencies cost 20-30% of revenue.

Time Costs: 

Employees lose 26% of their day to avoidable chores.

Recruitment Costs:

Each employee costs $4,129 and 42 days to be trained.

Amid these sobering statistics, businesses have adopted Business Process Improvement as a systematic, analytical approach to understanding, prioritizing, and measuring the impact of how to make their operations run more efficiently.

 

³Saunders, Dave, “How Much is Inefficiency Costing Your Business”, (19 November 2020), online: Electronic Data
Capture, Mobile Data Collection – Array Survey App

53% of IT decision-makers say that Cloud ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software is a worthwhile investment
Man working
50%
of companies spend up to $25 on each manually processed invoice
64%
of sales reps allocate their hours to non-revenue tasks
30%
of specialist IT time is consumed by basic, low-level activities

Download the Full Whitepaper

From Chaos to Clarity_Business Process Improvement_Blanc Labs

Our teams have compiled insights and best practices in this practical and outcome focused whitepaper.  Our learnings are based on numerous successful client engagements, research, and industry partners.

Business leaders seeking practical advice to advance their BPI capabilities will find value in the topics covered in the whitepaper.  These include:

  • A step-by-step approach on how to conduct Business Process Improvement within an enterprise operating environment
  • Practical implications of using Business Process Improvement with Intelligent Automation
  • Case Studies on the successful use of Business Process Improvement in mid-sized to enterprise organizations

 

From Chaos to Clarity

 

You consent to receive communication from Blanc Labs by providing us with your contact information. You can unsubscribe at any time. Please review our Privacy Policy for further details. 

Authors:

Luciano Lera Bossi
Luciano Lera Bossi
BPI & Intelligent Automation Lead

“Our commitment is to evolve your business processes in a way that’s both data-driven and adaptable, fostering an environment where continuous improvement is the norm, and each step leads to a more effective and empowering operational experience.”

David Liu
David Liu
Lead-CoE Consultant

“In the race for growth, inefficiencies hold companies back. Success unfolds in continuous refinement—where processes evolve, innovation thrives, and excellence becomes ingrained.”

Meet David Liu: COE Lead, Process Improver, and Ramen Aficionado 

People & Culture | Business Process Improvement | Enterprise Automation

Meet David Liu: COE Lead, Process Improver, and Ramen Aficionado 

December 6, 2023
David-Liu Profile_Blanc Labs

Say hello to David Liu, our new BPI CoE Lead! He’s the kind of guy who’s just as excited about diving into complex enterprise processes as he is about making a bowl of handmade ramen (his absolute favourite). His insatiable curiosity propels him to delve deep into the essence “why?”, and an expert at finding ways to enhance and elevate outcomes.

David’s been on quite a journey for the past three months, settling into his new life in Canada and shaking things up here at Blanc Labs. We sat down with him to find out more about his experience and discover what fuels his passion to understand the inner mechanisms of both professional landscapes and culinary delights.

Six Questions with David Liu

Welcome to Canada and to Blanc Labs! How have your first 90 days been?

Wow, these past months have been quite the ride, packed with trust-building, blending into new cultures, and loads of personal and professional growth. Shortly after my onboarding, our team kicked off a fairly large Business Process Improvement (BPI) project and and formalizing the BPI practice within Blanc Labs has been a great experience. Each step of this has been a building block for me.

As someone who recently moved from Hong Kong, I’ll admit, I had my doubts about adapting to a whole new workplace culture. But the moment I stepped into Blanc Labs, the team made me feel right at home. They handed me the reins, offering the freedom and trust that allowed me to make a significant impact around here.

Any standout moment that you’d like to tell us about?

One standout moment was a business trip to Vancouver, where I conducted an on-site process assessment for a client. This firsthand experience not only deepened my understanding of client needs but also helped me form close relationships. With the collaboration of experts from different areas at Blanc Labs, we successfully delivered our first BPI project, receiving recognition from the client—an auspicious start for the BPI practice.

What attracted you to Blanc Labs in the first place, and why did you choose to join at this point in your career?

Blanc Labs provides a dynamic, startup-like environment with daily challenges, which I find invigorating. The rapid pace and expansive growth opportunities align with my career goals. More importantly, the shared vision on business process improvement during the interview resonated with me, making it an easy decision to join a team that values innovation and is willing to take risks.

What makes Business Process Improvement such an interesting area of work for you?

