Business process review
In short. A business process review is a structured look at how work actually gets done in a business, from first request to finished result. It maps the steps, people and tools involved to find delays, duplicated effort, errors and dependencies, so improvements target real problems rather than assumptions.
Most businesses run on habits that nobody designed. Work passes between people through email, memory and workarounds. A review makes this visible by following a piece of work from start to end and writing down what truly happens.
The review typically asks who does each step, how long it waits, where information is retyped, where mistakes are corrected and who is needed for it to proceed. It often turns up surprises, such as an approval that waits days for one person or a spreadsheet that only one employee understands.
For example, a small installer may find that quotes take a week, not because estimating is slow, but because the details are re-entered three times and sit in someone's inbox. Fixing that one hand-off saves more than a new piece of software would.
A good review ends with a short ranked list of changes, an owner for each, and a measure of whether it worked. It should look at the process before the tools, because automating a poor process only speeds up the poor result.
Questions people ask
How long does a process review take?
It depends on the scope. A single process in a small business can be mapped in days, while a whole organisation takes longer. Narrowing the scope to one important process is a sensible start.
Do I need software to run one?
No. A whiteboard, a few conversations with the people who do the work and a record of how long each step takes are enough to start.