Efficiency is fundamental to effective and profitable operations
Efficiency is fundamental to effective and profitable operations – and a lack of it can be the cause of critical failures. The more efficient the business is, the more smoothly it will run and the happier and more productive employees will be. The end result is a boost to profitability and internal processes that support growth. At the heart of efficiency is having workflows that ground and improve your operational processes in-house.
Establishing workflows in-house
1. Identify your current processes
Take a critical look at the way your business currently operates and identify all the key processes that support operations. Staff feedback will be crucial to assessing what is working and what needs to change, from the ordering processes to operational systems. Look at each individual workflow process, what’s involved and where the current pain points are – and then step back and review how they fit into operations as a whole.
2. Evaluate the results
Once you know what’s involved in your existing processes, and you’ve got valuable feedback from staff on how those processes operate, you can begin to evaluate all the data. You might find, for example, that order fulfillment process is poor and employees feel that they spend too much time trying to get missing details from the sales team. If your business is also experiencing a large number of customer complaints as a result of late delivery of orders then both these factors indicate that better order fulfillment workflow could fundamentally improve both staff and customer experience.
3. Where do your priorities lie?
Introducing new workflows for every area of the business at the same time will be time consuming and could also result in considerable chaos. A better approach is to rank the discoveries you’ve made in terms of order of priorities and then work on improving the most important first. The best way to rank processes is by results – which is likely to introduce the most efficiency, the most positive change for staff or the best service improvements for customers?
4. Defining new workflows
Creating a new workflow for an existing process will require casting a critical eye over the feedback and looking into exactly how that process currently functions. How could you streamline the process to convert it into an efficient workflow? This may involve elements of automation, removal of certain stages in the process or creating new, more comprehensive steps. When you feel you have a solid new workflow, ask those who will be using it day-to-day to try it out to identify any gaps or flaws that might exist.
5. Test and adjust
Once your new workflows are in use, a process of testing and adjustment takes place over time. A new workflow might be quickly absorbed by employees and work fantastically well – or it could have some serious stumbling blocks and staff may soon revert back to old routines. It’s important to stay conscious of how the workflow is being implemented and to make adjustments based on the impact it has.
Workflows can change the way that your business functions, making it more efficient and profitable and supporting greater growth. Get in touch with FinanSys today to find out more about KiSSFLOW for SunSystems workflows and the benefits for your business.
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