What is business process optimisation?
As a simple definition we can easily highlight that business process optimisation is finding the best approach to utilise all the resources that an organisation has. It’s not enough to have performing resources that perform their regular tasks and achieve their monthly goals. Each organisation should go the extra mile and find a way to sinergies all the resources and processes in order to achieve its main goals while generating growth and thus profitability.
Why process optimisation is important?
Being optimised means that it’s more efficient. Being efficient equals having a better chance to increase performance the same as an efficient individual contributor has the possibility to prioritise his tasks better, find better solutions to any challenges or problems and thus gain more availability to focus on difficult tasks or on strategic ones. If someone is too busy handling lack of efficiency it will eventually become less efficient and this will have a negative impact on his overall work. The loop will continue growing, by impacting the work of other people part of the team and eventually negatively impacting the organisation and its customers.
When we consider process optimisation, we engage in finding solutions to avoid the above risks and create an opportunity for both business and people development.
Sometimes we believe that our end result is strictly influenced by the service or product that we are trying to promote or sell. Then, we look at the people that are working for us. But how often do we look at the processes we put in place day by day? At the tools or platform we use for years? Or do we consider our communication strategies? Or event goal setting and strategizing overall? You will probably say that you actually take it into consideration and this could be true – but do you also take into account considering all the processes at the same time and looking at their interconnections?
Everything is connected and it all starts with our organisational foundation: our core values, our goals, our processes, our people.
How can we optimise our business processes?
At OptimizedIT, we apply a simple 3-steps process:
- Identifying what is working versus what is not working
“Pain” can be a very good indicator of what is going wrong. But at the same time we need to be aware of the things that are going right. These can bring the solutions that we need to our problems. Or help us make a decision in terms of the best practices that can enable us to achieve more.
If things are not going the right way, customers are quitting us, employees are leaving the company, goals are not being achieved on time and in a timely manner, if business seems to be more on hold than running, it’s a sign that something is not going the right way – and by the right way we mean the right way for you. Sometimes the best way to move forward is to go backwards, find the cause of your pains and start all over again with a fresh look: new values, new goals, new plans, new ideas. Other times, with a proper analysis it turns out that your foundation is strong but only some areas are lacking some improvements.
Regardless of the outcome, finding what is working is as important as finding what is not working. Following, engaging in a process of a root cause analysis can help you identify the appropriate next steps in order to put up in place a new strategy to support the future development of your business.
- Identifying the obstacles that slow down or stop your organisation from growing
The reason why knowing why things work or don’t work is highly related to our ability to improve things in the future. We easily find ways to improve things and processes but only doing it without knowing the exact things that have to be corrected increases considerably the chances to end up in the same wrong situation all over again. If we don’t investigate the situation or we overlook some important details, these will transform into obstacles which will either slow down our business growth and development or eventually completely stop it.
- Propose a new strategy based on the organisational vision and focused on its business goals.
When reaching this step, we are focused on working on the business foundation. Identify the core values and if the organisation is promoting these. Moreover, is the vision still applicable to the business goals or are these goals still following the vision? Is the business strategy still in place and does it serve the purpose? What about resource management?
When all these above are not defined or not in the right place anymore, we help each organisation:
- Identify its core values
- Define the right vision
- Setup the strategy implementation plan
- Support the implement process
- Overall project management
Conclusion – It’s time to Optimise IT Now!
There is no time to lose. The right moment to answer the business optimisation question is NOW. There is no business that doesn’t need optimisation. Don’t look at optimisation as a repairing process. Optimisation is fixing without real fixing – is fixing the bad that doesn’t exist yet, the invisible one but that which can turn out to be the worst if ignored or overlooked.
At OptimizedIT we believe that we can optimise all the processes you need help with – our core promise to you is that we do the right things in the right way. It’s part of our core values,vision and mission to help your organisation grow towards its purpose. We believe in you and thus we aim to get you the results you deserve. Read more here.
