Process Consulting
Process Consulting: Analyze, Structure and Measurably Improve Business Processes
Process consulting focuses on the workflows a company uses to organize its day-to-day operations: order processing, approvals, handoffs between departments, documentation, and responsibilities. It usually becomes necessary not because of a single error, but because a process has evolved over the years around its exceptions—until no one can say which process actually applies, and processing takes longer even though no one is doing anything wrong. This requires a robust picture of the actual current state, a target process developed in collaboration with—rather than over—those who execute it, and a clear answer as to who will own the process and be authorized to change it in the future. Without this clarification, no new process will last longer than until the next reorganization.
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What Process Consulting Delivers — and What It Does Not
The term carries two meanings, and that regularly causes misunderstandings. In organizational development, process consulting has stood since Edgar Schein for a stance: the consultant does not deliver a finished solution but enables the organization to find its own — in contrast to expert consulting, which brings a result with it. In everyday business language, process consulting means the work on the business processes themselves: mapping, analyzing, modeling, documenting, improving. We work in the second sense, but with the method of the first — not out of conviction, but because a workaround never shows up in any evaluation.
It separates the process as lived from the process as documented. In organizations that have grown over time, years lie between the two. A process assessment that reads manuals describes a workflow that no longer exists in that form. It only becomes reliable once throughput times, waiting times and exception cases are measured on real transactions and the exceptions are counted instead of being set aside as special cases — frequently they account for a third of the volume and two thirds of the effort.
It starts at the interfaces, not at the individual steps. In administrative workflows most of the time is not lost in the processing but in the handover: between sales and order management, between the business unit and IT, between site and headquarters. Speeding up single steps moves the queue rather than dissolving it. That is why the end-to-end process comes before the optimization of individual activities.
It settles roles before tools matter. A large share of the cases that begin as a tool problem end as a question of accountability. As long as it is unclear who owns a process, who may change it and who maintains the documentation, no amount of clean process modeling will hold. That decision is uncomfortable, and it is the reason why some initiatives only carry on the second attempt.
What it does not do. It does not write a target process over the heads of the people who run it — a workflow created that way is not lived, it is worked around. It is no substitute for a software rollout when the workflow fails because of the system, and it is not a staffing decision: where a role stays vacant or an accountability stays disputed, no process description can absorb that.
Two boundaries are worth naming. Where the question is throughput on the line, setup times, equipment availability and lean methods in manufacturing, our operations and process improvement consulting is the right entry point. Where it concerns procurement and supply chain workflows, the route leads to supply chain consulting. Where a workflow stalls mainly because the system landscape does not carry it, digital transformation consulting is the fitting frame. Internationally the same work appears under the labels business process consulting, BPM consulting and business process improvement consulting.
Process Consulting by Industry: What Drives the Workflow
Administrative workflows look alike on paper and differ considerably in practice. In logistics the shipment sets the pace; at IT service providers it is the ticket process with agreed response times; in healthcare it is the documentation duty attached to the patient case; in public administration it is the binding of deadlines and legal bases. Anyone who does not know what sets the pace designs a target process that breaks at the first exception.
That is why we staff with specialists who have worked in the industry in question and who know its usual evidence duties, systems and role cuts — from ITSM processes along ITIL through quality management to ISO 9001 to approval chains in regulated environments. The selection comes from 25 functional areas with more than 300 role profiles on file. We work regularly in the industries below; each tile names what drives the workflow there.
Logistics & Transport
In logistics, timing is everything: A process that is recorded two hours late costs an entire delivery run. Typical issues include the order workflow from notification to billing, the interface between scheduling, warehousing, and billing, and the question of which data actually needs to be recorded at each stage—and which data is only being recorded because someone requested it at some point.
We track processes using actual shipments, measure dwell times rather than processing times, and eliminate follow-up inquiries resulting from incomplete handoffs. When it comes to the supply chain itself—network design, inventory strategy, and supplier integration—our supply chain consulting services are the right place to start.
IT and Technology Service Providers
For IT and technology service providers, the bottleneck rarely lies in the technology itself, but rather in the surrounding service processes: clearly separated incident, change, and problem management; a request workflow that doesn’t start in three different places at once; and a release process that doesn’t hide agreements in chat histories. ITIL provides the framework for this—the key is determining how much of it fits the size of the organization.
We align service processes with what was actually promised to customers, clarify escalation paths, and define the metrics used to verify those commitments. You’ll find relevant profiles in the IT Service Management section.
Healthcare & Pharmaceuticals
In the healthcare sector and the pharmaceutical industry, strict documentation requirements clash with limited staff time. The administrative workload—intake, scheduling, documentation, billing, and approvals—ties up capacity that is lacking elsewhere. At the same time, no simplification should come at the expense of documentation required by regulations.
We therefore take a two-step approach: first, we distinguish between what is mandatory and what is merely routine; then, we integrate the mandatory elements into the workflow so that they are completed as part of the process rather than having to be caught up on at the end of the day. We treat validated processes and quality-related documentation as a separate category with its own approval logic.
