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Produced by Huxiu Think Tank

Title image｜Visual China

As a global leader in the retail food service industry, McDonald's has successfully improved its business efficiency by reducing its operating processes from 21 days to a few seconds through digital operations and process optimization.

This article will focus on McDonald's practical experience in optimizing business processes. How to improve efficiency through business process management, use process mining to find problems, and automatically implement corresponding optimization measures?

Core points: 1. In the process of process optimization, the company's scale and organizational structure will be a great challenge, and these difficulties need to be overcome through cross-departmental and cross-field talent training, as well as systematic management using digital tools. 2. Digital process management not only transforms complex work into a systematic and time-based schedule, but also solidifies and standardizes the process through digital tools, forming the "muscle memory" of the organization. 3. McDonald's uses process mining technology to continuously discover and solve the card points and weaknesses in high-frequency processes to ensure the efficient operation of business processes.

Reengineering business processes in the digital age

In the information age, OA, ERP, BPM and other systems have laid the foundation for process management for large domestic enterprises. At the beginning of creation, each process was theoretically designed very scientifically. However, with the advancement of digital and intelligent transformation, as well as the increasing scale of enterprises, changing business needs, more and more collaborative departments, more and more complex processes, and more and more process variants, the "top-down" process management method of designing first and then implementing has become increasingly unable to adapt to the characteristics of agile business iteration in a rapidly changing environment.

According to the research and observation of Huxiu Think Tank, enterprises generally have the following problems in business process management and optimization:

1. The process is cumbersome and complicated:Many large enterprises have many management levels and complex systems of authority and responsibility. Their business processes involve multiple departments and links. The processes are cumbersome and complex, and the responsibilities are not unified, leading to inefficiency.

2. Information islands and information opacity:The lack of information sharing between different departments leads to serious information islands, making it impossible to fully understand the execution of real processes, affecting business collaboration and efficiency.

3. Lack of standardization and regularization:The business processes of many companies lack standardization and regularization, resulting in inconsistent operations, difficulty in management and optimization, and frequent problems of inadequate execution and non-compliance.

4. Lack of effective monitoring and evaluation mechanism:Many companies lack effective monitoring and evaluation mechanisms for their business processes, making it difficult for them to grasp the direction and effects of process optimization, and are unable to discover and solve problems in a timely manner, and they mainly rely on subjective judgment.

5. Process project optimization takes a long time and is costly:Currently, process optimization is mostly delivered on a project basis, which cannot be achieved quickly, is relatively costly, and is difficult to adapt to the development trend of enterprises. Especially in the AI ​​era, automated processes should have the functions of real-time decision-making and adaptive adjustment.

To address the above issues, enterprises need to introduce advanced management tools and methods to simplify processes and improve business efficiency and competitiveness.

Companies that have a data foundation and are trying to advance to automation (intelligent automation) can use "process mining" tools to first discover the bottlenecks and weaknesses in the entire chain, and then correct and open up the process loop, so that the enterprise processes can run more smoothly and efficiently.

It is worth noting that process mining tools essentially undertake navigation work. To further illustrate, the following case analysis takes McDonald's, the global leader in retail food service industry, as an example.

McDonald's China has actively embraced the innovation of the new generation of intelligent technology, and has gained huge benefits in optimizing business processes, improving employee efficiency, and improving consumer experience, while also gaining a strengthened competitive advantage. This case focuses on its practical experience in optimizing business processes, how to improve efficiency through enterprise business process management, and how to use process mining to discover problems and automatically execute corresponding optimization measures.

2. McDonald’s case study

2.1 McDonald’s process management ideas

From the perspective of a single process, enterprise business process management can be divided into four parts: Pain point survey

(investigate), design (design), execution (execution) and optimization (optimization), thus forming a closed loop of management.

