Many companies are pivoting to provide new online or remote services. Businesses are creating classes, publishing books, and providing apps that allow customers to do what they used to do in-stores or in person.
Is your company among those that have pivoted to meet the needs of your customers this year? It may be time for your leadership team to reexamine the underlying policies, processes, and procedures you are using to support the new business model.
Creating Stability Within Your Company
Many businesses are still trying to find their footing in this altered economy and atmosphere. Business owners feel obligated to their employees and customers to find new ways to provide products and services, no matter what is going on in the world.
So many businesses have used this time to shift their focus constructively.
One distillery shifted from providing distilled alcohol to hand sanitizer. A yoga instructor stopped offering in-person class and began to offer online classes. A home designer pivoted from in-person design services to online design classes for DIYers. An art gallery moved all of its operations online with high-end photographs of each piece, art print sales, and involvement in local charities.
There is no one way to pivot your business model. But there is one way to support that change and provide a firm foundation for any high-level alterations to your overall business.
That is establishing and updating policies, processes, and procedures.
Policies
Your company runs on a variety of policies, whether these are written down and established or intrinsic to the company culture. There is one way that you do business – and a million ways that you do not do business.
If your business has shifted, some of your firmly established policies may have changed as well.
It is vital that you and your management team reexamine company policies.
Ask yourselves, have you changed:
- How you do business?
- How you communicate with customers and/or employees?
- Your product or service?
- How you deliver your product or service?
- The overall workplace? (Perhaps you have more remote workers or have had to alter the physical space in which employee work.)
- How you provide customer support?
- How you provide employee support?
- Hiring/firing procedures?
- Employee training procedures?
- Approval processes?
If you answered “yes,” then you and your team should reconfigure or rework company policies.
Processes and Procedures
You are reading the article because your company has pivoted in some way. That means that your old processes and procedures no longer make sense for what you are doing.
Now is the time to review your processes and procedures and archive those that are no longer useful. Once you have identified the areas that no longer have adequate processes and procedures, fill in those gaps with your leadership’s new processes and procedures.
It’s very likely that you have already established many new foundational processes and procedures. Still, your company needs them firmly in place so that all employees and customers can gain a cohesive experience when interacting with your business.
Are you ready to update business policies, processes, and procedures? Contact the process experts at Business Success Consulting Group to get started.
