Risk Assessment in Business Continuity Planning
A risk assessment is about identifying all the possible threats to your business...
Once you have your strategy, plan, and people in place, how are you going to do it? We’ve addressed your why with your strategy and plan, your who with your people, so now it is time to address your how by looking at your business processes. Process is the next step of the MPWRSource methodology.
Superheroes are people of action after all.
A business process is a collection or related, structured activities or tasks completed by people, automations, or equipment which when done in a specific sequence produce a specific service, product, or achieve a certain business goal. Simply put—a business process is like an assembly line—lots of different steps and stages to create a completed product.
Your organization’s business processes should be developed to contribute to reaching your overall strategic goals. Their repetition should lead to your business success. If they are not, they need to be re-evaluated.
Now that’s the million-dollar question, right? A process is often comprised of tasks. A process is repeatable. A process should be ever evolving and flexible. A process has an established beginning and end. A process is measurable.
Business processes are how a business runs, the heart of your business operations. If they are out of whack, your business will be as well. According to Gartner, utilizing a business process management strategy increases the success rate of your projects by 70%. Therefore, it makes sense to power up your business by investing in the management and improvement of your business processes.
Some business processes are vital and other processes play a more supporting role of those other processes. For example, Hawkeye rounding up his arrows may not seem as an important of a process as when he uses them, but if he doesn’t do it, his quiver is empty the next time he confronts the Tracksuit Mafia.
Operational processes are your core business processes. These activities bring direct value to your clients and your company. They are essential and generate revenue.
We know, we know. You want to just focus on the core business activities. But for every superhero, there is a guy in a chair and for every core business process, there is a supporting process. These processes may not necessarily be responsible for the result per se, but they enable the core activities and without well thought out supporting processes, an organization will collapse. (This is similar to the relationship between direct and indirect costs. Sure, your indirect costs of telecommunications and facilities don’t bring home the bacon, but how are your superheroes talking about the bacon and where are they, in fact, making the bacon?)
They might not know who the next leader is (our bets are on Dr. Strange), but even the Avengers had a leader in Iron Man. Someone must oversee how the company runs. And managers have their own set of rules and processes by which they operate.
Each and every business process within an organization is important. And making sure that your business processes run smoothly and align with your overall mission and vision is vital to the health and growth of your organization. Business processes should be evaluated regularly to make sure they are efficient and help you meet your goals. Having set key performance indicators (KPIs) about your processes can help you identify any hiccups in your system. Using data analytics and workflows can help your organization maintain efficiency.
With all of these processes, it is a good thing you assembled your team in the previous step of our methodology (people) because one person cannot do it alone. A small business owner cannot possibly run her business, manage people, write blogs and do marketing, keep clients happy, answer service questions, or handle the numbers. Unless you are The Flash, there simply is not enough time (or enough time to do it well). While Wonder Woman certainly took on No Man’s Land on her own, she was able to soar to new heights upon the shielded back of Steve Trevor.