How Legacy Processes Slow Business Growth
Table of Contents How Legacy Processes Slow Business Growth Identifying Hidden Barriers to Efficiency, Scalability, and Digital Transformation Success Why...
Business Process Improvement Consulting
Most Technology Initiatives Underdeliver Because the Processes Behind Them Were Never Fixed.
Victoria Fide's process work is independent of any platform — focused on how your business needs to operate, not on what any particular system does well.
Start With a Process ConversationWhere we engage
Before a technology initiative. Mid-implementation. After go-live when results haven't materialized. The entry point is yours — the methodology is the same.
12%
of business transformations achieve their goals as originally defined.
Bain & Company, 2024 — analysis of 24,000 transformation initiatives
For the other 88%, the gap between what the initiative promised and what it delivered is almost always traceable to the same place: the processes the new system was built on top of.
When a new system goes live on top of inefficient processes, the system doesn't fix them. It runs them faster. The delays, the workarounds, the duplicate approvals, the unclear ownership — they survive the implementation. Sometimes they get worse, because now they're embedded in a system that cost millions of dollars and took years to deploy.
The organizations that get full value from their technology investments treat process improvement seriously: before the initiative starts, alongside it, or after it becomes clear that go-live was not the same thing as success.
Who Engages This Service
The engagement starts in one of three places.
For executive leaders who know their operations need to work better and understand that technology alone won't get them there.
Prepare to Transform
You know a significant technology initiative is coming and want your processes assessed, documented, and redesigned before execution begins — so the initiative is built on solid ground rather than inherited problems. Victoria Fide's process work at this stage feeds directly into ERP Implementation Readiness, where the preparation work for the initiative itself is done.
Transform with Confidence
You're in the middle of a technology initiative and process design decisions are running ahead of process improvement work. Victoria Fide integrates into the initiative to provide the process clarity that configuration, testing, and training require — working alongside ERP Implementation Advisory and Support or independently, depending on what your situation calls for.
Recover Your ROI
Your system is live but the expected results haven't materialized. Victoria Fide assesses where the process gaps are and does the work to close them. If the implementation itself needs attention alongside the process work, ERP Recovery addresses that layer.
Like every Victoria Fide engagement, this one is backed by our Client Success Guarantee. Success criteria are defined before work begins and measured at the close. We don't consider the improvement complete until they're met.
How the Engagement Works
Every engagement starts in the same place.
For organizations where the scope of change requires a more structured approach to managing the human side of the transformation, Victoria Fide also provides Change Management Consulting as a connected service.
Current-State Assessment
An objective picture of how work actually moves through the organization today — not how it's documented, and not how leadership believes it operates, but how it actually happens.
Change Risk Identification
That assessment looks at more than workflow. From the first day, Victoria Fide identifies organizational change management risks alongside process gaps, because the two are inseparable.
Success Criteria Definition
Before redesign work begins, Victoria Fide works with leadership to define specific, measurable outcomes — what better actually looks like for this organization, not in general.
Future-State Design
Processes are designed with both technology and people in mind, with full awareness of what relevant systems can and cannot support — and what the organization needs to believe to adopt them.
Process Ownership
Redesigned processes that no one is accountable for maintaining revert. Victoria Fide engages the people who will actually run the new processes — ensuring they understand, can execute, and have the authority to maintain them.
Results Measurement
At the close of the engagement, results are measured against the success criteria established at the start. The engagement isn't considered complete until they are.
What Makes This Different
Platform-Independent. Business-First. Accountable to the Result.
Most process work gets done by people who are also aligned to a specific system — implementation consultants whose expertise is in configuring a platform, not in questioning whether the process being configured is the right one. A consultant with a platform certification has limited incentive to recommend a process that doesn't match how that platform is typically deployed.
Victoria Fide's process work starts with your business — how it actually operates today, what it needs to operate better, and what your people will realistically adopt. No platform preference shapes that assessment. Future-state processes are designed around your operations and objectives, then aligned to what modern systems can support. That sequence matters: process first, system second.
