Organizations invest in new software to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and better serve customers. But technology alone doesn’t create better results. If the process stays the same, the new system just makes the same work happen differently.
Before implementation begins, take a step back. These five questions can help determine whether your next software investment will deliver lasting value.
1. Are we improving the process or just replacing the system?
A new system is an opportunity to rethink how work gets done.
Before configuring software, look at the process itself. Where are unnecessary steps? Where do handoffs create delays? What work no longer adds value? Improving the process first allows the technology to support a better way of working instead of reinforcing an inefficient one.
2. Will this system work with the rest of our organization?
Technology shouldn’t operate in isolation. When processes are thoughtfully designed, new and existing systems work together more effectively. Teams spend less time navigating disconnected workflows and more time using technology the way it was intended.
The result is greater value from every software investment, not just the newest one.
3. Have we made success easier for our employees?
Even the best software can’t overcome unclear processes. When responsibilities are well defined and workflows are consistent, employees learn faster, adapt more quickly, and require less retraining.
New team members become productive sooner, while experienced employees spend less time relying on workarounds. Clear processes build confidence, reduce frustration, and help organizations retain valuable knowledge.
4. What capacity could we create?
Consider process improvement beyond time savings. It’s about creating capacity. Innovation Process Design clients recapture an average of 2,800 labor hours annually through process improvement initiatives completed alongside new system implementations.
Organizations that redesign processes alongside system implementations often discover opportunities to eliminate wasted effort, reduce duplicate work, and free employees to focus on higher-value activities.
5. What happens after implementation?
A successful implementation shouldn’t mark the end of improvement.
When employees participate in redesigning processes, they gain the skills and confidence to continue identifying opportunities long after the software goes live. That momentum creates something more valuable than a successful implementation. You’re actively building a culture of continuous improvement that supports every future investment.
The Best Time to Improve Is Before You Implement
Software is an investment in your organization’s future. The greatest return comes when that investment is paired with better processes, engaged employees, and a commitment to continuous improvement.
Technology may change how work gets done. Process improvement ensures it’s done better.
About Lee Kuntz and Innovation Process Design
As founder and president of Innovation Process Design, Lee Kuntz brings over two decades of experience helping leaders of complex service organizations solve challenges through process improvement.
Through expert training and coaching, she helps teams see their work with fresh eyes, transform processes, and deliver meaningful results.
Interested in learning more? Reach out to Lee to discuss your unique situation and goals.
Process conversations can be difficult because the word process often means different things to different people. This disconnect can lead to staff confusion, inconsistent expectations, dissatisfied customers, and poor outcomes—especially during system changes or conversions.
To create clearer, more productive discussions about how work is performed, it is helpful to break process into three distinct levels. Understanding these levels allows teams to align on goals, design effective workflows, and execute work consistently.
🔷 Level 1: Process Framework (The “Why” and “How Well”)
This level defines what the process must achieve and how success is measured. Some elements:
• Speed (e.g., turnaround time)
• Accuracy
• Compliance
• Service level expectations
Think of Level 1 as: “What are we trying to accomplish, and how do we know if we’re successful?”
🔷 Level 2: Process Structure (The “Who” and “When”)
This level defines how the process is organized, including:
• Who performs major steps
• When tasks happen
• What main workflow exists
• What exception paths exist
Think of Level 2 as: “How is the work structured, and how does it flow?”
🔷 Level 3: Process Detail (The “How”)
This is the most granular level. Yet, even when documenting process detail, there are sublevels—from the highest level of detail to the most specificity, including:
• Process step checklists
• Workflow maps
• Detailed process steps with decision trees
• Step-by-step instructions with screen shots
Think of Level 3 as: “Exactly how do we perform each step?”
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🎯 Why This Matters
Without this structure, many teams jump into and get lost in details (Level 3) without agreeing on goals (Level 1). These team have difficulty answering questions like: Why and how?
Using all three levels together improves process discussions, software requirements alignment, and operational performance.
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💡 Simple Level Analogy
Think of building a house:
Level 1 “We want a three-bedroom house built in six months within budget”
Level 2 Blueprint: layout of rooms and construction phases
Level 3 Instructions: tools, materials, measurements
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✅ Key Takeaway
A complete process conversation answers three questions.