However, in actual management, large companies usually use thousands or even tens of thousands of processes, which requires a process framework to solve the problem of overly complex process governance. This includes: the position of the process in the architecture, the architecture level selected by the company, and the specific person in charge of each architecture. Only when the architecture is clearly defined can all processes be connected in series.

In an enterprise, each process has a corresponding person in charge, such as the person in charge of architecture, the person in charge of process, etc. Process governance requires the formulation of clear rules and monitoring systems to improve efficiency. In the specific operation process, the process team is responsible for key areas and architectures, and management efficiency is improved through process grading.

2.2 Relationship between digitalization and process management

McDonald's believes that process streamlining plays a very important role in the digitalization process of enterprises.

First of all, the understanding of the digital world itself should be based on the business process of the enterprise. At the beginning of construction, it is necessary to use a structured method to sort out what each position is doing (that is, the process) so that machines can replace people to work and thus improve efficiency.

Secondly, in the process of continuous digitalization, McDonald's has found that if it wants to save energy and improve efficiency in work in various fields, a deep understanding of the significance of the process is also an indispensable link. Only by combining the use of digitalization can more reasonable improvement plans be proposed.

Finally, to achieve the sedimentation of process assets at the company level, a dedicated team is also needed. They are, to a certain extent, the designers and evangelists of processes and new systems. They need to continuously promote, collect and analyze data so that more teams can understand and pay attention to them.

In view of this, McDonald's has developed a way of thinking in digitalization: process re-engineering should precede digitalization, followed by architecture design, and finally implementation and development.

For example, when the digital team receives a requirement or function, they will first work with the business unit to define the problem and troubleshoot the process, and clarify all departments, matters, and paths involved in the project.

After finding the source of the corresponding pain point, the digital implementation team will be asked to design a solution. Only at this stage will the discussion phase begin to decide what framework and system to use, whether to build a new one or reuse it. When the improvement goals, resources, and manpower are all matched, the digital engineering phase will begin. The advantage of doing this is that it can avoid blindly creating a silo-style product that can eliminate short-term pain points. With a global perspective, it will not become a "digital chimney that cannot be connected."

2.3 Practices to improve process management efficiency

Digital process management has changed the operation of cards and coupons, reducing the cycle from 21 days to a few seconds to go online.

When it comes to reaching customers, McDonald's uses membership vouchers/coupons through multiple channels as an effective means and one of the key focuses of the company's marketing activities.

Before the process was streamlined, on average, it took 21 days, and sometimes even 40 days, for a card or voucher to be available to customers. This was obviously not suitable for a fast-changing and highly competitive environment.

In order to improve business competitiveness, McDonald's process team sorted out the process, and the digital team completed the corresponding system construction. Through the work chain sorting, docking various systems and master data standardization, simplified approval flow, and implementation of rights and responsibilities, the marketing operation team finally achieved the transformation from a 21-day cycle to a second-level launch.

2.4 Improvement of business efficiency through digital operation

McDonald's announced the development goal of its 10,000-store plan in 2023. Under the premise of rapidly expanding stores, McDonald's strives to achieve efficient operation when each new store opens.

To this end, a lot of preparatory work needs to be done before the store opens, such as pre-marketing before the opening. On the opening day of the new store, in addition to the physical store and the self-channel online store, a large number of third-party channel stores such as Douyin and Meituan must be activated simultaneously. Although this seems simple, due to the large size of McDonald's, there are many links involved, and there are a lot of dependencies between them, so there is a lot of uncertainty in implementation.

For example, before opening a new store, it is necessary to ensure that the organizational structure is sound, the management team and functions are in place, and all parties are coordinated. This involves multiple cross-functional teams, and their work is interconnected. Often, the project team has made sufficient preparations before opening a store, but there will still be situations where third-party stores are not opened in time, which will affect the initial operating results of the store and thus weaken its competitiveness. Although such problems are relatively minor, considering the scale of McDonald's, which opens about a thousand new stores a year, it will become a considerable number.

