Why are Business Processes Critical to the of Ongoing Success of a Business?
A business process is a set of activities and tasks that, that once completed, will accomplish a business goal. This can include but is not limited to:
- Human resource management including employment, training, and staff retention.
- Production of your product or service from beginning to end.
- Sale of your product or service including order fulfilment.
- Procurement including making it easy for suppliers to work with you and you to work with them.
- Customer relationship management including customer retention.
- Financial management including invoice processing, work in progress and payroll.
Processes are critical to achieving the end goal in an efficient, effective and economical way. Additionally, they provide:
- Roadmap / documentation to show how a business function works which doubles up as a training mechanism for new staff and a manual if a key person is suddenly absent from the business.
- A mechanism for identifying duplication and waste.
Business Processes should map the critical path for achieving a task and be reviewed and monitored on a regular basis to ensure that duplication and waste have not crept in from:
- Updated or new technologies, law changes, environmental changes, etc.
- Existing or new employees not following the processes and doing what they think is best such as only obtaining one quote for a major procurement item. This can occur from a number of reasons including lack of training, lack of supervision or just plain old laziness.
Good processes are about flow and continuous improvement.
This is illustrated by the “Continuous Cycle of Business Process Improvement” chart.
For more information about business processes and business process improvement please contact me at john@intotheblue.co.nz or (021) 625-871.
For more information on creating or improving a business model please call John on (021) 625-871, and further more information please visit Into the Blue.