1. What are we trying to achieve? (Level 1)
2. How is the work structured? (Level 2)
3. What are the clear and executable steps? (Level 3)
When all three levels are outlined and aligned, processes become measurable, scalable, conversion ready, and effective.
About Lee Kuntz and Innovation Process Design
As Founder and President of Innovation Process Design, Lee Kuntz brings over two decades of experience helping leaders in complex service organizations solve challenges through effective process improvement.
Through expert training and coaching, Lee partners with teams to view their work with fresh perspective, redesign processes, and achieve meaningful, measurable results.
Interested in learning more?
Connect with Lee Kuntz to discuss your organization’s unique challenges and goals.
Is your organization looking to use artificial intelligence (AI), but wondering where to start? Using AI tools to support operations is an easy and productive win.
Creating Vital Operations Procedures, the Quick and Easy Way
Organizations know they need procedures documents, but dedicating time to type up work steps and take screenshots becomes a roadblock for many leaders.
Those procedure documents are important. Then staff are out of the office, it is essential that their backups have reference documents to guide them in completing various processes. Without such resources to do work correctly, client deliverables can be late or incorrect.
Undocumented processes are also costly when implementing a new system. New system installations start with understanding how work is done now. If undocumented, the software vendor will bill for documenting the process for the team, which adds to the cost and slows the project down.
These two undesired results can sting.
Using an AI tool to document work steps is an excellent way to create simple, usable procedures documents quickly. For example, using Zoom’s meeting summary function and its recording capability (both visual and sound) can document a process in about 15 minutes.
Here is an example of summarized work steps using Zoom AI Summarize function.
Most summations need to be edited because AI makes assumptions and records those assumption. Recently an AI summation listed Lee as a he rather than a she. Those types of assumptions need to be corrected in finalizing procedures documents.
Using AI in this manner can save your team hours of labor on each set of procedures. Taking the 15 minutes to more frequently summarize procedures is an excellent resource for back-ups or new employees, reduces your risk of disappointing your customers, and decreases cost and risk when transitioning to new systems.
Here are links to train your team on recording and summarizing procedures with Zoom meetings.
• Getting started with computer and cloud recording
• Using Meeting Summary with AI Companion
Many other tools, such as Windows 11 or Firefly in conjunction with Microsoft Teams, can also be used to summarize or record procedures.
What Leaders Say About Using AI to Document Processes
Right now, forward-looking leaders are using AI to document processes ranging from gift contributions to accounts payable. Recently one organization leader said each departing employee is expected to record all their procedures using AI before walking out the door. This expectation increases the likelihood of providing consistent, high-quality service to the organization’s customers.
When Lee’s firm begins a process and outcome improvement project, she asks clients to record their process steps using the Zoom meeting summary and record features. This initial step takes the organization only about 15 minutes, saving them both time and expense and speeding the completion of the project.
Contact Lee Kuntz at lee@improveprocess.net to ask about recording procedures. Also, contact Lee to share any operations pain points you see or to talk through process and outcomes you seek to improve.
About Lee Kuntz and Innovation Process Design
As founder and president of Innovation Process Design, Lee Kuntz has spent over two decades using process improvement to solve the unique challenges faced by leaders of complex service organizations. Through expert training and coaching, she helps teams look at their work with new eyes, transform how work gets done, and create real results. Contact Lee with questions or to talk about your situation and what you want to achieve.
The volume of work during November and December for nonprofits and community foundations can overwhelm normally adequate processes and capacity. A way to create capacity and to firm up processes during the upcoming onslaught is to conduct a one-hour process walk through of all high-volume processes. This best practice reminds employees of how work needs to be done, identifies sticking points, and engages the team in making backlogs visible and solvable.
An effective process walk through follows specific steps. Contact me, Lee Kuntz to receive our firm’s one-page Process Talk Walk through Best Practices. Also, let’s reconnect next year to talk about what you saw during busy season. As a process coach and trainer, I have seen teams go from drowning to thriving during November and December. Your team can also.
As founder and president of Innovation Process Design, Lee Kuntz has spent over two decades using process improvement to solve the unique challenges faced by leaders of complex service organizations. Through expert training and coaching, she helps teams look at their work with new eyes, transform how work gets done, and create real results. Contact Lee with questions or to talk about what you see and what you want to achieve.
