How to optimize business processes to make your actions more efficient
As every company now deals with many changes, EXE Software has produced an analysis explaining how constant optimization of internal business processes is the key to success when it comes to efficiency and profit.
“A recent study shows that in the upcoming years, companies will become more and more interested in dedicated solutions for business management. This is due to the evolution of technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), Cloud Computing or Big Data,” says Gabriel Cosmescu, a co-founder of EXE Software.
When it comes to optimizing business processes, you should consider the specific actions through which you can analyze, transform or replace old procedures with new ones. If we were to sum up the process of business optimization, there are certain aspects worth mentioning:
- Identifying inefficient or troublesome processes
- Describing these processes as accurately and in as much detail as possible – here, process flowcharts could be very useful
- Analyzing each stage of these processes
- Focusing on restructuring and automating processes, while also adopting new technologies that can make your day-to-day activities easier
To understand better how technology can help you improve your business, let us analyze the utility of two software solutions, which can bring obvious improvements to your business.
Task Management Software
By adopting this type of software, you will immediately increase efficiency and, more importantly, you will not have to make any other changes to your business processes. Such a solution will keep you up to date with all tasks and will remind you, each time, about deadlines or resources.
What is more, it is much easier to add a new task and assign it to your team online, instead of sending a detailed e-mail and hoping the recipient will give it due attention and understand the information.
Workflow Management Software
This example is more process-oriented because instead of monitoring the workflow manually through e-mail, chat or phone, you can use a dedicated system to manage all operations with only one dashboard. By doing this, you eliminate many potential issues, such as unstandardized procedures, since convincing all your employees to use the same methodologies can be hard to achieve. However, with an automated Workflow Management tool, you can be sure everybody is performing similar operations during each stage of the process.
Besides that, collecting and analyzing data will become much easier, and you will not have to supervise the process manually, check deadlines or measure efficiency through inaccurate metrics, because the software helps you centralize everything.
After analyzing workflow management solutions, EXE Software has identified three frequent mistakes that companies are prone to making when implementing such a piece of software:
- Investing in technology before defining a concrete business need. Technology will not solve all problems because it is crucial to start implementation only after having a clear view of the desired results. To begin with, you should map internal processes and identify which parts you want to improve through technology
- Processes cannot be improved before implementing informatics systems. Once you have mapped all processes, it is essential to analyze opportunities before automation and choose the most suitable ones. If not, you may not get the benefits you expect from workflow management solutions;
- Optimizing business processes is exclusively an IT project. Yes, an operations manager should have a certain amount of IT knowledge, but putting all responsibility on the IT department is not the key to success. Eventually, the process is mostly about business and not about technology. For this reason, it is important not only to involve the end users in choosing a solution but also to train and make them accountable for using it without considering it a tool imposed by the corporation.