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WHY YOU SHOULD DO AN END-OF-YEAR PROCESS AUDIT

Reading time: about 5 min

The end of the year is the perfect time for teams to audit their processes and
evaluate what's working and what's not. 

Auditing existing processes helps companies assess, understand, and plan
process-based transformations. It's particularly important for companies with
hybrid teams—which, let's face it, is most of us these days.

An annual process audit effectively keeps new employees informed about existing
processes while ensuring that all necessary team members are involved in
planning, creating, and documenting new processes.

Let’s define a process audit and why it's so important to do one at the end of
the year. 


WHAT IS A PROCESS AUDIT? 

A process audit evaluates whether a process and its resources are being managed
effectively and helps determine if specific business objectives are being
achieved. A process audit is collaborative and focuses on facilitating agile
workflows. Components include:

 * Identifying objectives: Process audits identify the business objectives you
   want to achieve, including factors impacting success, and help establish the
   process for achieving these objectives.
 * Defining competencies and capabilities: A process audit defines what
   competencies and capabilities are needed to deliver process outputs and
   ensures they are effectively evaluated.
 * Delivering results: The primary outcome of any process audit is that it
   enables you to establish the results being achieved by your processes, how to
   measure these results, and how to verify the integrity of the results.

Ultimately, what you take away from a process audit is thorough documentation
and review of the processes that are essential to your business and a plan to
pursue process improvement, if needed. 


WHY YOU SHOULD DO A PROCESS AUDIT AT THE END OF THE YEAR

Regular year-end process audits are crucial to help businesses stay competitive
and ensure that their processes remain efficient and effective. A year-end
process audit can also determine if your processes are achieving specific
goals. 

Here are some important reasons why your organization should embrace a year-end
process audit in your annual to-do list: 


1. TO INCORPORATE NEW TEAM MEMBERS INTO EXISTING PROCESSES 

Hiring trends are constantly changing and shifting, but the reality is that
employee tenures are getting shorter. In 2020, the US Labor Bureau reported that
the median tenure of employees ages 25 to 34 was 2.8 years. It was just 4.1
years for all employees, regardless of age. 

This makes it very likely that new people have joined your organization in the
past year and some crucial employees have left. Year-end process audits are the
best way to align processes with changing staff and shifting roles.


2. HELP IDENTIFY INEFFICIENT OR INEFFECTIVE BUSINESS PROCESSES

While it may be human nature to avoid change, keeping the status quo isn't
always good if your processes aren't working well. 

Sometimes it's a matter of being better able to scale and communicate, like when
DocuSign discovered the process they used for increment planning was
inefficient. Their quarterly planning process involved using a grid of sticky
notes connected by strings taped to a conference room wall. It was difficult to
update and only accessible to on-site employees.

DocuSign ditched the physical planning board and pivoted to using Lucidchart.
This allowed distributed teams and employees across DocuSign to access the
quarterly planning diagram and get more people involved in the planning
process. 

Pivoting to new technology and new processes ultimately enabled DocuSign to
increase their current close rate by 20% and shorten their deal cycle. 


3. REVEAL WHERE THERE’S ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT  

An annual process audit helps identify issues and bottlenecks that you might not
know about. Again, this is important because processes can become entrenched,
mainly when team members leave and new and existing employees continue doing
things the way they've always been done regardless of efficiency. 

Dated processes can create bottlenecks and increase time-to-market, allowing
competitors to gain an edge. Conducting an annual process audit is a proactive
strategy that helps you monitor processes in an ongoing way, ensuring you remain
competitive, agile, and relevant.


4. HELP IDENTIFY WHAT SOFTWARE TO USE  

Digital transformation, the adoption and integration of new digital technologies
into business processes, fundamentally changes how businesses operate and
deliver value. Global spending on digital transformation initiatives reached 1.3
billion in 2020, up over 10% compared with the previous year. 

Researching, acquiring, and implementing new software into existing (or new)
business processes is top of mind for most businesses. A process audit can help
identify the software you're currently using to facilitate different business
processes and expose technology gaps. 


5. GIVES YOU A CHANCE TO DOCUMENT PROCESSES

An annual process audit gives you a chance to document your processes. This
ensures you can communicate important processes to new employees and that
process details don't remain siloed with one or two employees or teams.
Up-to-date process documentation is like an insurance policy: preparing your
organization ensures consistent workflows even when critical employees are out
or unavailable. 


6. SETS YOUR ORGANIZATION UP FOR NEXT YEAR’S SUCCESS

A tangible benefit of the year-end process audit is that it helps prepare your
organization and team members for the upcoming year. A process audit gives you
the information you need to understand your organization's current capabilities
and tie them to four key areas critical to success—leadership, expertise,
culture, and governance. 

Audits and the accompanying process documentation ensure that senior leadership
remains committed to streamlining and improving processes. It helps establish
the planning and investments needed to achieve process transformation in the
coming year. 


HOW LUCIDCHART CAN HELP WITH AN END-OF-YEAR PROCESS AUDIT

Lucidchart is the intelligent diagramming solution that helps teams visualize
processes, systems, and organizational structure. Features like collaborative
diagrams allow teams to see roles and steps, understand data in context, and
clearly document processes. Pre-built flowchart templates for specific business
categories can help you build a process audit that works for your specific
business or use case. 

Try a Lucidchart template to document your processes.



Go now


READ MORE ABOUT DOCUMENTING YOUR PROCESSES.

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