Banking & Insurance
For banks and insurance companies, the process is the product: application, review, decision, contract, claim. Regulatory requirements create checkpoints, and each checkpoint creates a handoff. The typical observation is not that too much is being checked, but that the same information is being collected three times.
We redesign the workflow around these checkpoints rather than bypassing them: automated processing for clear-cut cases, defined exception paths for the rest, and traceable documentation that stands up to scrutiny. We incorporate statements regarding regulatory requirements into this framework—their binding assessment in individual cases remains the responsibility of your legal and compliance functions.
Public Administration
In public administration, processes are legally defined yet still flexible: the sequence of steps, responsibilities, media transitions, and the question of where a document is actually needed are left to our discretion. This is precisely where the majority of processing time is spent—not on the technical review.
We map application and decision-making processes end-to-end, distinguish between legally required steps and established practices, and describe the target process in a way that serves as a solid foundation for implementing a specialized workflow. The goal is not to reduce diligence, but to minimize the time spent waiting between each careful step.
Energy & Utilities
Energy and utility companies operate using high-volume processes governed by market rules: switching suppliers, meter reading processing, billing, and grid connection. The volume of cases is high, deadlines are set externally, and a single process error isn’t just costly—it multiplies ten thousandfold.
Here, we rely more on key metrics than on workshops: the rate of cases requiring clarification, deadline violations, and manual rework show very precisely where the workflow breaks down. This analysis leads to standardization, clear exception handling, and the decision as to which cases requiring clarification can be automated and which must be reviewed by a person.
Logistics & Transport
In logistics, timing is everything: A process that is recorded two hours late costs an entire delivery run. Typical issues include the order workflow from notification to billing, the interface between scheduling, warehousing, and billing, and the question of which data actually needs to be recorded at each stage—and which data is only being recorded because someone requested it at some point.
We track processes using actual shipments, measure dwell times rather than processing times, and eliminate follow-up inquiries resulting from incomplete handoffs. When it comes to the supply chain itself—network design, inventory strategy, and supplier integration—our supply chain consulting services are the right place to start.
IT and Technology Service Providers
For IT and technology service providers, the bottleneck rarely lies in the technology itself, but rather in the surrounding service processes: clearly separated incident, change, and problem management; a request workflow that doesn’t start in three different places at once; and a release process that doesn’t hide agreements in chat histories. ITIL provides the framework for this—the key is determining how much of it fits the size of the organization.
We align service processes with what was actually promised to customers, clarify escalation paths, and define the metrics used to verify those commitments. You’ll find relevant profiles in the IT Service Management section.
Healthcare & Pharmaceuticals
In the healthcare sector and the pharmaceutical industry, strict documentation requirements clash with limited staff time. The administrative workload—intake, scheduling, documentation, billing, and approvals—ties up capacity that is lacking elsewhere. At the same time, no simplification should come at the expense of documentation required by regulations.
We therefore take a two-step approach: first, we distinguish between what is mandatory and what is merely routine; then, we integrate the mandatory elements into the workflow so that they are completed as part of the process rather than having to be caught up on at the end of the day. We treat validated processes and quality-related documentation as a separate category with its own approval logic.
Banking & Insurance
For banks and insurance companies, the process is the product: application, review, decision, contract, claim. Regulatory requirements create checkpoints, and each checkpoint creates a handoff. The typical observation is not that too much is being checked, but that the same information is being collected three times.
We redesign the workflow around these checkpoints rather than bypassing them: automated processing for clear-cut cases, defined exception paths for the rest, and traceable documentation that stands up to scrutiny. We incorporate statements regarding regulatory requirements into this framework—their binding assessment in individual cases remains the responsibility of your legal and compliance functions.
Public Administration
In public administration, processes are legally defined yet still flexible: the sequence of steps, responsibilities, media transitions, and the question of where a document is actually needed are left to our discretion. This is precisely where the majority of processing time is spent—not on the technical review.
We map application and decision-making processes end-to-end, distinguish between legally required steps and established practices, and describe the target process in a way that serves as a solid foundation for implementing a specialized workflow. The goal is not to reduce diligence, but to minimize the time spent waiting between each careful step.
Energy & Utilities
Energy and utility companies operate using high-volume processes governed by market rules: switching suppliers, meter reading processing, billing, and grid connection. The volume of cases is high, deadlines are set externally, and a single process error isn’t just costly—it multiplies ten thousandfold.
Here, we rely more on key metrics than on workshops: the rate of cases requiring clarification, deadline violations, and manual rework show very precisely where the workflow breaks down. This analysis leads to standardization, clear exception handling, and the decision as to which cases requiring clarification can be automated and which must be reviewed by a person.
From Process Mapping to Process Governance: Frequently Staffed Profiles
Map, Organize, Embed: How a Process Initiative Runs
It starts with observing the actual process and ends with embedding it in the workplace—the step that is most often skipped and that determines whether the new process will take root. The duration and depth depend on the number of departments and the level of documentation, but the sequence does not: A target process without a solid foundation is nothing more than a guess backed by a flowchart.
1. Process Mapping
2. Analysis and Prioritization
3. Target Process and Responsibilities
4. Implementation and Enablement
5. Measuring and Adjusting
6. Embedding in Daily Operations
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