Demystifying Business Process Design for Startups and SMEs

The ever-evolving business landscape is always abuzz with fancy terms, some of which fail to resonate with startup founders at first instance. Business process design is one such term. However, it has profound implications if used smartly. In this blog, we will demystify business process design and understand its areas of application. We will also shed light on: 

• What a business process is. 

• Why you need business process design. 

• How to implement it in your business.  

So, wear your reading glasses and embark on a journey into the world of business process design!  

What’s a Business Process? 

New entrepreneurs and startup founders often embark on their entrepreneurial journey without outlining their business processes first. But it is a crucial first step you cannot afford to miss. The textbook definition of a business process is a set of well-defined tasks and workflows that yields positive results for a business operation.  

So, for instance, deciding what your tagline is going to be for 2024 is a business process. Packing and dispatching products to customers via a logistics partner is a business process. Hiring new employees is a business process. Business processes are as varied as businesses themselves. That’s why they are segregated into three clusters: core processes, strategic processes, and management processes.  

Here are some examples of the processes coming under the said headers:  

• Core Processes: Production, Sales and Marketing, Customer Service. 

• Strategic Processes: Planning, Innovation, Partner Management. 

• Management Processes: Budgeting, Human Resources, Project Management.  

What’s Business Process Design?  

Suppose you want to streamline your production process so as to reduce raw material wastage and maximize the output of your employees. What do you do? You go back to the drawing board with the schematics of the current process, do some brainstorminindig, and come up with a new and more efficient process. That’s Business Process Design 101 for you!  

Here are some practical examples of the areas where you can implement business process design: 

1. Order-to-cash Process Design: What’s a business without cash inflow? Order-to-cash design entails streamlining everything from order placement by the customer to cash collection and invoice generation.
2. Procure-to-pay Process Design: Purchasing raw materials and identifying suppliers is crucial to keeping your production line functional. Procure-to-pay design entails streamlining product procurement, supplier management, reducing cycle time, and such.
3. Client onboarding Process Design: Customers decide the fate of any business! Hence, it’s crucial to have a business process optimized for client onboarding. Optimizing client onboarding involves crucial steps like KYC, customer account creation, verification, etc.
4. Expense Management Process Design: A business bleeding money will eventually fold. Hence, it’s crucial to cut down on expenses wherever possible. An optimized expense management process trims down overhead costs and implements automation to reduce human intervention and process time.
5. Supply Chain Optimization: This business process redesign streamlines crucial things like demand forecasting, logistics, and inventory management. It’s like redesigning the backbone of a business for optimal performance.
6. Performance Monitoring and Management Optimization: A lot depends on employee performance, more so for startups. Hence, streamlining employee performance monitoring and management is crucial to boosting the morale of the workforce and encouraging them to perform better. The same holds true for business tools. With an optimized performance monitoring process in place, businesses can decide on which tools to implement and which ones to do away with.
7. Quality Management Process Design: Businesses thrive on positive customer reviews. When your existing customers speak highly of your products, you know your business is moving in the right direction. Hence, a highly optimized quality management process must be in place to monitor the output of the production line.
8. Innovation: When you have a set process in place to monitor and inspire innovation, you end up with much-needed product improvements. A business process designed exclusively to encourage innovation has systems to record customer feedback and turn ideas into reality.
9. IT Management: Recent studies reveal that businesses stand to lose as much as 30% of their revenue by leaving low-level IT tasks unautomated. Hence, optimizing the IT infrastructure of a business is crucial to seamless production and maximizing revenue.
10. Compliance and Risk Management Process Design: Businesses worldwide have to operate within the bounds of local laws. A well-defined compliance and risk management process entails monitoring and implementing control mechanisms to mitigate compliance violations. 

Why You Need Business Process Design 

• According to research and advisory company Forrester, business process design and management can increase productivity by as much as 50%. 

• 70% of founders and business executives consider business process design as the way forward.   

• According to tech research and consulting firm Gartner, implementing business process design increases a project’s chance of success by 70%. 

Here’s how business process design can help your firm: 

1. Redefine Strategies and Goals

When you dig deep into your business processes and institute mechanisms to improve them, you get a clearer view of your short-term and long-term goals and the strategies necessary to achieve them. 

2. Ensure More Transparency

With business process design, you can create a more transparent organizational machinery because you always know who’s working on what in your enterprise. You are always one step ahead of your team in terms of process knowledge, which means you are in complete control of your business.

3. Improve Communication

When you and your team members have a crystal-clear idea of the SOPs of your business, communication, innovation, and brainstorming sessions become fun and exciting. All you need to do is tweak the existing processes to achieve better results. 

4. Standardize Business Tasks

There’s no place for guesswork in business process design. Every process is standardized and hence easy to follow and remember. This means fewer errors and more room for automation. The end result is increased safety and revenue with minimal losses. 

5. Facilitate Integration of New Systems

What business process design does to your organization is divide it into mutually compatible units delivering their peak performance. Imagine the new structure as a model made of Lego bricks. You can easily add new systems, modify the old ones, and do away with redundant pieces.  

No matter your products or target customers, business process design can reshape your brand and perspective at the same time. The modular approach of business process design empowers you with a readily available schematic of your business. You can thwart malfunctioning processes and optimize those performing at their peak.  

How You Can Implement Business Process Design with the Help of Remote Resource?

Remote Resource is a premier offshore hiring firm that brings the power of remote hiring to your doorstep. With our help, you can hire software developers, business process design experts, web designers, PHP professionals, and more. Here’s what makes us your best choice: 

• Low Hiring Costs: We bring to you the top 10% of global talent in any domain at a fraction of your local hiring costs.  

• Zero Hiring Hassles: We do the heavy lifting of sorting resumes and identifying the best candidates for your job roles.  

• Zero Employee Liabilities: You pay only for the hours or days you engage our remote employees and nothing else. 

• Scalability at your fingertips: You can upsize or downsize your team without worrying about layoff hassles. 

• 100% Data Security: Your business data is safe with us. We adhere to strict nondisclosure agreements for complete IP protection and data security.  

When you hire our business process design experts, they: 

1. Assess old processes and create a roadmap for the changes to be implemented.
2. They communicate the reasons for process redesign, outlining the benefits of the new processes to all stakeholders.
3. They identify the training needs of your existing team to implement the new processes.
4. They implement business process management tools like Microsoft Power Automate, Pega, Appian, Bizagi, etc. to automate mundane tasks and streamline the workflow.
5. They monitor and evaluate the new processes for performance and suggest changes for improvement. 

Summing it up 

Business process design is one of the best things to happen in the business landscape. Together with robotic process automation (RPA), it is changing the way businesses function. 2024 has ushered in a new year for technological innovation and automation. If you are a startup founder, 2024 is the year to embrace business process design and scale new heights as an entrepreneur.