Has Covid improved the health of your business processes?
How has Covid effected the health of your processes? Consider this question and which answer below best describes your business situation:
We didn’t have our pre-Covid everyday business processes well-documented which made it challenging to suddenly operate differently.
We had our everyday business processes documented but didn’t have any for business continuity and working from home.
We had all of our processes, including business continuity, well documented and Covid-ready.
We expect that your business will have fallen into one of these three broad categories. That’s reality. But the bigger question is: what is your business doing to recover from or improve that position?
Everyday business
If your pre-Covid business did not have everyday processes well documented and available online 24/7, what have you done to address this? How you operate and what you expect staff to do is the backbone to your success. Without that ‘blue print’ you are effectively sailing without a rudder. Everyday opportunities to produce effective outputs, control costs, keep staff and customers happy are slipping by. Creating process reference materials can be a succinct exercise with the right guidance and suitable tools. A 2016 Gartner study estimates an average return on the investment of process documentation of 15%. Tools are only a Google search away and if you have suitable staff to assign to documentation, that ROI is within reach. If you don’t have the luxury of available or internal resources, talk to the professionals and get some guidance as to how best make that happen to suit your business situation.
Continuity
It would be virtually impossible to document every single ‘what if’ scenario and support processes for when things don’t go to plan (after all, who would have had strong processes in place to support a global pandemic?). Most businesses may well have ‘common’ continuity processes in place but never really consider they will be required. Covid has highlighted the importance of having these in place and ready to operationalise at very short notice. Business continuity processes are best reviewed at least annually for relevance and breadth. Business.govt gives some great guidance on the topic of continuity planning, part of which would include the business processes in support.
Improvement
Congratulations if you have everyday and continuity processes documented and in use in your business! Are these being regularly reviewed for changes and improvements such as eliminating bottlenecks, automating tasks, and uniting siloed systems? In today’s fast paced world, business processes often change. It is important for the pace of change to be reflected in process reference materials so that staff can remain conversant with updated effective practices as required. This includes measures and targets which processes need to meet, as with these in place, it sets a benchmark from which to improve their efficiency and effectiveness. Those insightful words from Peter Drucker still apply as potently today: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it“. EOS provides three ways to kick-start process measurement here.
What is the state of your business process health?
There is no better time than the present to take the quick process health check and determine the current position of your business processes. Let this be the catalyst to take action now as one thing is for certain: time is ticking until the ‘next time’.
