While travelling recently, we stopped at a food establishment in the airport. This chain had an established process of ordering and delivery of food items. However, this process was neither intuitive nor well-posted for patrons to understand, creating confusion and frustration.
There is a lesson for Entrepreneurs. As you focus on reviewing and improving business processes, do not forget that such processes have to be well understood by the users. There should be a strong emphasis on effective communication of the established processes.
For external users of your business processes, such as clients and vendors, lack of proper communication could negate the effectiveness of your procedures regardless of their excellence. Periodic follow-up with these users as to their understanding and feedback on the process would create an opportunity for refinements.
For internal users, communication combined with training is absolutely necessary. Developing a business process, no matter how good it is, will be effective only if your employees understand it.
Develop, improve, effectively communicate and fully train the users about each business process, otherwise confusion will kill your processes.
Ravi Patel