Roman Kumar Vyas is the CEO and founder at Refocus, EdTech enthusiast, investor, mentor and marketing expert.
The fast pace of change in the startup world often leads founders to prioritize speed over structure. Building solid business processes, however, is crucial from the very beginning, especially for companies planning to grow rapidly.
Processes provide structure, clarity and consistency across, helping startups streamline operations, improve efficiency and reduce the risk of costly mistakes. Without well-defined processes, startups can quickly become overwhelmed by complex and rapidly changing demands. This can lead to confusion, inefficiencies and a lack of accountability, making it difficult to maintain momentum and grow the business.
In this article, I will explore how young companies can effectively build business processes.
What are business processes?
Business processes are a set of activities and procedures for a company to streamline operations, minimize errors and increase productivity. Here are some of the key ones for startups:
1. Scheduled meetings with a specific agenda: Regular meetings allow team members to discuss their progress, identify potential roadblocks and brainstorm solutions. Be sure to have a specific agenda in place, which allows meetings to be focused and productive.
2. Assignment interface: An interface for assigning tasks to team members can help ensure that everyone’s responsibilities and deadlines are clear. To achieve this, various tools like dedicated task managers and more multifunctional resources, can be implemented.
3. Team workload planning interface: These tools are vital to help managers balance the workload across the team, to ensure that everyone is working at optimal capacity and to avoid burnout or overwork.
4. Instructions and checklists for repetitive tasks: Even at the stage of active growth, many tasks in a startup may be repetitive, such as onboarding new employees or processing invoices. Having clear step-by-step instructions in place can help ensure consistency and minimize errors, especially when the team is growing rapidly.
5. Knowledge base: A centralized repository of knowledge can help ensure that important information about the company, clients and processes is accessible to everyone. This can include research conducted on clients or competitors, best practices and key contacts.
Establish business processes from the very beginning.
In today’s fast-paced business environment, startups must find ways to optimize their operations to remain competitive. Building and implementing efficient business processes is key to:
• Save time and energy both for team members and new hires. Imagine a scenario where a designer needs to know how to submit a request for a new banner. With a comprehensive knowledge base, they can easily find the instructions and complete the task quickly without interrupting others.
• Make onboarding of the new team more efficient. Rather than taking up someone’s time to explain the ins and outs of a particular task, new hires can simply refer to the company’s process description or knowledge base. Of course, the manager’s help would be needed as well, but it will certainly help them learn faster and save time and company resources.
• Increase the efficiency and productivity of the team. When team members know what to do exactly and how to do it, they can work more efficiently, reducing the risk of errors and delays. Moreover, they can focus on more strategic tasks that add value to the company rather than spending time on repetitive or mundane ones.
All of the factors above have a direct impact on a startup’s revenue indicators. This is especially true in the case of larger teams with dedicated tasks.
How do you establish business processes effectively?
The responsibility of establishing processes usually falls on the shoulders of the department or team leaders who feel that an improvement is needed. For instance, if all teams are requesting urgent design work, it makes sense for the design team to work on better organization. In this case, here are the steps those leaders can follow to build processes effectively:
1. Identify the problem you want to solve. For example, “Our planning is a mess, and clients from other departments are dissatisfied with the delays and confusion our system causes.”
2. Identify the stakeholders involved in the process. This can include the clients or other employees. In the case of design, it’s worth analyzing which department needed their services the most and what exactly they needed.
3. Describe the desired way of interaction as detailed as possible:
• Who does what?
• How long does it take?
• What interface is used?
• How can clients understand that their tasks have been accepted?
• How is task status and progress shared?
4. Create an easy-to-understand and client-focused document. It’s especially helpful to include pictures or videos in a chosen knowledge base.
5. Present to all stakeholders. The recording of this presentation should be attached to the process document for future reference.
It is essential to test the process and collect feedback from all stakeholders in the first few weeks or months, making any necessary adjustments. Ultimately, the lack of complaints from stakeholders is a good indicator of a process’s success.
Conclusion
Business processes provide structure, clarity and consistency, helping startups develop effectively.
Building business processes should be part of a culture from the very beginning. If you start with the proper processes, you can overcome the hurdles in any environment—for example, in the office, fully remote or hybrid. But if you wait too long, or you don’t get buy-in from C-level executives and founders, you will likely find the process to implement processes becomes much more difficult later on.
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