Introduction
Small businesses have unique challenges, and establishing efficient and streamlined business processes is certainly one of them. You could argue it’s actually the most important of all: in fact, implementing business process management can improve customer satisfaction by up to 30 percent.
In this article, we'll take a look at business processes for small businesses, address common hurdles and give examples of overcoming them. Then, we’ll dive into the Business Process Lifecycle, a systematic approach to helping businesses in their process journey.
Let’s get started!
TL;DR: Small business processes
- Small businesses face unique challenges in establishing efficient and streamlined processes.
- Implementing business process management can improve customer satisfaction by up to 30%.
- Examples of common small business processes include CRM, supply chain management, financial management, quality control, and customer support.
- Core processes for small businesses include project management, human resource management, accounting and finances, marketing and sales, business development, and customer service and support.
- The Business Process Lifecycle consists of identification, documentation, design, implementation, monitoring, optimization, and evaluation.
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Why business processes are important
Business processes are the backbone of any organization. Small businesses often struggle to establish and optimize these processes. Research shows that business process management projects have an internal rate of return of over 15 percent and deliver productivity gains ranging from 30 percent to 50 percent.
In their quest for growth and success, small business owners face hurdle after hurdle. Time constraints, limited budgets, hiring talent, you name it. Streamlining processes is one thing all small business owners can do to improve their business overall.
Statistics reveal the true potential of optimizing business strategies—21 percent of companies have reported savings of 10 percent or more by implementing strategies to optimize business processes. Just imagine the savings if you could reduce costs by just 10 percent.
The point is: business processes are important.
5 examples of small business processes
Now, let’s delve into some examples of common business problems that small businesses often encounter. These processes each play a role in the business's long-term success, and therefore, we should take them very seriously.
1. Customer relationship management (CRM): A CRM system helps manage customer interactions, track leads and keep sales pipelines organized.
2. Supply chain management: This involves optimizing procurement processes, inventory management and logistics to make sure products flow from suppliers to customers as efficiently as possible.
3. Financial management: From bookkeeping to budgeting and from financial reporting to invoicing—financial management has it all.
4. Quality control: A good quality product or service is the backbone of any business. Quality control involves monitoring and maintaining quality.
5. Customer support: This process involves establishing communication channels, training support staff, and implementing systems for quick resolution of customer problems.
Core processes for small businesses + templates
Now that we have a good idea of what processes mean in small businesses and the role they play in long-term success, we'll break down some of the core processes and give you templates to easily create them.
Project management
Project management is an absolutely essential process that small businesses need to master to achieve a successful outcome. It involves effectively planning, executing and monitoring projects from start to finish.
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Project management is like a captain navigating a ship through turbulent waters. Project managers steer their teams toward the desired destination just as the captain steers their boat in the right direction.
However, small businesses often face challenges in project management. Projects can become disorganized if you don't work to streamline them, leading to missed deadlines and budget overruns.
✨ Related resource: 14 Free Project Plan Templates for All Teams
To overcome these challenges, small businesses can implement project management best practices, like creating clear project objectives, breaking them down into manageable tasks, assigning responsibilities and then having ongoing communication across the team.
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Use a pre-built template like Scribe's Project Documentation Template to easily document your project goals, timelines, tasks, and risks, and track progress.
Human resource management
Human resource management is also very important for small businesses. It includes hiring and onboarding, as well as maintaining a good relationship with employees at all times. HR is like the conductor of a symphony. Thanks to the conductor, every instrument plays harmoniously together to create beautiful music.
Small businesses often struggle with HR processes, especially when resources are limited. Hiring and onboarding new employees can be time-consuming and challenging without standardized processes. It's like trying to assemble a puzzle without the picture on the box—pieces might be missing, and the final result may not match expectations.
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Creating a New Hire Onboarding Guide can streamline the process and provide a structured and consistent onboarding experience for new employees.
Accounting and finances
Accounting and finances are the lifeblood of any small business. No money, no business. Running a business without proper financial management is impossible. You can’t drive a car without a fuel gauge, either. You'll run out of fuel without warning and find yourself lost on the road to success.
Small businesses face many challenges in accounting and finances. They may struggle with bookkeeping, invoicing, budgeting and financial analysis. Managing cash flow can be precarious, and accurate reporting may be difficult to achieve. There are so many activities to juggle in accounting and finances, making it easy to miss something.
To tackle these challenges, small businesses need systems in place. The right systems are the key to well-organized financial management, from maintaining accurate and up-to-date financial records to using accounting software for automated bookkeeping and invoicing.
Ensure consistency and compliance with legal and regulatory requirements, by using a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) Template to establish procedures for accounting and finance practices.
💡 Check out this list of the best small business software for more tools that can help boost operational efficiency.
Marketing and sales
Just as with accounting and finance—no marketing and sales, no business. Marketing and sales are a dynamic duo working hand in hand to attract potential customers, generate leads and ultimately close sales. However, managing marketing and sales as a small business is not easy. Limited resources can make it difficult to stand out from competitors and convert leads into customers.
These days, it’s crucial for small businesses to understand their target market—who is your customer? Then, they should craft a compelling brand message—what is their story? For small businesses, it’s especially important to jump on the opportunities presented to them.
Use this Brand Campaign Communication Plan Template to help you outline the strategy, tactics and channels for effectively communicating your brand's message, increasing brand awareness and driving customer engagement.
Business development
Business development helps small businesses identify growth opportunities and establish strategic partnerships for expansion. A business developer is always on the lookout for new opportunities.
Limited market knowledge and a lack of networking opportunities can hinder the ability of small businesses to identify potential opportunities. Small businesses really have to make an effort to “develop business” successfully. This includes conducting market research, identifying emerging trends and actively building a network of contacts and partnerships.
