Streamline Your Business Processes

I'm working with a client to streamline some of his business processes. Employees are relying on individuals rather than on the process to complete a task. That doesn't sound like a problem. But what happens if an individual leaves the company? Is the process strong enough and streamlined enough to allow business to continue as usual?

Even solo-preneurs or independent professionals use processes within their business. Think about how you bring on a new client or send invoices. Each one of those is an individual process. As you expand and bring in help, or outsource, it's important to have processes written down.

It takes a few minutes to write the process down, including all of the little details that are obvious to you. The payoff is that you have a reference for any employee or outsourced personnel you bring on to help with the business.

If the process looks complicated on paper you might want to take a look at redesigning that process. It is not as hard as it sounds. There are usually small things you can do that will help to streamline the steps you take.

Think about where you might have the same person do more than one task, or where one task could be eliminated or combined with another. Is there a way to track what is happening so you don't lose sight of where you or your employees are in the process?

Ask yourself what the process looks like from the customers' perspective. Answering that question may help you identify ways to streamline the process for them and for you.

How do you get buy-in from your employees when making process changes? Ask them how they might like to see the process change. Assure them that changing the process won't lead to letting people go or reducing responsibilities.

When the employees give you their suggestions act on them. You don't have to utilize all of them but give each one careful consideration. The individuals going through the process often have out of the box ideas you may not have thought of.

As solo-preneurs we don't always consider the fact that someone may need to step in and help us out at some point. If you have your processes written down it's easy for them to keep the work flowing even if you are not able to for some reason.

Streamlining and documenting your processes can take time and energy but the payoffs are well worth the work.

How Business Process Outsourcing Can Improve Your Work Efficiency

Business process outsourcing can improve your work efficiency and productivity and has therefore become a popular business strategy. It is a truly beneficial and cost-effective option for businesses striving to improve their business efficiency and return on investment.

Save Time and Money through Business Process Outsourcing

Businesses operating in different sectors are finding they can focus better on their core business tasks by outsourcing their non-core processes to a reliable BPO company. Every possible process of a business can be outsourced. This includes

- Transcription (medical/legal/business) - Medical billing and coding - Website development - Search engine marketing (SEO, PPC, Social Networking, and more) - Data conversion - Data entry - Document digitization - Virtual back office (outsourced positions) - Call center support

Managing a business has become much easier with the outsourcing of such processes to BPO companies. A lot of time and effort goes into carrying out non-core business tasks. Any business would need to invest in additional manpower and infrastructure to perform these tasks. The service providing companies have made things easier, and there is no need to spend your valuable time and resources on non-core business tasks. Outsourcing business processes allows you more time to manage your business efficiently and can take it to the next level.

Thus businesses can gain a lot by outsourcing:

- Reduced overhead costs - Improved business efficiency - Savings of up to 30% to 40% on overhead - Saving manpower and training costs - Less investment in technology and infrastructure necessary for non-care tasks

The money saved through outsourcing can be re-invested to further expand your business and acquire new clients.

To get the most out of outsourcing, you need to partner with the right people. So, when you outsource, choose a reliable company with proven expertise.

Advantages of Working with a BPO Company

At present, there are several BPO companies providing effective and professional services to thousands of businesses worldwide. Reliable and experienced business process outsourcing companies can help to improve your work efficiency in many areas. They carry out the entire back-end process efficiently. They can deliver high quality result as stringent quality assurance and checks are performed at every stage to ensure accuracy and completeness of the output. They also have all necessary measures in place to ensure security of the information and data you entrust them with. So whether you want to outsource long-term tasks or low volume tasks make sure you find a reliable business process outsourcing partner.

Opt For Business Process Automation Software

Running your own business is not that easy, most especially with today's competitive market. Indeed, you have plenty of competitors - both new and established ventures. But you must never lose hope in terms of achieving business success because there are ways on how you can make your business visible. To make your venture stand out, there are a lot of things you must bear in mind. You have to master various skills like negotiation skill, interpersonal and communication skills, and more. You really need to have what it takes to become successful. And you can do this by using some of the advanced technologies meant for your business.

Business process automation or BPA is a technologically-enabled automation of activities or perhaps services that accomplish a certain function or workflow. Business processes can be determined for a lot of different segments of company services which include sales, operations, human resources, supply chain, management and information technology.

So what does a business process mean?

Well, this is often started by a trigger like the filing of an expense report which will initiate a set of predefined workflow steps, or processes that will conclude with the employee who receives reimbursement. The ultimate goal of BPA is not just to automate such processes but also to simplify as well as improve business workflows. Know that BPA can stand alone, however it can also be a part of a larger business process management or BPM strategy.

Within BPM, automated business process are managed collectively in order to improve an organization's overall workflow when it comes to achieving greater efficiency, reducing human error, clarifying job roles and responsibilities, as well as adapting to changing business needs. BPM is actually a subset of infrastructure management that will maintain as well as optimize an organization's core operational components like equipment, data, and processes.

