When companies are in the start-up phase, most processes are informal, manual and undocumented. This works well for smaller organizations as paying for additional resources, or applications that automate work, can be costly expenses that are hard to justify.

As start-ups progress to the growth stage, the manual processes that worked well when the company was small begin to become burdensome. More and more time is devoted to these processes to the point where new resources are added to lighten the load. This adds additional overhead and lowers revenue. And, when you think about the organization as a whole, every department will be adding resources and/or their own set of applications because they think this will help them accomplish more work. The truth is, adding resources and/or applications before you review your current processes is a costly mistake.

“Business processes that were created during an organizations start-up phase will no longer be suitable as the company scales. Updating and optimizing processes will allow you to do more with less.”
- Tanya Saracino, Partner, Execution Over Theory

What does this mean?

It means revising and streamlining processes / operations will increase your income and positively affect your bottom-line. Efficient, lightweight processes will allow your resources to get work done quickly so they can devote the majority of their time to adding value instead of busy-work.

Throughout my career, I’ve heard the saying, “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it” over and over. Not only is that mantra is outdated, it keeps old, inefficient, ineffective processes in place and increases your resource overhead… taking time away from their core business functions.

Creating good business processes isn’t easy.

A quick Google search of “business process” reveals how hard it is to find a company that can actually create good business processes. Any process / operations consultant worth their weight would have articles, case studies and / or stats that show the impact of their strategies and processes. If they don’t have anything to show, that means their processes aren’t centralizing information for strategic review. Without quantitative information, there’s no business case to be made nor can you defend your strategies.

Because my processes centralize data, I’ve been able to track the impact I’ve created for the organizations I’ve worked with. For one of my clients, I increased employee productivity by 30% in one year by reducing overhead expenses, optimizing tool-sets and updating processes. For another client, one 5 minute reduction in a daily process saved them $500K/year. To request our full-set of case studies, shoot us an email at: hi@eot-consulting.com.

Processes should always strive to be quantifiable, this is how you make informed business decisions and prioritize work based on your unique business position. If your current processes are outdated, manual or not centralizing information, we’d love to chat about how we can help save you some money.