How to systemise your business

Before we begin, let’s discuss what it means to systemise your business. Dynamic Business explains that “systemising is the process of documenting everything you do in your business – from answering the phone and opening the mail, to pricing work, and after-care service”. The following definition shared by Sweet Process explains a few of the benefits of having a systemised business, “[it] will enable you to release more control to your employees, give you the freedom you truly want and also make sure that you get your desired results from your employees all the time, even when you are not around!” 

We believe a step-by-step documentation process of all of your repetitive business tasks is a good first step to systemising your business because many of your employees may need to follow the same procedure. A systemised business will not only hugely benefit your company, but it will also benefit your employees and yourself in many ways. Join us while we whip through some of the key benefits of how a systemised business will be the ‘holy grail’ for your company, your employees and yourself.

How Business Systemisation Benefits Your Company

Systemising your business brings many benefits to the performance and the status of your company. Here are just three of the key benefits it will bring…

Your tasks show great results each time

Imagine having a step-by-step process in place to ensure a task is completed correctly and to your company’s standard? In a business that has focused on systemising the majority of its processes, this can happen. Your employees will generally know what outcome is expected from completing the task after following the process for the first few times.

Make sure that when you create your step-by-step processes, it highlights in detail exactly what the employee should be doing so that it is easy to follow and no part of the task is missed out or misinterpreted.

New recruits can easily start working on tasks

Like the previous point, when you hire a new employee, you will no longer have to spend a full day or two to talk them through how to use each system you currently have set in place in your company and how to complete basic tasks in their role. Business systemisation generally helps the new recruit to learn about the foundations of your business at a faster pace, while allowing you to focus on your own tasks so you don’t fall behind.

This is also beneficial for when an employee leaves your company. The general rule is that when someone leaves, all of the critical business knowledge that was undocumented and inside of your employee’s head leaves your company too. To prevent this situation from happening, make a point for your employees to record the procedure they use to complete a task and encourage them to frequently update and improve that procedure.

Your company will survive and thrive

With tried and tested step-by-step processes in place for your company, this allows yourself and your employees to continually think about how an activity can be improved, from saving time when completing a task to generating better results every time. By regularly repeating this method, your company will become more efficient in its activities and therefore thrive in the industry in which it operates.

How Business Systemisation Benefits Your Employees

Not only does business systemisation benefit your company, it also benefits your employees in various ways.

Tasks can be easily passed onto other employees

With a documented process in place, your employees can share their workload if one employee finds that they have too many tasks to complete by a deadline and another employee has already completed their tasks. Basically, the employee who issued the task will only need to briefly explain the nature of the task and what outcomes are expected initially; the employee who is also skilled to successfully complete the task is then able to carry out the work with minimal guidance.

This benefits employees in a number of ways:

• Stress, anxiety and worry are kept to a minimum
• A good work/life balance is maintained
• It builds a stronger team bond
• The employee maintains high motivation when they don’t have to think of how to complete a high volume of tasks by an unrealistic deadline date

No time wastage on figuring out how to complete a task

When a task contains a step-by-step process, it becomes very unlikely that aspects of the task will be missed out and forgotten about. This is especially useful when the same task is carried out numerous times and by multiple members of staff; with a step-by-step process in place, each member of staff responsible for completing the task will know how to do this within the least time possible. Employees will also no longer need to have in depth discussions about the task to gain an understanding on what to do as this will already be documented.

Enhanced control and satisfaction in the role

Business systemisation will undoubtedly enhance control in the roles of every employee within your company. The reason for this is because there will no longer be any need for verification from other members of staff in terms of finding out if a task is implemented in the correct way and if it meets the company standard. Without the need to verify tasks, future tasks won’t be blocked, and a fast work pace is often maintained.

When utilising a step-by-step process to complete a task, employees have the opportunity to regularly revise the process in place and therefore provide valuable contribution to continually improve the process. This often increases employee satisfaction in their role because they feel like they are being listened to and they are heavily involved in improving the success of the company.

