The role of processes is often overlooked by business owners and teams. Even on paper, they are often an afterthought. As a result, the gap between nice clean charts and reality grows alarmingly fast. Process maturity and conformity, though, are important vitals of the company. As blood tests, they indicate when something is wrong and a thorough investigation is required. And help business recover.
The gentle art of manual steering
One of my first days in a new role, and I was thrilled (on Friday same week a colleague treated me to their personal whisky stash, but that’s another story). And somewhere in the afternoon, my C-level manager and me came together with another analyst to perform a daily ritual - highly personalised case-by-case manual customer approvals. We discussed each one out of five.
It was all fun and games after that, until it turned into a cutthroat race against time. The number of approvals grew steadily day-to-day, month-to-month. That was great for business development but became suffocating to execute. The approval process stretched far beyond 30 minutes booked in my calendar. More, it threatened to take over my whole afternoon. I literally felt Customer Success breathing down my neck.
By that time I already had successfully accelerated customer onboarding time threefold. This one was going to be my next optimisation project.
Shifting the mindset
In a small company process bottlenecks are easily overlooked. Everyone’s in involved in everything, eyes are burning with passion and ideas are flying. CEO sits in the same row, eager to learn team’s opinions. No wonder this shortcut is often abused.
Despite having authority, I often felt like a strict mom trying to enforce the bedtime, when kids would go to the more laid-back dad to relax the rules. So when Customer Success didn’t like my decision, they marched directly to C-level (and I was right there, hearing them talk). Imagine the waist of time, especially as my opinion was usually confirmed. We were certainly lacking criteria and a clear chain of command.
Getting CEO’s buy-in to reroute such requests back to me was easy. Putting the team into the mindset of scaling - not so much, but it was worth it. That also signified an important difference between the real tech company and the one with sprawled salesforce mimicrying as such - increasing efficiency with the same headcount. Compromises are inevitable and streamlined processes will let some good ones slip through the cracks, but the growth compensates for it.
Keeping the core engaged
Well-developed processes are not just about supporting rapid growth. They are the muscle that lets the company pull its weight. And increase it.
Processes are aligned with the business strategic and tactic goals. While they are comfortable for the individual employees, processes also work as they come and go. The process framework is strong and flexible, allowing the company to carry on and pivot when needed. Like a human body, when it’s generally fit, can turn to any activity, the company can be sure the basics are covered. It can also swiftly amend or add new processes and remove redundant ones when the opportunity arises.
In my case, the optimisation had gone through. Daily meetings with tensions worthy of a final game in a World Cup were replaced with quick-and-easy routine that left me open for other important projects. Moreover, when a time came for me to train new team members, it was easy to build up on documentation and process maps. So was for Sales with the onboarding flow I’d created for them.
The growing importance
This was well before the pandemic hit, making agility a must-have. The core principles I build or improve the business processes now haven’t changed, though. Multiple crises have highlighted the strongest trends and process optimisation is among them.
Above, I already explained how the lack of processes can spiral quickly out of control. I also covered more examples where uncoordinated foray into the industry or poorly built business model led to disastrous outcomes. At the other end of the spectrum there are superstars whose resilience is envied by billions. But in between, as bell-curve dictates, there are many companies that can significantly accelerate their growth and survival chances when they get business process improvement right.
As disclosed by Capgemini, 74% companies, who have introduced business process management to automate work, got positive results. 78% respondents reported increase in flexibility. Investing time and money in process improvement pays off. It’s backed up by data. And I myself have seen it over and over in organisations from different sizes and industries.
As a final though, I’d suggest looking at the processes and their improvement as a living breathing thing rather than a solid immovable structure. While they do follow certain best practices, the company alone decides how to build them to maximise growth and flexibility.