Therefore, after the process team intervened, they set out to identify and solve these problems at the source, in order to ensure that all channels could work simultaneously and move forward in tandem when the new store opened.

The process team needs to sort out information within a complex organization. After careful analysis, it is found that the seemingly simple work of opening a store involves collaboration between more than a dozen departments. Problems are often solved from the root, such as staffing when opening a new store. The starting point should be the store's identity ID and the maintenance of a set of store master data under this ID. Each department has its own perspective and starting point. When a lot of daily work piles up together, it may not be realized in time, resulting in continuous retry of subsequent processes. In this state, a simple decision from the front end will form a huge storm at the end of the process.

Therefore, to ensure the smooth opening of the new store and achieve effective promotion, McDonald’s process team needs to more comprehensively sort out and optimize the processes and collaboration between departments, clarify the rules and responsibilities of each task, and then solidify them into a system to ensure that each decision can be effectively implemented.

2.5 Challenges and Breakthroughs in Enterprise Process Optimization

McDonald's experienced and overcame many difficulties during the process of process streamlining. The experience summarized includes:

Company size and organizational structure have an impact on process streamlining.The organizational structure of a large company is prone to local optimal solutions, while the organizational structure of a small company may be more likely to see the global optimal solution. Therefore, to achieve the global optimal solution, it is necessary to jump out of all departments, stand at a higher perspective, and play the role of connecting all departments.

The importance of cross-departmental and cross-field talent in cultivating a global perspective.For example, when McDonald's opens a new store, it involves coordination and communication among multiple departments, each of which has its own responsibilities and upstream and downstream relationships. This requires the problem solver to be a generalist in business. Therefore, cultivating cross-departmental and cross-field talents will help improve the operational efficiency and competitiveness of the company.

The importance of digital process management.First, we need to sort out the entire process and transform complex work into a systematic and time-based schedule to ensure that all tasks can be completed. Second, we need to solidify and standardize the process through digital tools so that the organization can form muscle memory of the work. Finally, we need to make a global plan from the perspective of data assets so that the process can help the organization accumulate data assets more efficiently than its competitors.

Process management is a process of continuous inspection and optimization.A good process needs to realize business value, accumulate organizational assets, and be easy to execute in an intuitive and standardized manner. Another exploration of McDonald's in this field is to make full use of tools such as process mining based on data. This allows McDonald's processes to be continuously iterated. For example, after the digitization of key areas, McDonald's will use process mining tools and find that many high-frequency processes have a gap between the actual operation and the initial design. This requires continuous elimination of these gaps and continuous discovery of optimization points.

3. Impact of Al on process optimization

The development of AI technology is also driving companies to optimize their processes.

By modeling the process as a language, AI can be understood and applied to actual operations, thereby improving work efficiency. The application of AI in the process field includes data accumulation, process simulation prediction, knowledge sharing, etc., and the obstacle to the application of AI is mainly the amount of data.

It is worth noting that Wangfanxin CEO Suo Qiang pointed out that large models such as ChatGPT can provide suggestions based on historical data, but cannot access current data in real time to provide immediate feedback. Since large models do not access real-time data, they have limitations in certain scenarios (such as invoice processing in financial shared centers). Process mining can access data in real time and provide real-time decision support for hyperautomation, which has certain advantages in specific scenarios.

Log in nowHuxiu Think Tank Official Website, click the link below to get a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the application practices of AI in helping enterprises’ digital transformation.

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About Huxiu Think Tank: Huxiu Think Tank is a new research service organization focusing on enterprise digitalization and AI innovation practices. It provides insightful research reports, case selection, online meetings, offline activities and visit services for both parties in the process of industrial intelligence to support corporate executives in making wise decisions in intelligence and digitalization. The core value we provide: Timely and high-quality insights to understand technology, industry, peers and competitors; Provide important references for decision makers in technology and product strategic decisions, industry planning, and solution selection; Help the market fully understand the development status of cutting-edge technologies and the industries they affect, as well as future trends.