Professional Business Processes Getting everyday procedures to run smoothly
12 PACIFIC BUSINESS PARTNERS JUNE 2023
( GrowthWheel ®) – It is difficult to point to one thing that makes one entrepreneur more successful than another . The best entrepreneurs , who create the strongest businesses are characterized by being good at everything . This means that , besides having a great business concept , you also need to have good organization , business operations , customer relations , and that you make money . So how can we continue to be better at solving the many tasks , with which we , along with our employees , are presented daily ?
What do you need to become better at ?
When wanting to “ become better at everything ,” the first step is to gain an overview of the work that actually takes place in the business , or rather : which business processes or business procedures do the employees spend time on and which ones generate an income for the business ? Collectively , all of these procedures create value for the customers in the end and therefore we refer to them as the value chain of the business , this is illustrated here :
Which procedures and activities are included in your business ’ s value chain depends on your type of industry . If you are a production business for example , some of the important processes will be “ Product design ,” “ Purchases ,” or “ Logistics ”, while in a knowledge business , “ Project development ,” “ Project management ” and “ Result monitoring / evaluation ” are part of the value chain . There are also business processes that are common to most types of industry , for example , “ Sales ,” “ Marketing ,” and “ Customer Service .” Finally , the value chain also contains a series of processes , referred to as support processes , because they relate to other processes . Here you will find headings such as “ Financial Management ,” “ Personnel Management ” and “ Quality Assurance .”
For startups it is not unusual that a closer look at business processes will reveal that the important processes still need to be defined and planned . This is completely natural because the entrepreneur has been preoccupied with the most critical processes during the business startup phase .
However , to take the business to the next level , it is necessary to become better at even more business processes . How do you do that ?
Documentation gives an overview
The first step in professionalizing your business procedures is to map them out to get an overview .
One simple way of doing this is to pin a big poster on the wall and list all assignments and activities on individual post-it notes . Another way to get an overview is to register all the big and small tasks performed during the week and ask your employees to do the same . This means registering everything from phone conversations , internal meetings , emails to paperwork etc . since it will help to identify all the business ’ activities . With a poster on the wall or a list in your hand , it will be easier to define the business ’ overall processes and divide the business tasks into logical sub-categories .
The next step in describing the business procedures is to dig into the individual processes , describe them in detail and document them . For most startups it does not make sense to document all business processes , so instead you can start with the critical ones , the areas in which you can sense the possibility of improvement here and now . For some businesses this area will be the production process or delivery , and for others it will be all the sales-related tasks .
Documentation can take several different forms : a check list , a process description , a business manual , a company policy , or something else . The easiest way to document a business process is to make checklists . Whether you are talking about lists of materials needed for a sales meeting , setting up a computer or the integration of a new employee , the checklist is a very
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