The BPA software will indeed cut the time and money spent on completing business processes. Automation software is being utilized in order reduce the costs related with completing certain processes. In other words, this is a way of reducing labour intensive activities. Manual triggers are being replaced by software that will integrate disparate systems in order to allow an end to end business process. Costs are then saved by the reduced need for manpower.

Benefits of BPA

Automation of these processes will help organizations to achieve operational efficiencies as well as provide visibility of processes to stakeholders. It will also provide uniformity across the organization and help making it more.

Business Process Modeling Waste Your Money

Millions of hours and hundred of millions of dollars are spent around the world each year by businesses of all sizes doing Business Process Modeling.

Why?

The senior executives involved in signing off the huge budgets for these projects would tell you of the wonderful benefits they will bring to their enterprises.

But Do They?

How many businesses are better off after these projects than they were before? The answer, very sadly is, very, very few!

But why not?

Sadly, most of these modeling projects make such fundamental errors that they are guaranteed to fail. Yet all of these errors are all completely avoidable. Any reasonably competent analyst following the basic rules for Business Modeling could avoid them! The crazy thing is that even the most "experienced" analysts in these projects GET THE BASICS WRONG!

The Five Cardinal Errors

The five most common errors made by business analysts are:

1. Incorrect or no basic definitions

2. Starting in the wrong place

3. Decomposing business processes

4. Modeling the wrong thing

5. Using grandiose names for flawed techniques

One of these errors would be bad enough but once you get Item 1 wrong you are going to get the rest wrong as well - a recipe for a very expensive failure!

But there is hope. There are some good analysts out there and they do an excellent job. Unfortunately, the means by which they achieve their good results is all locked away in their heads. Unless an analyst eager to learn their methods were to follow them around for three to six months, there would be no way of learning these methods. But there is one exception.

John Owens, a business modeling specialist with over twenty years international experience and learning has written down the very best techniques and given birth to the Integrated Modeling Method (IMM). Following IMM will enable all analysts to avoid the Five BPM Cardinal Errors and achieve extreme success in Business Modeling.

Lets take a closer look at the Five Cardinal Errors.

Cardinal Error 1: No Basic Definitions

Ask any three business analysts "what is a Business Process?". The immediate response that you will get is a loud guffaw and be told not to be so stupid, because "Everybody knows what a Business Process is!" But if you press them for a definition you will get at least four different answers and probably NONE of them will be right.

Hard to believe, but it is true. The reason for this is probably because analysis started off in the world of computing where jargon was, and still is, king. Nearly everybody in that world believes that they know exactly what each piece of jargon means and what they understand it to mean is exactly what everybody else understands - WRONG!

If they ever have a doubt about their understanding, they will never ask. That would be admitting that they do not know and would risk the ridicule of their peers! So they bluff it out year after year, increasing their time in the business but not their learning.

So lets turn the tide and give some basic but essential definitions that anyone doing Business Systems Analysis or Business Process Modeling needs to be able to give by heart.

Business Function: WHAT a business must do, disregarding HOW and WHO.

Mechanism: HOW and WHO does the WHAT of the Business Function.

Business Process: The order in which Business Functions need to be carried out.

Business Procedure: HOW and WHO does the WHAT in a Business Process.

Full definitions for all of these terms can be found at Integrated Modeling Method

Solution 1: Learn the basic definitions.

Cardinal Error 2: Starting in the Wrong Place

When analysts do not have the definitions for the basic elements for Business Modeling they inevitably start in the wrong place. Once you know that a Process is a definition of the order in which Business Functions need to be carried out, you then know that, before you can model Business Processes you need to have modeled the functions. Simple, but a step missed out by probably 70% of Process Modeling projects.

Solution 2: Start in the right place and model the Business Functions.

Cardinal Error 3: Decomposing Processes

When analysts start in the wrong place and miss out modeling the Business Functions, they then fall into the next trap and model high level Processes, which they then have to decompose to get them to some usable level of detail.

Decomposing processes is a practice to be AVOIDED AT ALL COSTS because 1) it generates up to 300% more diagrams than are necessary and 2) it is an inherently flawed technique when it comes to precedence logic. When you start with the Business Functions, you can do all decomposition in the Function Hierarchy and only draw processes for the Elementary Business Functions, resulting in far fewer diagrams, lots of time and money saved, no logic errors.

Solution 3: Decompose Functions not Processes.

Cardinal Error 4: Modeling the Wrong Thing

For analysts committing Cardinal Error 1, the errors get compounded. Because they cannot tell a Function from a Process, they also cannot tell a Function from a Mechanism. So they start modeling Processes - wrong in itself - they then compound their error by modeling Mechanisms (the HOW and the WHO) as steps in what they think is a Process and end up, without knowing it, modeling Procedure.

If you do not believe my do a search on the Internet for Process Modeling software and 70%, or more, of what you find will be Procedure Modeling software!

Solution 4: Again, learn the basic definitions!