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Use this Business Development SOP Template to develop consistent, repeatable and efficient processes, which can help to increase your revenue generation.
Customer service and support
Small business processes for customer service and support can be as simple as answering a customer's phone call or as complex as resolving a customer's technical issue.
Small businesses typically have fewer resources than large businesses, which can make it difficult to provide the same level of customer support. You may not be able to afford to hire a dedicated customer support team, so it's important that everyone's on the same page with your support processes.
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Developing customer service and support processes helps to ensure that your business is providing excellent customer service, and reduces the amount of time and resources that you spend on customer service issues. Use this Customer Service SOP Template to train your team on how to deliver high-quality customer service.
How to identify your small business processes
We’ve been talking a lot about optimizing small business processes. But before you can even think about that, you need to know what the processes in your business are. Here is how you identify them.
1: Assess your business needs and goals
Take a step back and evaluate the core objectives of your business. For example, a small e-commerce business may prioritize optimizing its online sales funnel, whereas a brick-and-mortar store might prioritize its employee onboarding, because of the different goals the two businesses have.
📌 Related resource: 5 Free Business Plan Templates to Simplify Your Planning Process
2. Analyze industry-specific requirements
Every industry has its own set of regulations, standards and customer expectations that influence process implementation. Research and understand the industry landscape to identify any specific process requirements.
3. Document your current processes
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Once you clearly understand your business needs and industry requirements, it's time to document your current processes.
Use an AI-powered process documentation tool like Scribe to automate the process. Simply download Scribe, click on the browser icon, and click "Start Capture". As you go through the process, Scribe captures your onscreen actions and auto-generates a step-by-step guide with annotated screenshots and text in seconds.
"SOPs made possible! What I used to spend hours, if not days, doing to create professional-looking, detailed instructions now takes less than 10 mins to record, annotate and send.” — Chris B., Practice Administrator
Automate process documentation in seconds with Scribe ➜
4: Identify areas for improvement
Once you have a clear understanding of your business processes, you can identify process gaps and areas for improvement. Evaluate your existing processes with a critical eye. Look for inefficiencies, bottlenecks or recurring issues that hinder productivity or are costly.
For example, you may discover that your client onboarding process lacks clarity, leading to confusion and ultimately, delays. By recognizing these gaps, you can prioritize process improvements. Build a detailed, comprehensive process and focus on optimizing those areas for better outcomes.
7 steps to streamline small business processes
The Business Process Lifecycle is like a roadmap for small businesses to tackle their processes. It starts by identifying the need for a process, mapping out the details, designing a smooth workflow, putting it into action, keeping an eye on its performance, making it even better and finally, evaluating its impact.
The cycle keeps small businesses on track. Let’s take a look at what each step in the cycle is for, and how you can streamline them.
Step 1: Identification
The first step in the Business Process Lifecycle is the identification of a specific business process. This could be recognizing the need for a totally new process to improve the overall operation or identifying an existing process that requires reevaluation.
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An operational plan provides a clear and concise roadmap for achieving organizational objectives and can align your teams with your overall mission and vision.
Step 2: Documentation
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Once a process is identified, it is important to document it in detail. This documentation could capture information such as the objectives, tasks and responsibilities associated with the process, or if it’s a digital process, it could include how to do it so everyone in the business understands it.
This is where a process documentation tool like Scribe comes in. With Scribe, you can effortlessly craft process guides while you work, empowering you to create SOPs, training manuals and process overviews for any business process, complete with screenshots.
You can use Scribe's generative AI to add titles, descriptions and additional context to your project documentation—or ask the AI to write it for you.
Step 3: Design
The business process design phase involves determining the most effective and efficient way to execute the process. What will the process look like in detail?
This step focuses on creating a workflow that outlines the process's sequence of tasks and decision points. Additionally, it involves establishing key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the process's success and identifying any necessary guidelines or standards.
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Step 4: Implementation
After the process design is finalized, it's time to implement the plan. This step involves communicating the process changes to the relevant stakeholders, such as employees or customers. Clear instructions and training might be necessary to ensure everyone understands their roles and responsibilities within the process.
Step 5: Monitoring
Once the process is implemented, it's important to monitor its performance. Something will inevitably go wrong along the way, even if the plan was perfect.
In this step, you track the process metrics and analyze data to measure its effectiveness and efficiency. By continuously monitoring the process, small businesses can identify any bottlenecks and intervene in time to ensure the process stays on track and delivers the desired outcomes.
Step 6: Optimization
Based on the monitoring and analysis, you might identify opportunities for improvement and additional optimization. This step involves making adjustments to the process to enhance its efficiency and effectiveness.
Step 7: Evaluation
The last step in the Business Process Lifecycle is evaluation. Once the process has been implemented, evaluating its success and impact is crucial. This step involves assessing whether the process has achieved the desired objectives set during the design phase.
Evaluation also includes gathering feedback from stakeholders involved in the process, such as employees and customers. Their insights and perspectives can provide valuable information about the effectiveness of the process and are even more important than your own perceptions of it.
Based on the evaluation findings, small businesses can make informed decisions on whether further iterations or improvements are necessary. This continuous improvement approach makes sure that processes remain aligned with the evolving needs of the business and the market.
Wrapping it up
Understanding the significance of efficient process management is crucial for the growth of a small business. Each process plays a vital role in achieving business goals, from project management to marketing and sales.
By identifying their specific processes, small businesses can streamline operations and enhance customer satisfaction, ultimately driving sustainable growth. Through continuous evaluation and improvement, they can maintain a competitive edge and thrive in the ever-changing business landscape.
With Scribe, you never have to worry about small business process documentation again. You can save valuable time knowing that your documentation is taken care of.
So, why struggle with manual process documentation when Scribe can do it for you? Create visual process documents in seconds — for free!
