Re: Defining Key Processes in a Company - "Key Process Master List"
It can be quite tricky to identify processes initially! It sounds like you're on the right track. Without knowing your company it's hard to say what the processes are. However, a few key things that I have found helped me to identify processes. I hope something in here helps!
1. Think of what happens from the time a customer contacts the company (or from when you start searching for customers) and then trace that through to the time that you have satisfied the customer's needs (i.e., the project/job you're working on is finished). Don't go very deep as you jot it down.. go very broad to start with. e.g., for our company we do marketing functions to identify customer (process: marketing), they then contact us and we do some quoting and work out a contract (process: sales). If the project is big we pass it through to project management and they delegate and control who is doing what and when (process: project management). The engineers then use the information from project management to design their product and test it (process: engineering). When the design is tested and correct it then gets produced in mass through a particular set of procedures (process: production) etc.. all the way through to installation and commissioning.
2. A process can generally be broken down into lots of steps and may produce multiple 'things' (called 'outputs').
3. Generally, what comes out of (aka 'is produced by') one process may then be used to do the next sequential process. So it's an output of one process but it's an input of another. e.g., Sales produce a contract (output) which project management need to write up a project plan (a project management output). So, the contract is an output for sales and an input for the next process, project management.
4. Each step of a process can (but doesn't have to) have a procedure.
5. A process can have sub-processes. E.g., Production can be broken into Planning --> Producing the Product --> Validating the Product.
6. There are processes that support the main-line work that you do. For example, in order to do your work you need to purchase resources (process: 'purchasing'), you would also need staff to do the work (process: 'staff hiring') etc.
7. To help identify the main processes it can be good to draw very basic flowcharts going vertically down and then line them up next to each other in the order that they happen. If you find processes that can occur at any stage (E.g., you may need to purchase resources at many points), these may be additional processes or support processes.
Hope something there helps.. generally a combination of them helps to identify. It does take a while to get your head around.. just keep looking at the flows through your organisation and you'll start to notice patterns

The key is to not give up.. !