Cardinal Error 5: Using Grandiose Names

Are Process Modeling projects going wrong because analysts are doing the wrong thing? They would say no! They would have you believe that it is because the whole subject is so complicated. But they have developed a magical method or tool (which will have some esoteric name), that is still more complicated, that will solve all of the problems - but it will cost more and will take longer!

No grandiose name can make an inherently flawed approach useable.

Solution 5: If it cannot be explained in plain english, it will not work!

Summary

• Most Process Modeling and BPM projects fail.
• The reason is that most analysts do not know the basics.
• Complex methods and esoteric names are no solution.
• The solution lies in bringing to the projects the power of simplicity and elegance. All analysis flourishes, and always has, when endowed with simplicity and elegance.

Business Process Improvement Continuous Improvement Cycle

After you have improved a business process, can you simply relax and move on to the next process? Not if you want to retain the strategic gains you achieved.

Continuous improvement (CI) can seem like a theoretical concept unless you have experience working with business processes. But, this is far from the truth. You should make sure that you do not move too hastily to improving the next process until you have created a CI plan for the process you just finished. Otherwise, you will find that the process works fine for a while. Then you will see it starting to slip backwards a little, then a little more, until it becomes outdated and you are back where you started.

This step is similar to losing weight. If you lost 20 pounds and never weighed yourself again, you will probably find the pounds slowly creeping back. The "maintenance phase" of a business process is just as important as that of a weight loss program.

There is plenty written about continuous improvement and you should think about the four steps in the improvement cycle: (1) evaluate, (2) test, (3) assess, and (4) execute.

Identify what you want to evaluate on a recurring basis - did your customer needs change, are the internal controls still working, or are you measuring the most important items? Try the changes out on a limited basis (test), determine if they worked (assess), and deploy them across the organization if successful (execute).

It helps to identify the following before you leave a process you just improved:

• the key topics you will evaluate
• how often you will revisit each topic
• the time frame when you will revisit topics

For example, you may choose to validate the customer needs every 12 months and plan to conduct that analysis in the second quarter of each year. Putting a plan and schedule in place will help to keep an improved business process at the forefront of your mind and make certain that you routinely look for improvement opportunities.

Developing a continuous improvement plan and schedule is the tenth step to improving the effectiveness, efficiency, and adaptability of your business.

The Value of a Business Process and the Consequences Without One

I have often found myself at odds within the real estate industry. As a top salesperson, I completely understand the perception that Realtors have of themselves and their industry. This view is one of optimism, perception of success and the necessity to deliver true value to customers.

However, it's when I put my business owners' hat on; that I have distinctly different views of what I need to do to be successful. I believe hard work will pay off. I must continually communicate with my customers. Without a long term business plan, I will become a statistic of failed businesses.

When I started in this industry in 1985, there were over 220,000 real estate firms nationwide. Today there are less than 28,000 real estate businesses nationwide. This is a visible reminder to me of all those real estate companies and agents that say "I'm okay". I don't need to think about a business plan.

Realtors as business owners rarely look at the longer term picture for their company. This picture is impacted by business processes that take time and people- each cost dollars and effect customer satisfaction.

Business processes can be found by simply looking for data integration within the various business activities. One primary reason is owners/brokers purchase technology solutions to only solve the specific problem. This approach yields non-connected sets of data.

To demonstrate this, simply follow the path of data entry. For example look at the number of times you use the listing address or selling price. Selling price is recorded in the M.L.S., the franchise system(s) if applicable, your company website, the agents' websites, on-line listing pages on realtor.com as well as hundreds of transaction documents at the time of closing. This data is used in commission calculations, processing commission checks, and historical data tracking for business performance reviews.

In my two decades in this industry, I can recall only few owners/brokers taking an initiative to create streamlined business processes. It was not until 2008 when the broker looked out his/her office window and realized for the first time the empty real estate offices that were once competitors were "not okay". This is when the owner/broker recognized that if they did not change their old ways, they, too, would become a casualty like other failed businesses.

It is a difficult series of tasks to look a business steps, think about their value and then brainstorm to figure what steps are critical to my business performance and then look at ways that can reduce excess staffing to create an efficient "streamlined" office through business process changes.

The number of closed real estate offices in the U.S. cannot be explained simply by the recent housing crisis alone. A more realistic explanation and cold hard reality is the consumer has found less value in the services of the Realtor. Here are some facts. The real estate industry is a service based industry. Their value to the consumer is only as good as the service they provide. A prominent complaint sellers have with their real estate agent is the "lack of consistent communication". This gap different between what a seller expects and what an agents deliver is the core of the industry problem. Real estate companies are the causality because they rely on the agent to communicate to the seller rather than making this a company responsibility.

When real estate companies realize and take action to have consistent real estate software that can delivery a business processes to meet the demands of service expectations of the consumer; then they will become more successful instead of another failed business.

I liken the real estate industry to the travel industry about ten years ago. You used to have local travel agencies on every corner, but where are they today? Consumers found more value in companies like Expedia.com, Priceline.com, Orbiz.com and Travelvelosity.com. These "new travel agencies" were the ones who could deliver the value the customer expected at a price the customer was willing to pay.