What level of community impact is your team looking to create this year? One source of community impact comes through the effective delivery of service or operations.
Recently, as part of our sector survey, we found that community foundations and nonprofits are transitioning from traditional operations roles to new ways of delivering better, more consistent results and impact to their community. Learn more:
• Refine Operations Roles and Responsibilities to Increase Community Impact
• Our executive summary. Innovation Operations Survey Summary
As founder and president of Innovation Process Design, Lee Kuntz has spent over two decades using process improvement to solve the unique challenges faced by leaders of complex service organizations. Through expert training and coaching, she helps teams look at their work with new eyes, transform how work gets done, and create real results. Contact Lee with questions or to talk about what you see and what you want to achieve.
Do you want to be part of your foundation’s initiatives to improve how work is done, which creates a stronger community impact? Do you want to be a change agent who makes such improvements happen?
If your answer to any of these questions is yes, please join our virtual Process Transformation Concepts and Tools Training™.
In this training, you will hear and practice the skills to identify common operational pain points that slow down workflow and hamper results. This workshop is specifically designed for community foundation employees that want to be part of their organization’s process improvement culture.
Attendees:
The cost of this workshop is $1,800 for the first attendee. The cost per additional attendee working on the same challenge is $1,000. These prices are designed to make this outcome-oriented coaching accessible to all foundations.
Registration will be limited to eight attendees, so register soon by emailing Lee Kuntz.
Internal controls are one of the most important values a chief financial officer (CFO) can bring to an organization. Yet many assume business process improvement and the imposition of internal controls are the same thing or that they can’t exist together. The truth is that when controls are both efficient and effective, their value goes from good to great.
Internal controls—the accounting and auditing processes used in a company’s finance and operations departments that ensure the integrity of financial reporting and regulatory compliance—are a key component of financial success. Whether CFOs’ focus is on separation of duties, reconciliations, or approvals, they spend hundreds of hours a year designing, training, and enforcing internal controls.
Because of this investment in process considerations, some believe internal controls and business process improvement are the same thing. CFOs who think this way might say, “We have good controls; therefore our processes are solid.” Others believe that streamlining and speeding up processes by removing third and fourth reviews will make controls weaker. Their theory is that making controls more efficient means that some “control” corners may be cut.
But successful CFOs know that every process needs to be well controlled if results are to be delivered while maximizing resources. For example, the accounts payable process must function smoothly so that valid payments are made in an accurate, timely, and efficient manner. The path to well-controlled, efficient, and effective processes is what business process improvement is all about.
Recently I talked with an organization that had received many concerning comments in its external audit. The newly hired CFO immediately installed new and more expansive internal controls. One addition required that a purchase order be created for all items over $50. This purchase order needed three levels of approval. Invoices for the ordered items needed to be approved for payment by three levels. And checks in payment of the invoices had to be reviewed by four levels. As a result of the new internal controls, the organization’s negative audit comments disappeared. Yet these new steps slowed the process down.
In this organization, program operations employees completed these purchase orders and invoice reviews. They were the same employees taking heat from the board of directors for not serving the community fast enough or well enough. Adding more approval steps was achieving an appropriate degree of quality control, but it was also expanding the staff’s workload. How could the organization both serve the community as needed and maintain tight controls?
This team used business process improvement to solve this conundrum. First, we outlined the goals of the process, including the need for airtight internal controls. Then the team rebuilt the processes, identifying value-added steps and waste. Some of these wasted steps were the creating and fixing errors, commonly called rework. The process went from 110 steps to 64 steps despite internal controls increasing significantly. Assured that their concerns had been appropriately addressed, the auditors signed on off the new process. With a well-founded, secure process in place, both the organization and the community achieved a win.
Every organization needs to have solid internal controls in place to fulfill its mission with confidence and integrity. Business process improvement is an excellent way to build controls into work steps without compromising effectiveness and efficiency.
As founder and president of Innovation Process Design, Lee Kuntz has spent over two decades using process improvement to solve the unique challenges faced by leaders of complex service organizations. Through expert training and coaching, she helps teams look at their work with new eyes, transform how work gets done, and create real results. Contact Lee with questions or to talk about your situation and what you want to achieve.
