The Business Process Blog

Welcome to The Business Process Blog! This is where we share our thoughts and tips on rethinking business processes, running an international business, and doing more with less!

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IMAGES COULD BE THE THE MAGIC INGREDIENT FOR IMPROVING BUSINESS PROCESSES

The world is best expressed through images. Wouldn't including more pictures in our process documentation help teammates understand the content better? Here's why we should replace our checklists and manuals with more picture books.

1) People are visual learners. 

Think about it this way -  our brain is mainly an image processor, not a word processor; the part of the brain used to process words is tiny in comparison to the 90% that is used to processes images.

2) Pictures can accelerate understanding

When an instructor uses an image to represent a process, comprehension deepens and accelerates. There is significant impact on the learner when a visual aid is connected to a text explanation. It speeds up the learning process because the brain processes visual information 60,000 times faster than text. And you know what they say - time is money.

3) Think about the Frog

65% of people are visual learners. That’s two out of every three people you are trying to help understand a process. Say the word "frog" to a crowd of listeners and most would picture the little green amphibian.  What did you picture first?

    References 

- http://www.thinkingfoundation.org/research/journal_articles/pdf/habits-hyerle-chap.pdf (data) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_cortex (image) - http://www.business2community.com/digital-marketing/visual-marketing-pictures-worth-60000-words-01126256#uDtsQ0flA82sCu04.97 - http://www.forbes.com/sites/tjmccue/2013/01/08/what-is-an-infographic-and-ways-to-make-it-go-viral/#280f2fc0353c - http://animalia-life.com/frog.html

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Where do your best process improvement ideas come from? We listen very closely to our customers, and we have found most companies spend a lot of money and resources only to realize that their best process improvement ideas come from their employees. So why don't we collect these process improvements more actively? Because there was no easy way to do this, until now. TheBPR.com's newest feature, "process improvements", allows your business to quickly gather, vote on, and implement process improvements. Meaning now, your business can improve faster than ever. TheBPR.com's evolution into A Business Process Repository now helps your team organize your processes AND process improvements.

Want to learn more? Click 'here' to sign up.

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How many staff members does it take to create a process repository? If you are as busy as we are, the answer is all of them! Just imagine for a second that you could make a clear road map for the new and existing employees in your department, of virtually any task, just by having someone do the task once?

Imagine then that those tasks could be quickly sorted by the role completing them or by the department where they reside, automatically. Well stop imagining, and start creating your intelligent and ever-improving repository today.

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How To Start A Business

There are tons of self help books, articles, and blogs, and each one promises to show you the path to the pot of gold.

One thing that we at Optimum Output have learned along the way is that entrepreneurship is not about riches. It's about the path. It's about creating something from nothing. At Optimum Output, we don't write books. But if we did, here are the points we would tell every entrepreneur to focus on:

Create revenue streams

Invest

Focus

Survive

Be happy today

Make your own destiny

Make your own business framework

Write your own book

Stop trying to duplicate other recipes

The last point is paramount, especially in today's day and age where companies pop up left and right cloning something someone else has already done for a new market.

Don’t follow us and don’t follow the others - you won’t achieve happiness for yourself by reconstructing how others have become happy. Don’t set out to make a Fortune 500 company the Steve Job’s way; everyone today talks about beautiful design and simplicity because that was what was important to him and what worked for him. But the only reason it worked for him was because he actually loved simplicity and beautiful design. If you don't like that, don't do that. Set and create your own path. Make your own business based on what’s important to you.

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Finding Your 'Product Beat'

Building a successful business is not just about having a successful product, it's about have a successful vision for your company. Central to this vision is something called a product beat.

Finding your Product Beat from Tejas Nerurkar

Even stellar ideas need time to mature and become part of a corporate framework. Don't allow your company to be run by fear - whether internal or external. Relax, reassess, and reinvigorate by creating long-term value with a product beat.

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Do More With Less

Optimum Output can be run entirely with run with iPads and mobile devices.

While this degree of mobility and versatility may have been difficult to achieve in the past, it can now be accomplished easily. Here are the tools we use to get these results:

Salesforce - Customer Database for our Sales Team

Google Apps - Calendaring, Emailing, and Salesforce Contacts all synchronized to your Mobile Device

TheBPR.com - Manage your business and business processes

Box with Box edit and Box for Office - Shared drive in the cloud

QuickBooks Online & Intuit Payment Network & Paypal - Accounting and payment solutions

Skype Subscriptions, Rebtel, and T-Mobile Wifi Calling - The best way to build an international team with a 212 area code

Zendesk - Customer Service

Ecquire - No more data entry to Salesforce

American Express FX Payments - The best, fastest, and cheapest way we have found to send money to international offices or contractors

Try out these technologies and see for yourself. Have questions? Contact us and we will gladly assist you.

