We understand: systems and processes is not a topic that typically gets people excited. In fact, as a small business owner, it’s likely that the thought of systems and processes makes you want to scream a bit in boredom or frustration. After all, you are passionate about running your business! However, the reality is that systems and processes are integral for just that – helping you run your business more efficiently. Let’s look at the benefits of developing systems and processes for your small business and tips for incorporating them.
BENEFITS OF SYSTEMS & PROCESSES
There are a wealth of benefits that come from incorporating systems and processes into your small business. While your business may be functioning quite well as is, incorporating these things will have concrete benefits that are hard to ignore. While the number of benefits is far too many to go into in depth, let’s take a look at some of the major ones.
Save Precious Time
Time is of the essence for every business owner. Perhaps the most significant benefit for instituting systems and processes is that you will ultimately save time. They help make processes more streamlined in nature. An additional benefit of putting these in place is that they allow you to carefully examine how you do things. By looking at processes in an organized manner, you can often even find ways to increase efficiency.
Many times, we get so used to doing things that we don’t take the time to assess if there are better ways. By creating processes, we can often detect ways to better synergize our efforts and become more effective in accomplishing our goals. This is particularly relevant for complex processes. Furthermore, if you have employees, documenting processes can be an important resource that leads you to be more efficient with training.
Outsource Tasks with Ease
If you are one of the increasing number of businesses that are turning to virtual assistants to complete tasks, you will find that having systems and processes makes the process of outsourcing work much more efficient. By carefully documenting the steps in things that need to be done, it is incredibly easy for someone to take over the task. Having clear, coherent instructions will also help your virtual assistant to be more efficient.
However, this is not just a benefit for outsourcing but can be one for hiring in general. Onboarding new employees is often a time consuming process. While training will always take time, having standardized and documented systems and processes can help you to both improve the quality of your training and reduce some of the time it takes.
Ensure Your Business Continues to Function if You Can’t
Want to take a vacation but feel conflicted because your business needs you? You may need to implement more systems and processes. A successful business will be able to largely operate even if the owner is not present, but doing so takes well-trained staff and high levels of organization. Implementing coherent systems and processes can lead you to be able to take some much-deserved time off.
Additionally, what if there is a situation where you physically cannot work for a while such as a hospital stay? You definitely don’t want your income stream to stop at a time when you might need it most. Having documented systems and processes will allow someone to come in and take over temporarily, keeping your company running at full speed until you can once again take over the reins.
TIPS FOR INTEGRATING SYSTEMS AND PROCESSES
Hopefully you are now convinced that integrating systems and processes into your small business is something that will be well worth the time spent. Your next question is likely how to do this? After all, you only have so much time in your day. Let’s take a look at some tips for leveraging a more organized approach.
Don’t Be Scared to Start Small
One of the things that stops many people from beginning to develop systems and processes for their small business is the fact that it does take quite a bit of time to document them. Many people look at the wide wealth of tasks that need documentation and are a bit hesitant to start.
Fortunately, you don’t need to do it all at once. Some documented processes are better than none. Feel free to tackle the project a bit at a time, focusing on some of the most mission critical aspects of the work. If you approach the task in this way, you will find that you quickly make progress.
Borrow Principles from Project Management
While not everyone has a strong background in project management, you can certainly do a little reading and borrow some of these principles for creating your systems and processes. Some things that are easily transferable to writing processes is to define the goals of a process as well as its deliverables. The reader should easily be able to understand what the final result should look like.
Another important consideration that can be borrowed from project management is to clearly explain responsibilities and roles. This is key if a process or system involves more than one person. People need to know what their roles are and at what times they should be executed. This is important for accountability and transparency.
Leverage Technology
We are long past the days where everything has to be documented with paper. While you may very well decide that your business will function better with simply a binder of processes, there are also a number of tech solutions that can make organizing your business easier.
Specifically, there are many apps that help you design process, implement systems, and collaborate with your team. Many of these apps have free versions that are often sufficient for sole proprietorships. They also have typically affordable options for involving your whole team. While there are a variety of software options out there, some of our favorites include Asana, Monday, Process Street, Hive, and Airtable.
FINAL THOUGHTS
While you may be very comfortable with how you run your small business, the reality is that all businesses can be improved. Adding systems and processes to how you organize and operate your small business has a variety of benefits. It can save you time, improve efficiency, and give you ever important peace of mind. When beginning to implement processes and systems, consider smarting small and taking advantage of available resources.
Need Help Putting This All Together?
If all of this seems like a daunting task, we would love to chat with you and help you get your business automated.
Book a complimentary success call with one of our experienced professionals today, and let’s discuss where you need the most assistance in organizing your business so that it runs like a well-oiled machine.
