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If your business feels chaotic, you can probably trace the roots of this issue back to undefined (or poorly defined) processes. Making a few key changes could mean the difference between wallowing in frustration and enjoying amazing growth.
The Dark Side of Complex Processes
Complex business processes are any multi-faceted business operations that require multiple steps and are resource-intensive. These are processes that require lots of time, money, and man-hours to complete. They also tend to be inefficient and poorly structured, which leads to a host of negative consequences like:
- Overwhelm. Employees easily become overwhelmed in the face of complex business processes. This can devolve into burnout and other unwanted symptoms that prevent key team members from providing maximum value to the organization.
- Inefficiency. Complex processes are rarely efficient. In most cases, they fail to maximize productivity. This creates a host of distinct challenges that are ultimately reflected on your balance sheet.
- Frustration. Employees are easily frustrated by complex processes. They’re even more frustrated when it appears that there are ways to simplify the processes to make their lives easier. This can foster animosity between employees and management.
- Turnover challenges. When you have complex processes in your business, it creates challenges anytime you have to replace an employee. It’s difficult to just slide someone into the position. You have to invest in extensive training and hand-holding.
These are just a few of the negative side effects that stem from complex processes. The reality is that there are dozens of additional symptoms that aren’t always visible to the naked eye. And if you don’t address these complex processes sooner rather than later, there will be issues.
Practical Tactics to Simplify Processes
The good news is that you have more options than ever to simplify complex processes and restore efficiency and sanity to your business. Let’s take a look at a few:
- Get Rid of the Junk
Business consultant and author Ron Ashkenas recommends starting by identifying and removing what it calls organizational “underbrush.”
“An easy starting point for simplification is to get rid of stupid rules and low-value activities, time-wasters that exist in abundance in most organizations,” Ashkenas explains. “If you can shed a few simple tasks, you will create bandwidth to focus on more substantial simplification opportunities.”
He recommends silly things like having multiple people sign off on basic expense reports and small purchases; requiring extensive reviews of every single blog post that’s published to your website; or hosting daily meetings just because that’s the way you’ve always done things.
- Automate With Software
With the underbrush cleared out of the way, you can shift your focus to automating complex processes with software. By this point, there’s software for almost anything your business can think of doing.
Look for the business processes that have the most moving parts in your business. For example, if your IT department is bogged down by support tickets and other issues, integrating IT help desk software like Genuity could consolidate and streamline.
And if your business is struggling to keep track of your sales pipeline and what stage various prospects are in at any given point in time, a good CRM solution like HubSpot might be the answer.
- Outsource the Extras
The old 80/20 Rule suggests that 80 percent of your results stem from just 20 percent of your processes. And if you zoom in even further and analyze individual processes, you may find that 20 percent of the steps within a process generate 80 percent of the results.
What do you do with this information? Well, you start by reevaluating your approach. If possible, focus most of your internal energy and effort on the tasks that move the needle the most and then outsource or, if possible, eliminate the rest. For example, you can outsource your marketing to a professional agency like UpSwell Marketing to help you boosts your sales, allowing you to focus on your product. This way, you can leverage the expertise of professionals and ensure that your business is always moving forward and growing.
- Combine Systems
Always look for ways to combine systems together. It’s better to have one centralized platform that can handle 12 different tasks than to have 12 platforms that each handle one individual task. As cloud software becomes more advanced, carefully consider strategic integrations that allow you to simplify your tech stack. You can approach a company like PLANEKS to properly integrate new solutions.
Give Your Business a Boost
There’s no excuse for letting your business wallow in process inefficiency. With the amount of automation, analytics, and research that exists in today’s business world, you must commit to weeding out the complexity and restoring order within your organization.