Mapping out a business process is not an easy task and educating someone else about the process is an even harder task. One of the best and the simplest ways to do that is to use a flowchart to showcase your business process. It’s much easier to convey the information using a chart compared to a document detailing the process. Most people associate flowcharts with software engineering and algorithms and think it is simple tool to represent logic, but not business processes. But there are standard symbols and powerful flowchart techniques you can use to draw a business process.

One of the most underutilized but one of the most powerful techniques in flowcharts is swim lanes. Swim lanes in flowcharts refer to dividing various activities in a flowchart by different parties. This makes it much clear who is responsible for which activity. For a businesses this could be various departments and if its a small team then the responsible party could be even a person.

Another thing to remember is that there are standard flowchart symbols to support complex diagrams. One of the least used ones is the predefined process symbol, which is similar to process but which has two stripes for the side. You can add that symbol in the process and create the predefined process as another flowchart. Most online diagramming tools now support cross linking diagrams so users wont have a problem with this unless they need a printout.

One big advantage of flowcharts is it makes it easier to identify sub processes and critical business decision in a process. This way you can optimize sub processes in isolation and identify key decision points that are delaying the process. To successfully do these things it is important that you follow flowchart standards like using correct symbols, having arrow directions and naming arrows, naming processes etc.

Flowcharts are definitely a powerful tool to map your business process and increase the productivity of your organization. It is especially useful for complex processes and ignoring to use them is a big mistake.