Bpm for small businesses: Is it completely necessary?

Is there anything that leaves the owner of a small business more nervous and disappointed with their team and their ability to work than wastes, delays, and miscommunications? All of which lead to customer dissatisfaction.

The most ironic of all this is that the solution to this type of situation may be easily within the reach of most small entrepreneurs. If they just make use of BPM for small businesses.

If you’re finding this to be a strange buzzword, BPM stands for Business Process Management, and it works like this:

It makes a business more efficient, eliminates waste, delays and bottlenecks, facilitates communication and still provides accurate and clear data for control and decision making. By organizing business tasks in an appropriate order (an optimized process). With the goal of delivering to customers exactly the product or service they desire.

Phew! Such a long description of BPM for small businesses (and large and medium ones as well)!

Let’s discuss, in this article; how to implement BPM in small businesses and all the advantages that can come from it!

See more: Is process management possible for micro and small businesses?

Adopting BPM for Small Businesses

When an entrepreneur starts a business, they usually do business model planning. This entails defining everything he needs to buy, the employees he needs to hire and train, the target audience, where to set up, the organization of vendors and much more.

But rarely are processes properly defined, which refers to, the order and the way to accomplish each task necessary to deliver the best service or product to customers.

And that’s exactly what BPM for small businesses can do. It will prevent the wastage of resources, the delay of deliveries and the creation of confusion because of inefficient communication.

See this successful example from the Outback restaurant network:

Every step a waiter takes, every word he says, every procedure for the exchange of a cold drink that arrives warm, or the process of serving dishes to a group of teenagers celebrating a birthday, or an executive celebrating the acquisition of a new large client with his employees, is studied and detailed in manuals and training.

The goal? In addition to perfect customer service, it cements Outback’s position in the minds of customers as the ideal place to celebrate any special occasion, or spend fun moments with friends and family, in a beautiful environment, full of pleasant experiences and great food.

Of course, your small business may not be able to reach this degree of sophistication right away. But of course many large companies have started small, and that does not mean they can’t use BPM to have better processes, more efficiency, and happier customers!

Is this possible? Yes! See how:

See also: Small Business Management Software – What Areas Should I Invest in?

Use Small Business BPM Software

Don’t worry; you can find great BPM tools for small businesses for free with the best of everything. Intuitive and capable of being understood by anyone, with a small amount of effort and study; see what this user says:

“HEFLO allowed me to learn about process management in a general way, through a free and modern platform. With an open mind for innovation and customer feedback, the team meets demands and presents constant updates; it’s an excellent online tool.” –Andre Antivilo

Find bottlenecks

This kind of software helps you find bottlenecks. Those process “narrowing” phases where, if you don’t complete a task, it will slow the process down.

For example: the oven in your pizzeria has a problem and, therefore, is heating very little. The pizzas take too long to cook and customers are complaining about delays.

If you knew this was a bottleneck in your company, you could have purchased two smaller ovens, instead of one large oven. This would enable you to maneuver better in the case of this kind of problem.

Eliminate waste and delays

By organizing your tasks logically and chronologically, with an intuitive and easy-to-use tool, you will see where waste and delays can occur more clearly. Then you can take the necessary steps to prevent them.

For example: A gas station owner notes, after organizing his processes in a flowchart and doing some calculations, that the company is selling less fuel than it buys.

So, knowing that there are no deviations, he studies his flow chart. He realizes that the point where this loss may be occurring is when the truck transfers fuel to his storage tanks.

This task is then corrected and performed with more care, and saves him money.

 

Standardize communication and information control.

When and how should your employees send messages, report, and file documents?

If all this is standardized, even automated with a BPM tool or with the help of other software such as spreadsheets on drives, team management apps and integrations between them, everything will be much easier and more efficient!

For example, the owner of a car dealership begins to organize his processes. He notes that every time it’s necessary to approve the financing of a car through a bank, it takes time to locate many of the documents, data, and information he needs. Sometimes this results in the customer giving up on the purchase.

With the help of BPM for small businesses; he can define exactly what information should be collected, which documents should be scanned, where drives and folders will be stored etc. Which greatly reduces his sales losses.

These are just a few examples of how BPM for small businesses can help your business. There are many other more possibilities.