Imagine this: You own a furniture distribution business and Sue, your head of operations, and Fred, your HR manager, both have food poisoning after a company retreat. Its end of month, so there are customers calling to find out about their delivery time, payroll has to be run so your people get paid, and there are truck drivers waiting for their schedules. While you knew at a high level their job profiles and responsibilities you don’t quite know how to: run payroll; how to check delivery schedules to correctly answer the customers calling; or direct the delivery drivers. It’s a chaos filled day as you try to find Sue and Fred’s next of kin at your organization to figure out those things to make things run smoothly again.
Why the chaos? There are many small individual business processes you use to achieve your goals that you are not always aware of. First step to improvement is to understand what they are.
What is a business process? In simple terms, a business process is a series of events and tasks which are connected together to satisfy some component of your company’s business activity. The business activity’s purpose, for example, may be designed to provide a product, a service, or a response to a customer. This activity may include internal customers, (i.e. managers and employees) or external customers of your business.
Which areas of company do business processes support? Business processes support various areas of your company such as operations, sales, finance, purchasing, human resources, payroll, I.T., maintenance, and other supported departments of your organization. They serve, or have dependencies, among multiple departments within an organization, and may be very simple or complex in nature.
Are Your Internal Processes Documented? Surprisingly, some organizations actually have very few of their processes defined and documented. Many companies may instead rely on the hope that a seemingly routine, tried-and-true process will continue to work as usual, and that those held responsible to keep the processes on track and supported will continue to be available.
In our imaginary scenario, what if one or more of your key staff members were to suddenly leave your organization? Are the processes that they are responsible for well-defined and documented? If so, do you know where to access that documentation? If not, what would the impact be to your business? What would the consequence be to your business if one of your outdated systems that you’re using, well behind on its updates and receiving limited support from the vendor, would crash and make your payroll, financial reports or customer deliveries come to a screeching halt? Are the details of those current systems documented within your processes?
Wouldn’t it be great to be able to easily refer to a library of your documented processes to evaluate efficiencies, make any process adjustments, support the investment in new technology and automation, or satisfy the requirements of an audit?
8 Good Reasons to Document Your Business Processes and Keep Them Up To Date:
- Evaluate and continuously improve upon the efficiencies of your processes.
- React to changes required in the flow of transactions, assignment of tasks, dependencies and events and be able to make timely adjustments accordingly.
- Respond efficiently to disruptions in your human resources due to key staff turnover and uncontrollable events.
- Add complexity to existing processes by building upon your documented baseline procedures.
- Deliver repeatable value to other similar types of new processes that need definition and documentation within your business.
- Build upon your transfer of knowledge and improved communication within your organization.
- Utilize a business process documentation standard or template to achieve consistency, organization and continuity among your business processes.
- Support the adoption, development and execution of best practices – adhering to the best ways and using reliable systems to perform your processes.
Given the benefits of documenting your business and operational processes, don’t wait for a chaotic situation to occur before you begin. Take a proactive measure to be prepared for unforeseen circumstances that can adversely impact your business.
Find out how StarGarden can improve your HR processes in our Free eBook: A Better Way !
