‘Documenting operational processes’ is an appropriately streamlined description for an activity that offers significant, often exciting benefits to almost any business.
Far from a dry review of paper-based steps, our methodology quite literally brings workflows to life, interviewing those who carry out the planned series of actions and taking the time to understand how the plan stands up under the evolving needs of your business.
We recently spoke to 12 employees who ostensibly followed a well-documented process. Within the first two interviews we uncovered a bespoke report that had been delighting one client, and another employee’s custom macro to automate one stage. These team members were diverging from the intended plan, but only to add incredible value.
By the time we’d conducted all 12 meetings, we had mapped 30 differences between paper and real-world execution.
Some represented needs to standardise or update, but the overwhelming majority of ‘quirks’ were individuals identifying ways to be more effective or deliver additional benefits.
Understanding the real and varied ways employees were performing the same task enabled this business to make informed decisions on client outputs and the processes delivering them. With a holistic understanding of actual workflows, they could decide which newly-discovered actions required streamlining or removing. They could highlight improvements to integrate broadly across the business, and identify cases where time spent on a bespoke task was appropriate only to specific tiers of client, or could be transformed into separate, paid services.
By understanding adaptations, incorporating enhancements and eliminating frustrations, we enabled the employees’ own innovation to make them happier, more productive and able to offer new products to their customers, raising satisfaction internally and externally. We worked with them to create a future-proof plan that could withstand adaptations over time, enabling positive evolution and limiting
counterproductive alterations.
We believe any business can benefit from a guided review of their processes, allowing our expertise to bring more of theirs to light. If you’d like to learn how we can work together, we’d be happy to conduct a complimentary initial consultation.
Please get in touch via our contact page or by calling us on +44 (0) 1403 582070.