How to leverage Business Systems
How Every business manager use business systems to delegate business activities.
Building Your First Business Systems – Where Do You Start?
Look at the business for essential business systems for organisation profitability. e.g. Marketing System, Sales System, Customer Fulfillment System, Billing.
Identify who the subject expert is for each system. The goal is to record how the system works (text, audio, video). Confirm the documentation with the expert.
Test the system using other people in the department.
4 Simple Steps to Developing Business Systems
- Define what is success for the system. What are the tolerances allowed. What is acceptable as a failure rate? What is the acceptable throughput?
- Note all the techniques used by the system master that save time and money.
- Can the documented system be performed by others satisfactorily? The relates to scalability.
- Can the system be run with minimal supervision? This will free up the managers time.
How do I create systems and processes for my business?
Look at the repeated tasks in the organisation. Which systems and processes are critical for the organisation? Document the main systems and tasks for quality, governance, disaster recovery, redundancy, scaling and workplace health & safety.
The system expert can perform the task explaining the activity while other can video record it. This can be transcribed. An interview can also be performed.
The documentation needs to be in an accessible place for other staff to refer to.
What are the a must have systems in a business?
- How are customer acquired
- How are customer managed with product & service delivery
- How are customers billed
What is a business process?
A process is a series of steps for a defined goal. e.g. Accept an order, print the receipt, package the order, ship the order, email the customer its shipped.
How to standardize business processes?
Business processes can be standardized using templates for documentation, central storage of documented systems that is accessible, including performance requirements, quality requirements and having document version control.
Regular project templates can refer to system documentations as a pre-requisite, quality and performance standard.
What is the best way of documenting business processes?
Documenting business processes ideally requires a central storage location accessible by the staff. e.g. Intranet website, SharePoint website, Wiki... Documentation needs be able to be updated by the subject expert and documentation staff including version control.
Documentation should have hyperlinks that can be shared on other documents. e.g. Project requirements, staff induction instructions, quality management...
How should I design a workflow process for my business?
Look at process workflow in terms of steps required, checks required and throughput. Can the process be arranged for less manual handling? Can automation or Internet of Things help with data collection and quality measurement? Look at the travel distance of all the components. Identify who is responsible for each stage and how handover is performed. Can it be done better?
What is one way you improve the business process?
Having the organisation main process documented including how its measured for success provides a critical KPI for how the business is performing. e.g. Orders, inventory, back orders, shipped products, revenue.
What are the steps for building a quality management system?
Identify the frequent tasks within an organisation. Document the most frequent and critical tasks first. If you are planning to outsource any tasks then they also need documentation. List the inputs, activities, quality measures, tests to perform, success criteria. Project management and quality management need to be separate. Quality management may include test results and log files. Quality should be part of the organisations governance with feedback to management.
