New Year, Time to Update Processes

Your business functions off processes. Whether you are aware of them or not, they are part of almost every aspect of your business. We here at Comprehensive Consulting Solutions for Small Businesses have spoken before about the importance of processes but how do you make sure your processes continue to work as they did when you first implemented them?

That is what we’re going to tackle in this article. Making sure your business runs smoothly is a timeless necessity, and the processes you use to do so may need to be tweaked more than a few times as your business ages and changes over time. Taking the time to find out what changes need to be made, what needs to stay in place, and what new processes you need to add are all vital.

What are Processes?

Processes are “procedures developed from a sequence of steps to achieve goals.” These are basically the set steps you go through to complete tasks and jobs within your business. Some areas that many businesses have in common that function based on processes are:

• - Customer service Processes for how your business handles complaints and rectifies situations
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• - Resource management Processes that manage your supply chain, budgets, and inventory management.
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• - Payroll Processes on tracking hours, calculating pay, and scheduling when and where to send paychecks.
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• - Marketing Processes that handle social media posts, networking, referrals, advertisements, cold calling, and follow-ups to name a few.
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• - Recruiting and employee retention processes that handle onboarding, HR situations, and the business culture. These processes can be set steps you follow to ensure things are done correctly, the order in which you complete these steps, and the oversight of these processes.

How Do You Know When a Process isn’t Working?

Once you have your processes in place, you need to keep an eye on the results of the processes to make sure they work. Processes that you put in place when your business first opened may not be reliable years down the line as your business goes through changes in your staff, productivity, size, or services.

Maintaining a process that doesn’t help your business would be a waste of your resources. Signs your processes are not working as they should are:

- Increase in customer complaints or lack of positive resolutions. - Shipments of products and supplies showing up late or inventory being incorrect.

- Marketing tactics fail, sales decrease, or customer retention rates drop.

- The culture within your business drops, employee dissatisfaction levels rise, and employee retention rates decrease. As a business owner, you should be proactive for any signs that your processes fail to provide the desired results.

How AI Can Help Your Processes

AI has been evolving exponentially within the past few years, and the assistance it can offer businesses, grows with it. One of the many benefits AI can provide your business is automating processes you have so that you can free up time for other tasks.

Ways that you can use AI to help automate processes and help improve them are:

- Scheduling and sending out posts on social media. You can use AI to schedule when posts on social media come out so you can draft up posts in one sitting and schedule them to be posted spread over any length of time.

- Emails and automated messages You can use AI to send out automated emails and messages until you or whoever is in charge of customer assistance can reach out for a more personal form of assistance.

- Studying analytics You can use AI to help filter through online data and analytics from your sales, social media performance, and customer input to turn the data ocean into a manageable data pool you can work with and study.

- Tasks involving scheduling You can use AI to help develop schedules for employees and tasks your business needs to do.

- Helping with payroll and automating payments AI can help track employee clock-in times and schedule when payments need to be sent and where they need to be sent. For more information on business processes, check out these articles:

• - 16 Business Process Examples to Help an Organisation Succeed
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• - The Extensive Guide to Business Processes for 2024

Your processes are the backbone of your business. They are what allow your work to flow and tasks to be done for optimal results. Managing all the processes for your business may seem like a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be. With the proper management and delegation, it can be a seamless system that produces ideal results.

If you need help fixing processes, establishing processes, or finding technology to automate your processes, reach out to us here at Comprehensive Consulting Solutions for Small Businesses to schedule a free consultation with a Small Business Consultant!