The Processes you use in your business to provide value to your customers are critical to your success. If you are “playing it by ear” and “doing whatever it takes” you can grow your business and please your customers but at what cost and for how long? The smaller your business, the more likely you are to manage in this manner because time is usually short. You are busy spending your time building and maintaining customer loyalty and providing the services and products your customers need. As you grow with this type of management your business can become harder to manage and control. If you’re good enough to ensure you have great people that are all on the same page then you can manage to continue doing business this way for even longer.
As you grow bigger or as people come and go this model of behavior becomes harder to maintain and you start running the risk of losing customers since you are not able to maintain the consistent products and services that got you the business to begin with. This is where understanding and explicitly defining the business processes that are most likely to satisfy your customers can pay major benefits. By defining the value you provide to customers and the processes that support it you are more likely to understand how you can grow your business without jeopardizing your value added products and services.
Process definition, communication, management and evaluation are key components of consistent products and services. Consistent products and services help build trust in your brand and your company and create customer loyalty. But not every process contributes to the value of your products and services. Some of your processes are needed not because they provide value but because they are mandated by regulations or common sense management practices. Understanding these processes, why you do them and the value they may provide help you identify how you can improve your business and the processes that support it.
Defining processes for process definitions sake is as useless as using a hammer to drive a screw into a whole. If you are defining processes that aren’t related to your brand or value proposition then what value is the definition bringing? The key to gaining benefit from establishing consistent processes is that you are able to continually evaluate and improve them. But this takes resources and time and thus you need to make sure the processes you define and manage are processes related to the business value you provide.