AbdulGaniy Shehu — January 6, 2020 Systematizing a business is hard. But, it’s a path you must take if you really want to take your business to the next level.
Not only does it make it breathe without you, but it also ensures that it stands the test of time. While most business owners want to systematize their business, they find the process difficult to implement.
In this post, I want to share with you a five-step guide that will make this important journey in your business lifecycle seamless.
Let’s get started.
Why Systematize Your Business?
Systematizing involves creating standard operating procedures or policies that are specific to your business.
This helps to ensure smooth operations, instil orderliness and improve productivity.
By systematizing your business, you capitalize on your strengths and build upon it, hence replicating those procedures that work best.
There are some other reasons you should systematize your business and they include:
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It Synchronizes Your Operations into One
Systematizing your business makes it easy for you to document the guideline you’ll follow in order to get things done at once.
That way, you’ll be able to create a specific workflow that you’ll operate with in the business from different sources.
In fact, you can create a standard operating procedure that will be useful for your employees and business.
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Gives Employees the Freedom to Perform
Employees need freedom to perform excellently in any company. But if you don’t have a system in place, this will be a tall order for them. If you can systematize your business the right way, you’ll empower your employees to become stars in your organization.
This is because a system shows them exactly what they need to do, when they should do it, and how to do it for optimal results.
By performing documented procedures over time, employees get familiar with your business process, learn on the job, and improve their expertise over time.
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It Enhances Quality Control
Quality control is a process by which entities review the quality of all factors involved in production. When you systematize your business, you improve the quality and consistency of your company’s production.
This is because there is a procedure to follow and all you need to do at all times to achieve similar or better results for your clients is to replicate the same actions. This leads to better quality service delivery and tons of satisfied clients.
How To Systematize Your Business for Success
Now you might be wondering. How do all these add up for my own business? If I want to create a system for my business today, how do I go about it?
Look no further.
Here is the five-step guide which you can use to systematize your business.
Step 1. Outline the Existing Systems that Work in Your Business
If you’ve been in business for a while, chances are that you already have working systems in place.
The first thing you need to do when systematizing your business is to write out these systems that are already working with pen and paper.
That way, you’ll get one or two things from it, hence maximizing your business’s full potential.
In order to do this, you need to list out these systems, go through them and make sure they’re truly useful and relevant.
Take for instance, if you help businesses and brands that want to figure out how content marketing can work for them.
Some of the tasks you’d typically do for each project include:
- Keyword research
- Competitor research
- Content outline
- Content drafting
- Designing, editing, and proofreading
- Publishing and promotion
From these tasks, you can identify the ones that don’t solve any particular problem and remove them.
By doing this, you’ll prune down your list as much as possible and position yourself to get better results.
Step 2. Identify Repetitive Tasks that Help You Achieve a Goal
After outlining the systems that work, the next step is to identify the tasks that must be performed before you can get a job done in your company.
Truth is, you might think that you already figured out all the tasks in the company before proceeding with this step.
However, you’d be surprised to find out that there are some tiny details which are critical to the success of your business and you’re yet to find them out.
To get a good result from this activity, you can ask your team to write out a daily report of their individual and team tasks for a specific period of time; say a week or two.
Once done, you’ll have a clear understanding of how each team member contributes to the growth of your company.
Take your time to study the records, identify the tasks that are irrelevant, and the ones that should either be performed individually or collectively for better results.
You may also group similar tasks together and assign them to specific employees.
Step 3. Create a Workflow Sequence
Before systematizing your business, it’s not strange to see that most tasks don’t have a sequence used in implementing them.
This leads to disorderliness in your company’s operations and also affect the productivity of employees and their output.
For this reason, you need to create a sequence that everybody on your team must follow. What you need to do here is to identify the small tasks that must be done before the bigger ones.
The sequence should start with the primary tasks which must be executed before the secondary tasks. That way, your system will become effective and not prone to errors.
Step 4. Document Your Company’s Procedures
This is the most critical step in systematizing your business for success. Truth is, anything that isn’t properly documented isn’t a system. This is why you need to write down everything.
When you do this, you’ll provide your employees with a step-by-step guide detailing what they need to do and how to do it in your absence.
The document will serve as a guide for everyone working in your company, such that they’ll be able to carry out tasks correctly with little or no supervision.
In order to document your system, you can use Google Docs to get this done. This document should not only tell employees what to do, rather it’ll also explain to them in a step by step format, how to do it.
If you can use visuals or explainer videos here, it’ll really go a long way.
Step 5. Test to See if Your System Works
This is the final step you take when systematizing your business. You need to test the system in place by assigning different tasks to your employees using the document and see if everything works out fine.
If they’re able to get it at first try, it means that your system works and you now have a solid procedure that you can rely on.
Else, try as much as possible to go over the procedures with your employees until they get it right.
Conclusion
If you want your business to grow and run effectively even in your absence, you need to systematize it.
When you do, you’ll have a full picture of what each member of your team does exactly. Likewise, you’ll be able to take yourself out of everything happening in your business.
The steps shared in this post will help you create a business that has components working on their own without your interference.
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