|
Great chefs make some of the world’s most
wonderful meals. People pay top premium to enjoy their works. Most
delightful tastes lie in quality ingredients mixed up in ways
known only to them. With few secret sauces their meals become
truly marvelous works of art.
Think of
yourself as a chef, chef of your own business. Your success
ingredients lie in the way you organize and orchestrate your
business operations. We call it business Cookbook!
Business
Cookbook main objectives are:
> clearly define how things are done in your
business
> ensure that things are executed in a quality
way as you expect it
> have full visibility and control over
operations and business results
Main benefits of implementing your own Business Cookbook are:
> control over sales revenues and profits
> control over cost management
> control over tasks execution
> control over products and services quality
> consistency in quality of products and
customer service
> full visibility in how your business operates
> delegation of tasks, responsibilities and
accountability
> timely identification and escalation of any
problems
> ability to quickly and easily adopt to changes
> personal peace of mind
Key components of Business Cookbook are:
> processes
> automation
> dashboards
Processes
Processes define who is doing what, for whom, how, when and
at what costs. Process maps draw pictures of how things are done
step by step.
Some of the most important processes every business needs
to clearly define are:
> how do you get people to contact you
for new sales
> how do you win new business from new customers
> how do you get maximum business from
existing clients
> how do you manufacture your products
> how do you deliver your products
> how do you handle customer change requests
> how do you handle returns
> how do you handle customer support
> how do you control product margins
> how do you control you product quality
> how do you manage cash flow, receivables,
payables and other
One may get ‘scared’ by how
may processes there could be. But the reality is you MUST map
out all of your key processes.
The sooner you start
building your own business cookbook, the sooner you will start
enjoying GREAT results. When you implement one single process
from your business cookbook, almost immediately, you will start
enjoying significant benefits.
This should feed your
motivation to continue process mapping of all of your critical
business processes.
Automation
When your processes are clearly mapped out and you have full
picture of how they are executed step-by-step next will be
automation of their execution. This is where technology and
systems play essential role.
Some of the key benefits
from automating process execution are:
> eliminate
human errors
> leap gains in operational effectiveness
> reduction is operational costs
> predictability, consistency and control of
product quality
> automated approvals
> notifications and escalations for any process
execution discrepancies
> enforce tasks execution as per defined process
maps
> employee accountability for timely tasks
execution
Great news is that today’s technology products and systems are
designed with automation in mind. Many offer plenty of
automation capabilities out of the box. Usually it is not that
difficult to setup this to your business needs.
Here are some of examples of
Information Technology solutions that greatly automate process
execution:
> Customer
Relationship Management
> Service Field Force Automation
> Service Desk solution
> Accounting Software
> Interactive Voice Response
> Self Service Internet Portals
> other
Dashboards
The biggest benefit coming from implementing and automating
process execution is full visibility and control over business
performance.
Visibility and control is
delivered via dashboards. Dashboards are graphical presentations
of business results. Some of the things you could see at a
glance would be:
> business
activities that require your immediate attention
> ability to drill down into issues and
challenges
> your current vs. projected sales results
> generated profit vs. expectations
> your cost budgets and current balances
> number of open customer complaints
> ratings of customer satisfaction
> overdue accounts
> real time notifications and escalations:
> in case of missed performance
expectations
> any major changes in customer
buying trends
> any major changes in
market/industry trends
The dashboards are usually web driven so you can securely access
them from any place on almost any type of device (laptop,
handheld, kiosk) as long as you have internet access. This gives
you ability to be at any place and still maintain full control
over your business.
|
