3 Difficulties of Assigning Roles & Responsibilities Without RATSI
One thing you need for your business processes to run smoothly?
An awareness of who is responsible for what and when, in your processes.
In other words, clearly defined roles in the process and their associated responsibilities.
At Skore, we’ve made it a point to include this important aspect of business process mapping in our platform via the RATSI framework, which is a bit different from RACI. It stands for assigning the responsibilities based on:
- Responsible – who is the person making sure the activity is done satisfactorily enough to move on to the next part of the process, typically a manager or director figure.
- Authority – ultimately, who is in charge of the activity or decision should anything need to be elevated, usually not your everyday worker, more of an executive.
- Task – who is actually doing the activity, your everyday frontline worker.
- Support – a support figure that can provide input in particularly exceptional situations or cases, for example, a subject matter expert (SME) being invited to a sales call to support the sales team.
- Informed – someone who is informed when an activity or task is completed, whether successfully or not, most likely someone that is part of your analytics team.
The reason why we focus so heavily on roles and responsibilities in our platform is that if it’s not done properly, organisations suffer.
Let’s take a look at why.
Difficulty 1: Accepting Sign-Off
One of the most common causes of a business process bottleneck, signing off can sometimes end up being a game of hot potato when it comes to responsibilities. And can be what slows everything down.
If it is at all unclear who is responsible for what activity in your process, things can come to a standstill, and your business will suffer for it.
The clarity in signing off and the steps associated with it is essential and needs to be incorporated into your process as soon as possible. With Skore, we make it easy for you to do so.
Each of our activity boxes has a Who? space at the bottom of the box to assign the correct title to the activity. Next to each title, you can also assign a RATSI (or any other responsibility matrix) letter, to indicate the type of role they have within the process. This helps ensure that it makes sense and that several bases are covered as needed per task.
Additionally each title, or role, has a set of responsibilities and activities that align with the activity which is easily visible, either when you’re building the process, analysing it for improvement, or studying it as part of training.
Without a RATSI framework, knowing who is in charge of moving the process along via approval can be extremely difficult to pinpoint.
Other forms of mapping such as swim lane diagrams or flowcharts do not place as much importance on the visualization of the responsible role for each process task. But this is because they were not created with business process mapping in mind.
For business processes to move along, certain roles must be made responsible for certain tasks. Otherwise, people are difficult to pin down and could refuse responsibility for a process step, slowing everything down and affecting your efficiency as a company. Understanding the responsibilities of a role and transparently communicating them in a map is a necessity for business processes to run smoothly.
When building Skore, we recognised this limitation in other forms of mapping, and sought to fix it. This is why we use Universal Process Notation (UPN) to avoid confusion, and why we employ the RATSI matrix. You cannot shirk responsibilities when they are clearly shown next to your role and your role is highlighted as responsible for a necessary task to move the entire process along.
If you do not use Skore or our notation or matrixes, you are most likely struggling with obtaining approval and being slower than you could be.
Difficulty 2: Required Compliance & Risk Overviews
With the rising need for compliance and risk overviews throughout various industries, it is imperative for businesses to know who is responsible for ensuring that they are falling within the correct guidelines.
Any slowdown in being able to be sure that the necessary steps are being taken will negatively impact any business.
If you’re in tech, where everything moves fast, you are probably feeling this heavily right now.
Cybersecurity has never been more necessary, and there are new regulatory standards to adhere to constantly. The amount of changes you are making to comply with the new standards to mitigate risk, and the speed at which you are trying to make them, is probably new to you. But it might also be something that is slowing you down significantly.
With new measures, your workers may be unsure who is responsible for approval, or the responsible party may be difficult to track down. Especially if your processes aren’t mapped and available to relevant team members.
In a worst-case scenario, if you’re in food and beverage, it can actually lead to perishable products being lost. It would be due to the amount of time wasted without having a clear idea of whether you are complying with laws. And this, of course, results in a significant loss of revenue that you then have to compensate for out of pocket.
All because you didn’t know who was supposed to be in charge of the risk and compliance overview.
With RATSI and Skore, you can move past this concern.
Workers can refer to a process map and find who the correct role should be for approval in this situation. Even when things are changing fast, extrapolating the information as you build a process is quick based on their existing tasks and the RATSI matrix.
If you’re unsure, you can also utilise Quantify to study who is approving the quickest in different areas, and plan your process accordingly.
Above all, transparency regarding responsibility is key when workers have to find the right approval for risk and compliance changes.
Difficulty 3: Knowledge Retention
Finally, without RATSI, knowledge retention becomes nigh on impossible.
Our clients have greatly benefited from this aspect of Skore over time, and it is why we have written so much about the importance of process libraries.
While employees come and go, and processes can change, it is imperative for a business to hold on to that information. Without information on how a process is being done at this particular point in time, it becomes impossible to analyse processes for improvement and train new hires.
But even that becomes difficult if RATSI is not implemented and used by the organisation.
RATSI allows roles and responsibilities to be assigned thanks to a pre-determined matrix, and Skore has simplified it even further so that the role is the focus, and its particular capability is highlighted.
If you are studying a process map to improve or optimise it, or you are preparing to train new hires, you need to know what role has what responsibility within the process. New hires can then learn who to ask for help, and you know who you can ask for further details on a process if you’re looking to make positive changes.
Additionally, it helps to keep the knowledge within the company and be passed down, and potentially duplicated if the company grows.
Without RATSI, you only end up with half the information you need to truly improve or train.
Conclusion
Assigning roles and responsibilities is a key component of any business. It is especially important when it comes to business processes, since if you do not know the correct person to turn to for questions or approvals, a process will stall.
Skore recognised this importance, and so when it was being built, roles were incorporated directly into the mapping process.
Skore focused on UPN because it knows the importance of a role for an overall process to be it’s most efficient. And when it was looking to recognise this and improve on it for anyone interested in their business processes, Skore also started recommending the RATSI matrix.
Without it, knowledge of who does what becomes a bit more difficult than it needs to be.
If you’re looking to speed up approval times or fully understand who is responsible for what in your company, you’ve come to the right place.
Our team is ready to help you gain control of your business processes, simply get in touch