How to streamline your Operational Processes

By John Endeacott, Chief Executive at Anthill.

For any KBB business to run effectively, it requires robust Process Management.

This is essential to not only provide crystal clear transparency and laser focussed clarity for employees and customers alike, but to ensure every step of every process is geared toward your desired outcomes.

Without this, it becomes increasingly challenging to guarantee consistency and quality.

Imagine for a moment, the impact of having one process in one store and a completely different process in another for an identical situation. Or a critical step in a customer facing process being completed by one employee but not another.

In other words, your best practice service could vary hugely depending on whether or not the process is being followed.

When it comes to establishing an effective and efficient process, too often organisations get comfortable. A reliance on what has worked before fosters familiarity and with it, a status quo.

But what worked 10 years ago, may no longer be the best way of doing things.

Across every aspect of a business, it’s undeniable that if you are not consistently moving forward, you are actually falling behind your competition. This includes regularly reviewing and developing your own operational processes.

By tweaking for constant improvements, no matter how small or large the organisation, you can remain ahead of the curve in an increasingly competitive business landscape.

Effective Process Management enables a business to do exactly that; highlighting gaps and inefficiencies to eradicate longstanding roadblocks and maximise organisational performance.

By aligning each and every company process to your strategic goals, you can guarantee every employee is pulling in the same direction, focussing their time and effort on the tasks that matter most to you.

Whether through detailed tracking to identify process gaps or automating time consuming yet critical stages of your customer journey, taking a proactive approach to Process Management can help transform the productivity and efficiency of a business.

Maintaining legacy processes may be the easy option but they can stifle a business; holding it back through a combination of outdated infrastructure and stubborn rigidity.

Self-critique can often be one of the hardest tasks we undertake. However, the question to ask yourself, is whether sticking with what you know is worth the risk.

Now more than ever, KBB organisations need to stay one step ahead and build into their operations a flexibility to quickly react to changing consumer needs and demands.

To help your organisation streamline it’s operational processes, Anthill have created a brand new guide to Process Management.

As well as covering the basic principles and explaining way the practice is so important, the guide dives into actionable tips that you can translate to your own organisation.

To access your copy of the guide and find out more about streamlining your operational processes, click here.