My career in the process-related field comes from a simple desire—to streamline processes and make everyone’s work easier. Growing up, my curiosity about how things work, be it a restaurant kitchen or a car engine, fueled my interest in operations behind businesses. This fascination deepened as I came across more slow processes in daily life. That’s when I knew I wanted to pursue consulting and specialize in business process improvement.

How do you envision the future of BPI, and what challenges do you foresee?

Even as I envision an automated future where most tasks are streamlined, I believe human intervention will remain crucial in customer-facing roles and creative industries. Because of automation, there is a concern about potential job loss. Post-improvement initiatives, companies must consider upskilling employees or transitioning them into roles that leverage human intervention, like customer-facing roles, to maintain value addition.

And finally, what according to you, makes a Business Process Improvement project successful?

I like to think of a successful BPI project as a well-made bowl of ramen—

The flavorful broth needs a long time to boil bones and meat until they blend well for a rich flavor. This is like the experience needed for a good BPI project. Finding issues and understanding process problems takes years of practice and dedication.

The Tare, though a small part in ramen, has a big impact on the noodle’s taste, determining the overall flavor. It’s similar to the goal in a BPI project. A goals acts as the guiding star throughout, leading us to the expected business outcome. A BPI project without a clear goal is like ramen without Tare—it lacks flavor and excitement.

The type of flour used in making noodles is comparable to the tools and methodologies employed in the analysis. Meanwhile, the texture and thickness of the noodles resemble the direction of the analysis. For a successful BPI project, leveraging experience to select the most suitable tools and methodologies is crucial. This strategic choice ensures accurate analysis, aligning with the project’s goals effectively.

In ramen, oils and fats serve to enrich the broth’s flavor, adding complexity to the overall taste. Similarly, in the realm of BPI, user education plays a vital role. If users are not well-informed about the new process, they may prefer the original one, rendering the efforts of the entire project futile.

Finally, the toppings on the ramen symbolize the selection of technologies. Just as there can be an infinite combination of toppings in ramen, choosing the right set is essential to enhance the overall flavor. Similarly, in a BPI project, technologies act like toppings strategically added to enrich the final product.

 

David Liu_Ramen Process_Blanc Labs

David Liu’s Ramen Making Process

“Ramen is my go-to favorite, and exploring great ramen spots in downtown Toronto has been so much fun. Now, a quick heads-up—I’m not a pro chef, just a big ramen fan who enjoys watching ramen videos online.

So, here’s how you make it. First off, you start with making the broth. Boil stuff like bones, meat, and extra flavors to get a yummy base for your ramen.

Then comes the Tare, which is the seasoning. It’s usually made with soy sauce, salt, or miso. You mix it into the broth to amp up the flavor.

Next is making the noodles. Mix flour with water (sometimes carbonated water), stretch the dough, and cut it into noodles.

To make the broth richer, add some fats and oils. It gives the ramen that extra deliciousness.

Finally, to make it look cool and taste even better, add toppings like pork, seaweed, bamboo shoots on top of the noodles and broth. It’s like the cherry on top, making your ramen not just tasty but also a feast for the eyes.”

Feeling inspired by David’s journey? Want to supercharge your own business processes? Whether you’re craving insights on enhancing workflows or simply curious about David’s favorite ramen spots, he’s your go-to person! Reach out to David at davidl@blanclabs.com.

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Blanc Labs and TCG Process have partnered to transform lending operations with innovative automation solutions, using the DocProStar platform to enhance efficiency, compliance, and customer satisfaction in the Canadian lending market.

Financial Services
Business Process Improvement
Enterprise Automation
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BPI in Banking and Financial Services in the US & Canada

April 23, 2024
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Business Process Improvement in Financial Services in US & Canada

Banking and financial services are changing fast. Moving from old, paper methods to new, digital ones is key to staying in business. It’s important to think about how business process improvement (BPI) can help.

Financial Services
Banking Automation
Business Process Improvement
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Business Process Improvement vs Business Process Reengineering 

April 08, 2024
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Business process improvement vs. reengineering is a tough choice. In this guide, we help you choose between the two based on four factors.

Financial Services
Business Process Improvement
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What is the role of a Business Process Improvement Specialist? 

February 16, 2024
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Business Process Improvement Specialist in Canada

A business process improvement specialist identifies bottlenecks and inefficiencies in your workflows, allowing you to focus efforts on automating the right processes.

Financial Services
API Management
Open Banking
Financial Services

Open Banking Technology Architecture Whitepaper

February 13, 2024
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We’ve developed this resource to help technical teams adopt an Open Banking approach by explaining a high-level solution architecture that is organization agnostic.

