6 reasons to invest in your processes
There are so many activities required to run a business. Think managing payroll, generating contracts or invoices, maintaining CRMs, or even just scheduling meetings. And while you might be getting the job done ‘playing it by ear,’ you’re likely leaving money on the table.
Here’s why you should take a critical eye to your business processes and invest (time or money) in structuring them:
1 – Consistency
Clear processes breed consistency and quality. Take car manufacturers for instance. These companies provide explicit instructions for each model of vehicle to their assembly teams. These instructions ensure that every unit is identical and each customer receives the same quality product. The same goes for assembling the car’s components like belts, sparkplugs, and lights. Why not foster the same consistency in your business?
What’s more is that this principle is not specific to selling products. It’s also applicable to service business where activities like sales and media production can benefit so much from a blueprint for execution.
The bottom line: Consistent processes ensure that products and services meet the same quality standards every time, often leading to improved customer satisfaction.
2 – Continuous improvement
Documenting your business processes is the foundation for continuous improvement. With clear phases and steps outlined, it’s much easier to identify what’s working and what’s not.
Sales activities are a great example of this. Moving a lead from discovery into closing a deal is a multi-step process that varies from business to business. With a structured blueprint for the sales process it becomes much easier to identify where you’re losing customers. It could be as early as the first touchpoint, or as late as the proposal. Either way, there’s no way to effectively improve the process without knowing the locations of the bottlenecks.
That’s the beauty of a carefully-constructed and well-documented process. With a framework in place, it becomes much easier to identify bottlenecks and quickly implement improvements..
Which leads to the next benefit…
3 – Efficiency
Structuring even the simplest process can create immense efficiencies. Consider my new personal task of finding a wedding venue for example.
Before whipping up a strategic process, I was utilizing Google search and “vibes” to decide whether to tour a venue. It wasn’t until my fiancé and I spent half a day driving to, touring, and driving home from a venue, that we realized it was far over budget. And from this timely mistake, a game plan was born!
The new process is three simple steps: first email the venue for pricing info, then run the numbers to establish if the venue is within budget, and if it passes the test, schedule a visit!
This may sound incredibly obvious, but you’d be amazed how many “intuitive” tasks could be made more efficient with a 3-5 step outline… especially when you’re part of a team. Now, my fiancé and I have an agreed-upon process to ensure we won’t waste any time on venues that don’t meet our requirements.
In other words, defining your processes can reduce the time and effort required to complete tasks by eliminating unnecessary steps and redundancies.
4 – Scalability and Growth
Once your process is defined, it’s so much easier to replicate successful elements, iterate upon less successful ones, and scale your business.
As your customers, revenue, and teams grow, the existence of well-defined processes eliminates some of the biggest growing pains that other businesses face, including…
5 –Training & Onboarding
With growth comes the need for more employees, and training can be a huge time sink for small business owners. Instead of relying on one-on-one training for 100% of onboarding, lean into your new process documentation to train your staff. You will not only save yourself time, but ensure that each new employee learns the exact same standard operating procedures. No more knowledge gaps between teammates!
6 – Improved Communication & Collaboration
As a result of everyone operating on the same training, terminology, and set of procedures, your team is able to communicate so much more effectively. An effective process is like a language and it’s so important that your entire team speaks the same one.