As the new year begins, you may wonder whether there are ways your team can improve process. I am frequently asked about this, and based on my experience and certifications, I see critical feedback from your customers and community as a sign of a potential process improvement opportunity.
As an organization that seeks to make a positive impact on your community, you undoubtedly receive feedback from many parties. The kind of feedback you receive can help you pinpoint areas where process improvement might be both warranted and achievable.
Is any of this feedback familiar to you?
These parties all want you to do more with what you have. You can close your ears to this feedback, or you can treat this feedback as a golden opportunity to apply proven process improvement techniques that address the identified concerns. Taking a deep dive to assess your processes can enhance how work is done and can change outcomes for the better.
So, does your organization have an opportunity to improve process? If you have received critical feedback from any key parties, the answer is yes. To learn more about your team’s potential to improve the way your work is done, contact me to talk through what you see. Others have improved processes to better serve their community. You can too!
As founder and president of Innovation Process Design, Lee Kuntz has spent over two decades using process improvement to solve the unique challenges faced by leaders of complex service organizations. Through expert training and coaching, she helps teams look at their work with new eyes, transform how work gets done, and create real results. Contact Lee with questions or to talk about your situation and what you want to achieve.
Many foundations and nonprofits receive the majority of their contributions during November and December. This makes for a busy donation season, which can result in employee stress and delayed responses to donors and grantees. Instead, some teams take one hour to conduct a process walk through, which enables them to thrive during this busy season.
The Best Practice to Create Capability
The volume of work during this time can overwhelm normally adequate processes and capacity. A way to create capacity and to firm up processes during the upcoming onslaught is to conduct a one-hour process walk through of any high-volume processes. This best practice reminds employees of how work needs to be done, identifies sticking points and engages the team in making backlogs visible and solvable.
An effective process walk through follows specific steps. Here is a link to my firm’s IPD Process Talk Walk through Best Practices. Feel free to print this document and use it during your process walk through.
And contact me with any questions or to talk about what you see during busy season. As a process coach and trainer, I have seen teams go from drowning to thriving during November and December. Your team can also.
Throughout the 25 years I have been a process improvement coach and trainer, I have learned that people are the most important factor in achieving effective and efficient organization results. Yes, methodologies, training, and tools are important. But engaging the people doing the work in a way that increases their readiness for improving the way they work is the most important element.
In a recent conversation with one of my clients, I was reminded of the power of engaging and readying staff for process improvement. This leader moved from the CFO role in one foundation to a similar role in another. Both foundations are huge and healthy with big growth ahead of them. This experienced leader had brought my firm in to the first foundation to help him create capacity to take on that big growth. He anticipated the busy season ahead and knew the workload would be unmanageable unless he took action.
During our training, we built both the skills and will to improve how work is done. See how this looks in this video: Energized, Inspired, and Engaged.
My firm also conducted a process deep dive with this leader’s team to recapture capacity in their donor advised fund (DAF) grants operations. See how a deep dive looks in this short video: IPD Process Deep Dive Experience. The team redesigned their process to cut the time to do a DAF grant by 40 percent. That meant delivering grants and confirmations faster to donors and freeing employees up to enjoy the year-end holidays.
Last month I reconnected with this leader to congratulate him on his new CFO role. He mentioned that he brought the language of process improvement with him to his second organization. He said, “We constantly look for and talk about finding unproductive tasks, exactly as I learned to do in your training.”
Because this leader identified the challenges ahead, learned key process transformation concepts, and took action to implement them, he has now been able to lead two teams to improve how work is done. As a result, both he and the two organizations he has worked for have streamlined their operations and increased employee satisfaction. You and your organization can achieve these favorable results too.
Contact Lee Kuntz at lee@improveprocess.net if you see pain points in how your organization’s work is done or if you seek to improve the outcomes your organization delivers to your community.
About Lee Kuntz and Innovation Process Design
As founder and president of Innovation Process Design, Lee Kuntz has spent over two decades using process improvement to solve the unique challenges faced by leaders of complex service organizations. Through expert training and coaching, she helps teams look at their work with new eyes, transform how work gets done, and create real results. Contact Lee with questions or to talk about your situation and what you want to achieve.
Contact Lee today to discuss your challenge.
