It seems that every company owner or executive is always looking for more business tools to use to cram more hours into the day. The average business owner works somewhere around 50 hours a week, with some increasing that amount to 60 hours. Almost all business owners say that they work at least one weekend regularly.
There is so much to get done and limited time in which to do it.
As you continue to grow and evolve your business, one tool will continue to serve you by cutting down work hours and increasing efficiency. That is systematization.
Effective business systems:
- Reduce workloads
- Save money
- Build efficiency
- Improve customer satisfaction
- Support business growth
- Better company culture
- Allow one to delegate
- Make training and onboarding easier
- Provide consistency within a company
They do this by creating a pre-defined way to handle routine situations in your company. Not only does this cut down on mistakes made within your business, but it also makes employee training much more manageable.
What are business systems?
Business systems are those step-by-step processes and procedures which show how one completes an action within your business. Overall systematization includes mapping how the entire company works, while more granular processes and procedures provide step-by-step instructions of how one gets from point a to point b.
Processes and procedures can be used for general and specific tasks, including:
- Onboarding new employees
- The overall sales process
- Defining how a sales lead will be followed up
- How an invoice gets processed
- The steps of product development
- Mapping out how meetings will go
- Structuring how your team can achieve business goals and long-term targets
Every step you take in your business can be set out in processes and procedures so that your employees can undertake tasks without your input – and without threatening your product quality.
How to build processes and procedures into your business
Business systematization is a significant undertaking. However, if you’d like to free up time and get more done in your day, it’s necessary. Here is a brief overview of how to begin creating processes and procedures to build a better business:
Step 1: Identify
The first step is to identify the initial area to tackle as you begin systematization. At Business Success Consulting Group, we recommend starting with an area that often seems to be in chaos or needs your help. This is the area that has the most “fires” or constantly needs oversight.
Step 2: Collaborate
Tell the team it’s time to get organized. Often, this is a collaborative process. You will need to get your team together to look at the big picture of how actions are completed and get a consensus on how to perform essential functions.
Step 3: Test
Once you have a consensus on how things are done, test it out. Make sure the system works in the order written. Look for any holes or places where a customer, employee, or critical piece of information will get lost.
Step 4: Revise
Revise the systems based on the data you collected during the testing period. Once this is done, you need to test the system again to check for anything you missed and ensure the revisions resolve any issues revealed during the first test run.
Step 5: Implement
Get everyone on board with using the new processes and procedures. Often, if systematization is done collaboratively, implementation is easy because everyone had a chance to provide feedback.
Step 6: Expand
Take on the next area that could most use organization. This could be another area that needs consistent supervision, or it could be an area that is always in the back of your mind.
Two vital factors to keep in mind
As you create business systems, it’s important to keep the following two factors in mind:
1. Make sure your processes and procedures are accessible
Your system needs to be accessible to those who need it – which means that a printout of a process is not good enough. Keep your processes and procedures in an accessible, digital space.
2. Regularly review and update processes and procedures.
As your business evolves and grows, so must your systems. Set up a process for updating and reviewing your systems. We wrote a “how-to” for this in a previous post which you can find here.
Does business systematization look challenging? You don’t need to do it alone. Contact the experts at Business Success Consulting Group. We are here to work with your team and get your business running smoothly.
