Maximizing Efficiency and Productivity: How Business Process Services Can Help
Your business processes are what bind your customers and team together. They are how you deliver your product or service, how you maintain business operations, and how to drive revenue.
It is important to establish business processes if you want to be independent from the day-to-day running of your company. This will allow you to delegate more work to your employees without having to manage them. There are many benefits to using processes.
A consistent customer experience is created by business processes.
You know what you will get no matter where you live in the world. While the menu may be slightly different and the decor might change depending on where you are, the basic concept is the same. Any McDonald’s will provide a pleasant dining experience that meets your expectations.
Do you think the same can be said about your business?
Two ways that processes create consistent experiences for customers are:
They ensure that every customer receives the same experience with your service each time. This is especially important for customers who buy repeatedly from you, keep in touch over time, or subscribe to your service.
Second, business process services create consistent experiences across customers. You want your friend to feel the same way. If you rely on referrals to find new work, this is crucial.
What can a consistent experience do to help you grow?
- Customers are less likely to be frustrated.
- You have a lower churn, which means you have more money to invest in growth activities.
- Referrals, testimonials, and reviews are better.
- It is simpler and faster to train and promote employees using business processes.
Most businesses spend a lot on training new employees and contractors. Sometimes, employees aren’t able to create the maximum value for their business within six months or one year after they are hired.
Standard operating procedures make it simple to add new employees to your team as soon as they are hired. It is faster and easier for everyone if you can point at a document and say “Follow the procedure”, rather than having to hold their hand throughout the entire process.
Combining your SOPs with a comprehensive registry (a map of all SOPs) can empower employees to solve their own problems, figure out next steps, and not take you away from growth-oriented activities.
Improve Efficiency in Business Processes
You will find very few ways to improve the way you and your team work together when you are attempting to create a process. This is especially true when you are writing about a process that your company has grown into.
Let’s take, for example, a look at your email marketing plan. One employee claims that they manually copy email addresses from the lead generation tool to their email marketing tool each morning. It’s a wasteful use of time for your employee. The lead generation tool will automatically push the addresses to your email marketing tool through a simple integration.
This example shows you how inefficiency saved a worker a few minutes each day. This saves time and allows the employee to add value to your company in other ways.
It wouldn’t have been possible if you didn’t look at each step to create a process.
It is impossible to overstate the benefits of efficiency.
- You have more time to invest in growth-oriented work.
- Increase your spending power on growth strategies.
- There is less to worry about.
Business processes help you stay compliant and secure.
You likely have security and regulatory concerns like many other businesses. Protect yourself against legal liability and safeguard your data from misuse or theft.
These concerns can lead to a lot more overhead. Either you need someone to ensure you are following the law or you will need tools to protect your data. By creating internal controls to protect your business, processes can help promote compliance and security.
You might, for example, add a step to a standard operating procedure to backup data. An SOP could be created to address security threats. You can include a step in an employee’s workflow that will remind them of a specific form you need to complete for the government.
If you plan to scale up, you will need to address any of these issues.
Business processes increase agility.
It’s clear that businesses that are agile and can quickly respond to changes in information or conditions are more likely to succeed.
It can be difficult to bring about real change as a leader or owner of a business. You must train your employees individually if you want them to change. It can take time for your company’s new ideas to be implemented if there are multiple people working between you and your frontline employees.
You can make a huge impact on your organization’s processes by documenting them and keeping them in one place.
If you are in an industry that changes frequently, flexibility is essential. You might find that your regulatory landscape is changing every month. You might have multiple vendors, depending on which deals you are able to get. These are the cases where quick changes to your standard operating procedures can make a big difference in the way your team behaves.
As the leader of the company, you have full control over all levels of the business.
You can also use SOPs that have been used for similar tasks as templates to create new ones. This could save you (the SOP author) time, depending on your work.
Increase team satisfaction.
It is difficult to measure a happy team or a comfortable culture within the company, but leaders will tell you that they have a significant impact on your organization’s ability and potential to grow.
Satisfied employees don’t just make work more enjoyable. They are more productive and engaged in their work. They are also more likely to stay with your company for longer periods of time, which means that you will get greater value from their training.
Your team will be more satisfied with their work if they have all their instructions and materials in one spot. They are able to complete their tasks and fulfill their functions without having to rely on their supervisors. SOPs are a clear way for your team to define their roles, but they also give you the freedom to work independently.
Processes create a culture that encourages continuous improvement. Your team will be able to identify areas where they can improve their work if their tasks are clearly documented. You can make your team more efficient if you are open to their suggestions.