Standardizing Your Business Operations
Sometimes the difference between a good business and a great business is the way they go about their operations across all departments and branches. One of the hallmarks of highly successful businesses is the presence of a consistent experience of carrying out deliverables and tasks from one department of the company to another. Standardizing business operations helps to collate the methods of solving problems scattered across the organization.
Customers notice where there is an obvious lack of standard operating procedures, and business owners often suffer from the consequences of using a scattergun approach when carrying out tasks and activities. This trial-and-error method is dangerous and wasteful. In this article, you’ll learn more about standard operating procedures for your business and why it matters. Also, you’ll learn how to write an effective standard operating procedure document and implement it successfully.
How Does It Work?
A standard business operation procedure (SOP) can be quite tasking to create, but when done effectively, yields positive results for the organization. One of the key principles of creating a business SOP for your company is compartmentalization. In simple terms, compartmentalization is breaking down a process to its simplest steps, such that it can be reproduced and applied wherever it is needed, by anyone at the company (not just you).
Once the hard work of perfecting and simplifying the process is done, the next thing is to scale and deploy it across the entire organization, to solve the same needs wherever it arises.
Why Does It Matter?
Perhaps the most important quality of a standard business operation procedure lies in the very word itself— “standard”. With a scattergun approach, a business often finds itself in a stage of chaos. Trying to do too much with scarce resources and time – each customer gets a different version of the business. With a single tested and proven method of doing things, the results are more certain. More can be achieved in less time and despite scarce resources.
For any business interested in growth, having a standardized business operation procedure is non-negotiable.
How to Create a Standard Business Operations Procedure
There are chiefly four major aspects involved in creating a standardized business operations procedure. They are:
- Identify how things currently work
- Document the process
- Follow the written process to complete the task
- Improve the SOP – SOPs are never “finished”
For the first aspect, you’ll be required to identify instances across the organization where a particular task is being carried out, and research the available ways to carry out these tasks in a consistent, unified way. You can’t do this without the input of your current employees. You’ll need their observations, opinions, and feedback to help you visualize every step in the process clearly.
From there, document, and inform all employees of the changes to the process. Encourage them to apply the documented process to the tasks at hand, as well as be willing to make informed improvements to the process as time goes on.
Conclusion
Standardizing your business operations procedure will bring immense benefits to your business. Besides getting things done in less time and the simplicity of applying the process when it is needed, it also leads to resource efficiency, dependable knowledge management, and improved customer satisfaction.
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