All About Business Process Mapping, Flow Charts and Diagrams

Business Process Mapping details the steps that a business takes to complete a process, such as hiring an employee or ordering and shipping a product. They show the “who,” “what,” “when,” “where” and “how” for these steps, and help to analyze the “why.” These maps are also called Business Process Diagrams and Business Flow Charts. Like other types of diagrams, these maps use defined symbols such as circles, rectangles, diamonds and arrows to depict the business activities.

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Business Process Mapping can be used to document a current process and to model a new one. Its purpose is to gain a detailed understanding of the process, people, inputs, controls and outputs, and then potentially to simplify it all, make it more efficient and/or improve the process results. It requires time and discipline to conduct this mapping, but the payoff can be significant over time. Mapping has become common in the business world to standardize procedures, become more efficient, meet audit requirements and gain competitive advantage.

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