Why Every Business Should Standardise Its Processes
Posted on 2nd December 2021
From onboarding to productivity, standardisation improves many aspects of a business. Here's how every company can benefit from it.
Process standardisation is essentially a collection of guidelines whose goal is to ensure predictable and smooth company operations. It relies on finding the most efficient practices for all vital tasks and ensuring those practices are always observed.
When a business has well-defined rules of conduct, it will achieve a more consistent quality level and be less affected by the consequences of human errors.
The guidelines and rules need to define the method, quality threshold, and process scope. If your company implements standardisation correctly, the overall efficiency will improve in several ways.
Benefit #1 - More Straightforward Onboarding
New employees will have a much easier time fitting into the company’s operations if the processes are standardised. If a job position entails working within defined parameters, learning the ins and outs will be relatively straightforward.
On the other hand, when there's poor or no standardisation, newcomers will face a steeper learning curve and might take a longer time to grow accustomed to everyday processes. Having to take a step back to understand vital details will also slow down the work and diminish the effectiveness.
Benefit #2 - Higher Overall Productivity
Business process standardisation means deciding on the optimal solutions to daily, monthly, or yearly tasks. What makes the solution optimal is the possibility of using it in most cases and making it available to any employee, regardless of specific talents or flaws.
It’s important to understand that the optimal solution doesn't have to be the best possible.
Some individuals might achieve impressive feats relying on their unique qualities, but not every employee will be able to do the same. Instead, a standardised process needs to ensure reliable results across the board.
If done correctly, standardisation will improve the company's overall productivity and make the output easier to predict. This can be very beneficial for forming strategies and business plans.
Benefit #3 - Easier Future Improvements
Having standardised processes means it will be much more straightforward to re-evaluate and improve them in the future. If there are numerous variations to a process, each will need to be optimised. This will take more time and prove as an unnecessary complication.
With standardisation, even complex operations will be easier to optimise as they can be broken down into smaller, well-defined steps.
Improving business processes will require some level of standardisation. As every business needs to go through optimisation from time to time, it's better to already have the rules and guidelines in place. This will make the improvements easier to implement on all levels.
Benefit #4 - Your Clients Will Know What to Expect
Business processes are essential to the way a company functions internally, but they also reflect on the relationship with customers.
If your business operates by strict guidelines, it will appear more reliable to clients and customers. Building trust and being dependable will attract more customers and turn the existing ones into loyal repeat customers. In turn, this is likely to improve the bottom line.
Standardisation will affect not only productivity but also the cash flow.
Standardise for the Best Results
Proper standardisation is a great way to improve business processes and operations. Do it right and results will be sure to follow.
If you're unsure where to start with your finance processes, we can help you introduce a number of digital packages to help streamline your processes. Contact us today and we can
Written by:
Nicola J O'Sullivan -
Effective Accounting
Founder | Xero Champion | IR35 Expert
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