Business processes are devised and refined to help a team or brand achieve core objectives, and in turn, its organisational goals. Fundamental in enabling a company to progress and evolve, streamlined business processes optimise functionality, and drive ambition essentially increasing a product or services’ net worth.
As a brand grows and develops, the way production is organised and how that product or service is produced and retailed evolves and becomes increasingly complex. Business processes need to be analysed and refined, ensuring that they are consistent with the brand's operational plan. A product's lifecycle should be managed optimally to ensure it remains in line with customer requirements. To this end, operations must keep in step with the brand's evolving strategic direction. If business processes are poorly planned and executed, customers will see through this and lose faith, loyalty will falter, and profits will fall. To establish a reputable company, the business processes of a brand need to be entirely understood by relevant staff and developed.
SMART is an acronym for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound, SMART objectives are a great way of ensuring that a brand's business plan is developed and realised in a structured way. SMART Objectives help to cohesively marry up process initiatives with business values. First and foremost, communication between team members, existing clients, and potential leads must be mastered to lay down the foundations of each business improvement project. Secondly, ensuring a brand's long terms objectives are fully understood and appreciated by team members will enable them to really work as a team and adopt key business processes that are essential to the firm's success.
Minimise waste
Refine, refine, refine! Reducing waste in materials and processes will not only eliminate unnecessary costs but will also help maximise efficiency. By cutting out processes that do not add value, the money that is saved can be reinvested in more relevant activities. Making money isn't just about increasing sales. Preserving profits by maximising revenue-generating tasks and retiring unnecessary and wasteful activities is essential if business processes are to be optimised. Ensuring every staff member is trained and developed to become the best they can be will also help a brand achieve its potential. Introducing quality control in business processes can also help to reduce waste by reducing mistakes and helping to deliver high standards.
The customer is always right
Positive customer experience correlates with growth and helps enhance the reputation of a brand. Building brand loyalty also results in increased word-of-mouth recommendations and helps increase your customer base. Recognising the positives and negatives experienced by customers before, during, and after the time the sale is made can inform improvement in business processes. Make sure feedback is always collected and the associated data charted. The impact of pricing levels, discounts, and loyalty schemes can be analysed to help target investment to help enhance sales. Managing the sales process will inevitably improve sell-through rates.
Chart and track your processes
Use every tool and chart you have at your disposal to measure and track all business transactions, from inputs to outputs, and retain those which are useful, and get rid of those which are not. Once charted in this way, the impact of business processes can be more readily predicted. Consider automating your charting metrics to free up human input. This will allow your staff to focus on the most important issues of the day. Stage quarterly reviews to re-analyse data and re-evaluate operational detail and present the conclusions you reach at your critical management meetings.
