Okay, it’s been a few tough years. And if you don’t want to follow my line of thinking that the best opportunities and ideas come out of the toughest of times then maybe you’ll be willing to at least give thought to another one of my observations. I believe that summer tends to be a slower time in our industry and because of that it is the perfect season to look inward. Look inward to how you might do things differently. Do things just a little better. We know that improving day-to-day procedures leads to cost savings, greater efficiencies, faster response to market changes (yes, it will change) and enables better customer service.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a micro business or a sizable organization, improving HOW you do things and taking time to explore your processes is the first step. Small things such as creating activities (to do’s) with a routing plan to ensure it follows an automated, predictable path can make a big difference. Implementing things like routing service requests to the appropriate individual(s) who then resolve the issue or process the request. Think of invoicing, mailing and customer issues. Your list is probably pretty long if you take some time to sit and think it through. Just remember, a business process is simply related and organized tasks that an individual, department or entire company follows to produce a certain result. It’s that simple. It’s what everyone does. The key is to make it somewhat automated.
The acronym for “how things get done” is BPM – Business Process Management. I don’t have to tell you that there are more ways to do this than you probably think, and it can be a daunting task to weed through the choices. My advice? Start small. Identify a few tasks that are being done repeatedly by some of your employees or yourself and draw out the workflow. I love to use Smart Draw software for this, but a pencil and paper work really well. And there’s no shortage of options for workflow/business process software. I also recommend people take a look at E-Myth. As far as I’m concerned, for most of you, the books and program would provide the best foundation for your business or any organization.
As a shameless plug, we’ve had our workflow software out for years. So I can tell you developing and implementing a useful strategy goes way beyond selecting software tools. One of the keys is to make sure there’s a great (notice I didn’t say “good”) working relationship between you and your IT folks. It must be a true team in every sense of the word. They need to be responsive of course, but they also need to be able to guide you along the process development, not just put the building blocks of the system in place.
And my last bit of advice. To make sure everyone is pleased when you hit the “on” button, start to create the system by picking pain points that will be noticeable if you fix them. Interview everyone to find pain spots you may not know exist. If you’re a micro business or sole practitioner, interview your peers and clients. BPM is one area where making small improvements can have really big payoffs.
