Being a great business is about getting the processes right NOT technology.
If you have been following along with this blog for any length of time, you are familiar with my mantra of people, process then (maybe) technology. For small to medium enterprises, what your investment in technology does is standardize or automate to improve your business processes.
To demonstrate this concept, look at this excellent article in Canada’s PROFIT magazine.
Previously I have used the term friction, in this quote, they call it the baton pass;
… not just for the usual purpose of managing sales but also to transform its handling of customer relationships “in the ‘baton pass’ from the sales team to our service-delivery engine
And another;
To spot inefficiencies, “Staple yourself to a customer order and see what happens as it moves through your company,” suggests Becky Reuber, a strategic management professor at the Rotman School of Management in Toronto. “Whose hands touch it? Whose desk does it get stuck on? This makes it easier to spot bottlenecks.”
Baton Pass, Bottleneck or Friction
All of these are just different words for the same issue. Where we as SME managers lose sight of what is happening in our business is in the details of;
Where is that information right now?
Who is responsible for it currently?
What is the next step that it has to take in our value chain?
Where in the process is that information stuck or losing time?
And these questions can have real effects and outcomes on our business. Invoicing never leaves your facility for 10 days? Why?
Delivery is 4 weeks? why not next week?
It is when we ‘staple ourselves’ to that piece of paper moving through our call to cash cycle, or follow that ‘baton pass’ that we begin to see opportunities to improve our turn around times.
Improving these processes can be managed manually as well, but there is also the opportunity to use technology to assist in routinize that dull stuff.
Photo is a vintage 5.25 inch floppy disk dated 1993 I had to get a photo of