Blue Elevator Blog

Business process consulting: making progress.

This is the 4th article in the “Business Process Consulting” series published by Blue Elevator™.  The prior articles are as follows:

1) Business Process Consulting: A Primer

2) Business Process Consulting: Predicting Owner Success

3) Business Process Consulting: Getting Started

In this article, we will outline the process for making progress.  Ultimately, after the planning, it’s time to step out and begin forging your path.  This is where the rubber meets the road.  This is the essence of implementing business process consulting.

The essence of business process consulting.

In prior articles, a lot has been said about taking time to plan your journey.  This is obviously important.  But when all is said and done, there comes a time when you step out and begin blazing your own trail.    How does an artist paint a beautiful picture?  How does a musician write a beautiful melody?  How does a poet pen a heartfelt poem?

There is a saying, “all great musicians are self-taught.”  A great musician has to have technical proficiency in playing his or her instrument, but writing a song is an art.  It’s a gift.  As someone who has been designing business processes for years, it is no different.  Designing great business processes is an art!

Business process consulting is an art form.

When it comes to making progress in your business, you need to make or design a business process.  Business process consulting is all about taking a particular area of focus and designing a great process for pursuing that focus.  Great business process consulting is not boiler plate.  As sure as every business owner is different, so is every business.  Just like having a custom suit made for you, the same goes for designing a business process.  There are no two processes designed alike and no two processes are created equal.

Business process consulting – a process.

I want to share with you a little secret.  This secret is really a process.  I’m sure most of us have read the back of the shampoo bottle.  It says, and I quote: “lather, rinse, repeat.”  Right?  This is a process: the process of washing your hair.  At Blue Elevator™ we have our own process.  It is, and I quote: “design, implement, refine.”  Well, what is it?  Is it an art or is it a process?  Well, it’s both.

The actual design of a cutting-edge business process is, in fact, an art form.  Notwithstanding the design of that process, there is a process that we follow here at Blue Elevator™.  We design processes, we implement them, and we refine them.  And we do this over and over until things are just – as they say – peachy!

How many processes will my business need?

In your business, you are going to have quite a collection of processes.  That is, if it’s important to you and your business, you should establish a process for it.  If you haven’t read it yet, in the article just prior to this one, we discussed determining your KPI’s, or key performance indicators.  Click here to read about KPI’s – See Step 1.

Generally speaking, you will usually design a business process around a key business function or a key performance indicator.

Business process consulting – designing the process.

Keep it simple.  Simple is OK.  Rather than write a “how to” for you, I’ll give you something better.  A true story.

Many moons ago, I was working with a great team of professionals at a very large company.  It was and is a good company.  I remember this story like it was yesterday – and I assure you it wasn’t yesterday.  The company had decided that it really needed to track the types of incoming calls; it was business critical.  In essence, a business process needed to be designed.  I was working with the CFO and I happened to accompany him as he sought to provide the necessary impetus for starting this new business process.

Long story short, our CFO told a key manager in a certain department that the company needed to get a daily recap of each call that came into the company.  Basically, if we received 100 phone calls in a given day, we needed to get a recap of the calls.  It would be great to get those calls categorized into meaningful categories (e.g. maybe four or five types of calls that the company usually received).  A simple request.  Easy?  Maybe not.  Realizing that this “simple” request may not be “easy,” the department manger told our CFO: “I’d like to do that, but I don’t have a system.”

By “system,” our manager was probably referring to some fancy, electronically-controlled masterpiece designed by a four person software design team.  To be frank, that’s what I was thinking too.  There were a lot of calls every day and it seemed to be a daunting task of categorizing them.

As only our CFO could say, and with amazing clarity of speech and purpose, he said the following: “If you have a piece of paper and a pencil, then you have a system!”

The light bulb went on.  Simple just became easy.  You see, at that point, all the manager needed to do was give four customer service reps a sheet of paper with four or five “boxes” on the paper and the customer service reps could simply put a “check mark” in each box.  At the end of the day, the totals could be quickly added.  No real time was added to anyone’s day – and no great expense.

Over night, the company developed its “Daily Call Recap.”

Business process consulting: lather, rinse, and repeat.

As you can see, some processes are easier than others.  And, that is the point; business processes should be kept as simple as possible.  That being said, ultimately good processes can be made great.  Redundant steps can be eliminated, easier methods can be employed, and – eventually – great processes can be converted from “manual” to electronic.

Yes, there is a time for that four person software design team.  My recommendation: wait until you have implemented and refined your process so that it is “stable.”  Often times, when things are new, there are a lot of changes as things are refined and your process is customized to fit your business environment.  You will save yourself a lot of time and money by hiring a business process consultant to help you design the right process – and that is the “shortest distance between two points.”

Summary

If you think you need it, you probably do.  My encouragement is to get going!  Ask for help, move forward, and don’t be afraid of failing.  Here’s a great little video for some encouragement:   Steve Jobs on Success and Failure.