For a while now, I’ve been working with a business process just begging to be systemized. The problem is systemizing a business process requires two things many small businesses are short on: owner/manager analysis time and resources (people or equipment) to implement the system.
What I noticed today as we worked through the systemization of our process is that the real value lies in the exercise. It’s the analytical time spent breaking the process into steps. When you do something yourself, you just do it and then think you’re keeping good track of what your doing in your head. However, eventually more projects will be added into the system and more people will be working within the system and suddenly this approach will stop working so well.
Then, it’s time to sit down as a group and break the process down into steps that can be written down in short sentences. The key to a great business system is the requirement of record keeping and communication for each step in the process.