How Business Systemisation Benefits Business Owners

Now that we’ve covered the ways in which systemisation benefits your company and your employees, it’s time to discuss how systemising your business can benefit business owners.

Others can do your tasks when you’re unavailable

Have you ever been in a situation where you’re worried about the pile of work you’ll come back to if you take time off work to go on holiday, take a sick day or by simply attending a last-minute meeting? A systemised business will reduce the amount of work you have to catch up on by being able to offload your most critical tasks to other members of staff in the same discipline. You no longer have to worry about an unmanageable workload, leaving you stress free and ready to work on your remaining tasks, all whilst maintaining a strong team bond.

You won’t be pestered with task uncertainties

Once a documented process has been created and tested and a brief explanation of the task has been given, employees will have a clear understanding about what it is they have to do in order to successfully complete the task.

Since the systemised process acts as a replacement tool for lengthy team meetings taking place to explain the task in full, this enables you to get on with your own tasks without constant distraction, putting you in a better place to reach important deadlines and to focus on additional tasks that you never previously found the time to do.

Can forecast how long a task will take

As mentioned previously, by following the same process to complete a task that is done regularly in your company, it will soon become easier to determine roughly how long that task will take to complete. From this point, it would be beneficial to regularly review the process and to modify it in a way that it will improve the overall result of the task and to find ways to save time without affecting the quality of the result.

It would be worth using the lean methodology when reviewing the process by trying out new approaches to maximise the value and make improvements on the process. The idea of the lean approach is to maximise value while minimising waste; meaning more value is created when using fewer resources. This approach helps to maintain productivity within your organisation when whittling out the negative areas that haven’t performed as well as you hoped.

Understanding how to systemise your business

Now that you have read through the nine benefits of a systemised business, you may be wondering how you can adopt this approach within your business practices.

Some tips

Start by simply adopting some online tools to manage your workload, your available time and other areas of your business. Tools such as Trello and Harvest help you to keep track of the tasks you must complete and how much time is spent on completing such tasks. There are many other tools that can benefit different areas of your business that can be viewed here.

Another tool you can use to help systemise your processes is called Sweet Process. Sweet Process allows you to note down all of the processes you wish to systemise into a set of documented processes stored online. You can also choose which team members you wish to view these processes by creating departments and adding the appropriate members; this is important when sensitive information is included in a process that shouldn’t be available company-wide. It also helps to keep the procedures organised and easy to find by employees in different functions – saving them time when finding the correct procedure to follow and it maintains high relevancy to their job role.

Start by documenting all of the repetitive tasks in your company into Sweet Process, it would then be useful to document the processes that are not carried out often, but it may be referred back to in the near future. Learn more about Sweet Process here.

Additional things to consider

In addition to your new business systems in place, it is very important that you listen to your team and encourage organic thinking and fresh ideas regularly. New suggestions will massively benefit the reviewing of the processes in place which will aid innovation to allow your company to thrive against its competitors - ultimately, this helps you work out how to systemise your business more quickly. This can be achieved by hosting regular team meetings and brainstorming sessions to focus on a specific process each time in order to achieve maximum output; this allows for identified problems to be solved and a better process to be followed.

If you have already begun use systems and tools to benefit your business, that’s great! But, have you thought about automating some of those tools to save even more time? Once a business process is systemised, you could save even more time by automating the process altogether, which will free up time for you and your employees to focus on other tasks; this encourages you to become more productive and therefore thrive in your industry. Here are some benefits your business will gain when you automate your processes:

• a more enjoyable workload by eliminating repetitive and manual tasks through business systemisation
• a more challenging workload that will help team members to develop additional skills when working through new tasks that were not possible before the system was set in place
• if you choose to sell your business, it will be a much more attractive purchase if you have systemised your business and and used business automation
• new employees will onboard quickly and easily, and current employees can be easily promoted

We will help you automate your business processes by carrying out a digital review of your company. We will spend around half of a day in your business and examine each department to find ways in which we can automate your processes to save you and your employees more time in your average workday. Call us on 0191 259 1272 for more information on how to get help in systemising your business.