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What To Do When An Employee Quits

If you have been in business for more than the last few minutes, the picture I am about to paint is familiar. You love your business. You love the progress you have made. Your business is a happy struggle. A struggle with resources, with time, with money, and with manpower. You have had your fair share of pretty good employees. But suddenly, you find a star employee. She is perfect. You tell her your vision, and she executes it. You can get totally out of her way and you can finally feel relaxed. You and your business are set! 

  One beautiful summer day, she sends you an email--I know an email!--saying "I've loved working with you but another opportunity has come up that will further challenge my potential. I just want to tell you how much I appreciate what you have done for me."  What?! 

  After getting over the initial shock, nausea, cold sweat, and temporary blindness, you ask yourself "how do I possibly find another her"? How are you going to be able to cope with suddenly being devoid of that star?

  1. Breakdown

  No, I don't mean nervous breakdown; I mean role breakdown. Rather than immediately writing down a job description that mimics your ex-star's skillset (sorry, that is impossible to find), take a step back. Write down the 5 things that that star did--and not just what the person did well. Stare at that list. 

  2. Internal Assignment

  You've heard many times, "the answer lies within". Well in this case, it just may. Rather than looking immediately to the job boards and scheduling 10 interviews, look within. More often than not, the answer is right there. You've seen what your existing team gravitates towards as they work and, if they gravitate to any of the things you have just written down, give them the chance to take on one of those things, even if they have no experience. It is not very troublesome if it doesn't work, and it's a stroke of genius if it does. 

  3. External Search

  Okay, so you absolutely cannot creatively fill that role from within. That's fine, but stay creative! Look at the list of things you've jotted down, and find the minimum viable prospect. Find the most important item of that list and find someone who is just good at that. Find someone cheaper, not more expensive. Scour universities. Find someone with less experience. You've already learned what it looks like to have a star at that role. You will be able to determine quickly if the new hire can play the game. As he or she can play the minimum viable game, increase their role. 

  Above all, stay calm and stay creative. We've all been there and you will get through it!

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Why Do You Need To Be Compliant

Whether you are part of a financial, healthcare, or IT company, you know that organizations always have regulatory bodies with whom they need to stay compliant. To achieve compliance, organizations need properly documented procedures to minimize risk exposure from non-standardized processes.

Studies show that the legal and financial implications of non-compliance can be crippling to an organization. In fact, when looking at the cost of a compliance failure, the numbers tell a very grim tale: companies with just one compliance failure incurred costs equal to 15% of their net profits. In a recent IDC survey on processes and business risk, 36.2% of respondents cited failed to meet compliance or regulatory requirements. TheBPR can minimize your risks. Use TheBPR to document and organize business processes on all your latest Mac systems and PC systems.

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What Are Business Processes?

What is a business process? And why does it have anything to do with me?

  So what is a business process, anyway? There is of course a technical definition, but essentially it is the day to day stuff you do at your company. That's all. 

  More specifically, business processes are the tasks you perform to complete your work. When you start your business, you are small and remembering the tasks is no big deal; you can remember how to do all this stuff. But of course you don't want to stay small - you want to grow your business. To grow, you bring on new employees who can multiply your efforts. 

But how to you divvy up the work and monitor the work? It starts and ends with business processes. By spending time on developing clear business processes before they join, and by improving them after they join, you can create a foolproof "system for success". The most successful entrepreneurs develop these "systems" with crystal clear business processes. They create their business processes, hire people, and watch their "system for success" blossom.  

  So, how do you start? Here is a quick checklist of things to do to get started:

  1) Make a list of all departments (you have multiple departments even if you are a one man show!)

2) Write down a list of things that happen in each department (those are your processes)

3) Write down who is responsible for each process (Even if it is just you)

4) Assign a person you would ideally like to have do that process

  Look at that list every day before you begin your work and you will start to see your "system of success" emerge. You will start to see how your business can improve, how it can grow, and how many things you are doing that you don't have to be doing. 

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Knowledge Loss Risk

In order to understand what TheBPR is, you must first understand the problem we set out to solve.

Since late 2008, there is a growing trend of employee turnover. In fact, the average US worker now changes jobs 10 times during their career. What this constant change means is that approximately every 3-4 years a company will experience complete turnover in any given position.

Experts will tell you that turnover-induced knowledge loss is very expensive: the US Department of Labor reported that this type of knowledge loss costs $20,000 on average for every employee lost by an organization. So what do we do?

Experts will tell you that you have to document all your business processes to make your transitions easier -- so why don't we? Well there are a number of challenges, but the biggest inhibitor of process documentation is the amount of TIME it takes. TheBPR is a solution to this challenge: it saves time by allowing you to simultaneously log your processes and work -- all you have to do is press Record. After saving, your company now has a document that can be shared with teammates, coworkers, clients, etc.