To hit pay dirt

Any business development starts with process organization. Before starting a new business or expanding an existing business, we need to have clearly defined processes and a clear understanding of these processes. If we don’t, we will only increase the chaos. We even risk destroying any good assets which we have, including our relationships with customers. If we are just starting our business, we are also going to need a clear understanding of which processes we will need.

It does not matter how many people there are. If there are a lot of people and departments, then processes will be distributed among the departments and people. If there are not enough people, each person will need to perform more functions, and we will know what people we need based on the number and types of functions. In a startup, often one person wears many hats.

So what would we do first?

According to the guide ISO 9001, businesses are divided into the following process groups:

• management processes;
• main processes;
• supporting processes.

The processes in the first group and the third group are almost the same for different businesses. 

The Management processes are the activity of creating the strategy and forming the development direction, management model and principles. 

This first group includes the following processes:

1)   Strategic Management;

2)   Quality Management;

3)    Organization Management;

4)    Contractor Management;

5)    Customer Management;

6)    Partner Management;

7)    Public Relations Management;

8)    Financial Planning and Budgeting.

The main processes are the activities directly assumed by the charter company documents and forming the main product for the market/society.

How would we know these main processes? 

The main processes depend on what kind of business you have.

At the beginning we need the clear understanding your goal. After that we have to formulate the main tasks which you will want decide to reach your goal.  

So, we know our main processes.

Auxiliary/supporting processes are activities, which are necessary to support the main processes, to form a single platform and typical rules of the unit and processes interaction within all other processes.

This third group includes the following processes:

1)  Regulatory Information Management;

2)  Project Management;

3)  Information Technology and Security Management;

4)  Workflow Document Management;

5)  Archive Documents storage;

6)  Stuff Management;

7)   Transportation Management;

8) Administrative Management

9)   Supply Chain Management.

When we know our processes we have to describe their inputs and outputs. Process inputs and outputs can be material, financial and information. Each business has own inputs and outputs.

If we only create a company, we describe our company model. If we already have a company, we also describe the model, in this case we don't need to think about our current structure when you make description, we have to think about your goals and tasks for reaching these goals. When we will get the model we can compare our current processes and our model, we will see what we have and what we have not. After process description, we can write the plan for transfer from the current processes to the model processes.

Information about the process description will be in the next article.

I'll always glad to get your feed back and questions.