You take the time to map out your processes, get feedback from the team, evaluate best practices, and then document them. Now you’re all set, processes have been improved, documented, employees have been trained and the business should run more efficiently, right? Not so fast! Now that we’ve documented them, why are we not seeing results? The reason could be implementation.
Understanding processes and documenting is one part of the equation. The next step is implementing and quantifying. This is the step that requires daily, weekly, and monthly vigilance to watch the process, see if employees are following it, and seeing if that process is creating the desired results to accomplish your business goals.
For example, let’s say you are a building contractor and you are trying to decrease the amount of time it takes a prospect to move through your estimation process. In order to do this you need to know or approximate at the very beginning how long that process is taking. So let’s say you guess that it takes 2 weeks to move a prospect through estimation. Through process improvement you find ways to decrease that time to 1 week (via better forms and techniques for the sales team, better technology for the estimators, better company communication practices, etc.). You write the new ways down and pass the new process along to your estimators. The business result that you expect from this practice is to be able to bring in more sales by moving customers through the process faster. But if you aren’t monitoring that process, estimation can slip right back to 2 weeks again.
As the business owner, you need to:
- know what is happening in your business,
- motivate employees to use the processes and add in their own ways to improve it,
- and monitor that the company is getting the results you expect.
If you aren’t getting the business results you expect, there are a couple of options:
- you may need to re-evaluate the process,
- employees may need additional training or you may need more highly qualified employees,
- or you might need to look at how other business processes are affecting this one, such as the sales process.
Working on your business takes discipline and constant monitoring. If you are too involved in the day-to-day then yes, this can be difficult to find time to do. But if you are growing your business and desiring to make it transferrable, then you are hiring people to complete the day-to-day and you are working on the business. This is what makes your business a valuable asset.