No platform alignment
Victoria Fide holds no certifications that create incentive to fit your processes to a vendor's preferred deployment pattern.
Process first, system second
The future state is designed around your operations and objectives. System capabilities inform it — they don't define it.
Built-in accountability
Success criteria are defined before redesign begins. The engagement isn't considered complete until results are measured against them — and the Client Success Guarantee applies.
What You Receive
Tangible outputs at every stage.
Current-state process maps documenting how work actually flows today: handoffs, decision points, exceptions, and known pain points
Organizational change management risk assessment identifying where people and adoption risks are greatest
Root cause analysis identifying the underlying sources of inefficiency, delay, or error
Future-state process designs aligned to business objectives, system capabilities, and operational best practices
Process ownership assignments establishing clear accountability for each redesigned workflow
Transition documentation — including the business case for the future state — capturing what is changing, why it is better, and what it means for the people affected
Defined success metrics to measure whether the improvement delivered its intended results
For organizations implementing or planning to implement a new system, this work feeds directly into the implementation: the process clarity that configuration decisions, testing, and training require.
Victoria Fide peeled apart our business process and challenged us on why things are the way they are. I loved that because that is exactly what we needed."
Hubert Visee
President, Carlson AirFlo
Process Health Is an Ongoing Discipline
Processes drift. Organizations change. Systems get updated. For clients in longer-term relationships, process health is maintained through the Sustain phase of Victoria Fide's engagement model — not handed off at go-live.
Ask about ongoing process advisory →
The Experience Behind the Work
Victoria Fide's advisory team is led by Tory Bjorklund, who has been involved in technology implementations since 1987 — across manufacturing, distribution, and enterprise-scale organizations — and Adele Graser, who has guided complex ERP and digital transformation initiatives since 2014. The methodology Victoria Fide brings to every engagement is built from that combined experience, not borrowed from a framework.
Common Questions
Business Process Improvement Consulting
Answers to what executive leaders ask most before engaging.
How can we work on improving our processes before we know what technology we'll be implementing?
You don't need to have a system selected to start improving your processes. Good process design is grounded in how your business needs to operate, not in what any specific technology can do. Victoria Fide aligns processes to general best practices and designs future-state workflows with a clear understanding of what modern systems can typically support. When a system is eventually selected, the adjustments needed are minor. The alternative — selecting a system first and then trying to fit your processes around it — is one of the reasons so many technology initiatives fail to deliver what they promised.
If you don't know our specific system, how can you help us with our processes?
Victoria Fide's team has worked across a wide range of platforms, which means we get up to speed on new systems quickly and work effectively alongside your implementation team without a lengthy ramp-up. Our value is knowing how to design processes that work for your business and that the system can support — and knowing the difference between a process that should be standardized and one that shouldn't be touched because it's core to how your business operates. Those are different skills from system configuration, and most organizations need both.
Will this slow down our implementation if we're already mid-initiative?
Briefly, at the start. Getting oriented to where the initiative stands and where the process gaps are takes some time. The net effect is an accelerated initiative, because unresolved process problems don't stay contained. They surface during configuration, testing, and training, where they're significantly more disruptive and expensive to address than they would have been earlier.
How is this different from what our implementation consultants are already doing?
Implementation consultants are typically aligned to a specific platform — many are employees or partners of the software vendor. They are skilled at configuring that system and know how it has been implemented elsewhere. What they are generally not is business process experts with the independence to question whether the requirements they're given reflect the right processes in the first place. Victoria Fide's focus is on your business, not the platform. That means asking whether a process aligns to best practices, whether it fits the way your operations actually work, and whether it preserves what makes your business distinctive — questions a vendor-aligned consultant has little incentive to ask.
The Right Starting Point Depends on Where You Are.
Engagements are scoped to your situation — fixing process problems before or during an initiative costs a fraction of what they cost to fix after one.
Also on this topic
Preparing for an ERP implementation? ERP Implementation Readiness
Already mid-implementation? ERP Implementation Advisory and Support
Additional Resources
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