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These are not your grandmother’s models: the impact of LLM’s on Document Processing

January 22, 2024
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These are not your grandmother’s models: the impact of Large Language Models on Document Processing

Explore the transformative influence of large language models (LLMs) on document processing in this insightful article. Discover how these cutting-edge models are reshaping traditional approaches, unlocking new possibilities in data analysis, and revolutionizing the way we interact with information.

Financial Services
Integrations
Services
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Blanc Labs Expedites the Development of Mortgage Product for Canada’s Top Brokerage

September 27, 2023
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Financial Services
AI
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Banking Automation: The Complete Guide

April 06, 2023
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Financial Services
Digital Banking
IDP
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thirdstream and Blanc Labs collaborating to bring intelligent document processing to financial institutions

October 25, 2022
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Financial Services
Banking Automation
Digital Transformation
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Challenges in Digital Lending

May 12, 2022
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Financial Services
Automation
BPI
Case Studies

Process Improvement and Automation Support the Mission at Trez Capital 🚀

July 29, 2024
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Trez Capital

Trez distributes capital based on very specific criteria. But with over 300 investments in their portfolio, they process numerous payment requests and deal with documents in varied data formats. They saw an opportunity to enhance efficiency, improve task management, and better utilize data insights for strategic decision-making.

Financial Services
Consumer Driven Banking
Open Banking
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How Open Banking Will Empower Small Businesses in Canada

June 06, 2024
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small business owners benefitting from open banking technology

With 85% of business owners seeking faster access to capital in today’s challenging economy, Open Banking offers a way out. This guide explores how it addresses issues like high inflation and slow lending processes, aiding small businesses in navigating the evolving landscape.

Financial Services
AI
Digital Transformation
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Align, Assemble, Assure: A Framework for AI Adoption

May 09, 2024
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An in-depth guide for adopting and scaling AI in the enterprise using actionable and measurable steps.

Financial Services
Advisory Services
Artificial Intelligence
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Blanc Labs Welcomes Two New Leaders to Advance AI Innovation and Enhance Tech Advisory Services for Financial Institutions Across North America

May 07, 2024
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Blanc Labs and TCG Process have partnered to transform lending operations with innovative automation solutions, using the DocProStar platform to enhance efficiency, compliance, and customer satisfaction in the Canadian lending market.

Financial Services
Banking Automation
Enterprise Automation
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Blanc Labs Partners with TCG Process to Integrate their Automation and Orchestration Platform and deliver Advanced Intelligent Workflow Automation to Financial Institutions

May 03, 2024
Learn More

Blanc Labs and TCG Process have partnered to transform lending operations with innovative automation solutions, using the DocProStar platform to enhance efficiency, compliance, and customer satisfaction in the Canadian lending market.

Financial Services
Business Process Improvement
Enterprise Automation
Articles

BPI in Banking and Financial Services in the US & Canada

April 23, 2024
Learn More
Business Process Improvement in Financial Services in US & Canada

Banking and financial services are changing fast. Moving from old, paper methods to new, digital ones is key to staying in business. It’s important to think about how business process improvement (BPI) can help.

Financial Services
Banking Automation
Business Process Improvement
Articles

Business Process Improvement vs Business Process Reengineering 

April 08, 2024
Learn More

Business process improvement vs. reengineering is a tough choice. In this guide, we help you choose between the two based on four factors.

Financial Services
Business Process Improvement
Articles

What is the role of a Business Process Improvement Specialist? 

February 16, 2024
Learn More
Business Process Improvement Specialist in Canada

A business process improvement specialist identifies bottlenecks and inefficiencies in your workflows, allowing you to focus efforts on automating the right processes.

Financial Services
API Management
Open Banking
Financial Services

Open Banking Technology Architecture Whitepaper

February 13, 2024
Learn More

We’ve developed this resource to help technical teams adopt an Open Banking approach by explaining a high-level solution architecture that is organization agnostic.

Insight
AI
Enterprise Automation
Articles

These are not your grandmother’s models: the impact of LLM’s on Document Processing

January 22, 2024
Learn More
These are not your grandmother’s models: the impact of Large Language Models on Document Processing

Explore the transformative influence of large language models (LLMs) on document processing in this insightful article. Discover how these cutting-edge models are reshaping traditional approaches, unlocking new possibilities in data analysis, and revolutionizing the way we interact with information.