Any business big or small relies on processes to achieve desired outcomes. Most processes are drawn up from the experiences of one/more people, are poorly documented and suffer from oversight or execution errors.
Studies suggest that formalizing processes directly impacts the business’ bottom line. Investing in a formal and custom process management platform may be your biggest contribution to boosting company profitability. (zvolv.com provides a no code, custom and easy to use solution for precisely this). Here are 7 reasons why:
- Process documentation
Documenting your process is the biggest benefit of a formal system. Best practices and experience get written down and repeatably executed causing maximum efficiency and minimal errors.
- Delegation
With a formal process in place tasks can be easily delegated down the hierarchy freeing up valuable time of higher level employees for more productive activities. Cost of employee hiring is also directly affected as more junior employees can perform the tasks documented in the process.
- Improvement
A formal process lends itself to easier improvement. As more workflows are run through the process executives and decision makers can find and implement the improvements needed much more easily and once done these become part of the new process seamlessly.
- Efficiency
Inputs, outputs, next steps, owners and tasks all being known, documented and automatically moved forward increase the process efficiency thereby saving dollars. Studies of efficiency improvement using a tool like zvolv have shown an order of magnitude improvement in turn around times for processes automated in this manner.
- Communication
Communication is hard to track, mistakes happen and the ball gets dropped. A formal process management system automates communication, documents it and follows up until closed. Informal communication is best reserved for the water fountain.
- Training
Every extra minute spent in training is a minute that could be used to do the core work. However training is obviously very important. A formal process flow reduces training time and speeds up employee understanding of the process thereby freeing up more time for core activities. Its also easier to refer back to a formal process than track down a trainer or a supervisor for every question a trainee or new hire may have.
- Overview, decision making and understanding the bottlenecks
Most executives agree that the biggest hindrance to being able to improve profitability is just the fact that critical data and bottlenecks are hard to access and identify. A formalized process and workflow management software generates quick data in the form of dashboards and reports that are easy to access, analyze and take action on. This may be the most important reason for a formal process management software solution to be used.
