Use Business Process Management software to strengthen your business and reduce frustration, inspired by Gino Wickman’s book "Traction."
In his book Traction: Get A Grip On Your Business, Gino Wickman explains that process is often the most taken-for-granted component of running a business. Successful leaders know how powerful process can be. However, business processes are often intangible and, therefore, challenging for people to understand and value fully.
Achieving your business's fullest potential requires assessing your current processes and identifying opportunities to simplify and improve them. Harnessing the power of process reduces friction and frustration in your daily operations, allowing you to do better work faster with less risk. Creating measurable goals and applying the right tools will keep you moving in the right direction.
Wickman describes five common frustrations that plague business owners:
Let’s explore the first of these frustrations: a lack of control. Instead of controlling the business, the business is controlling you.
Turning your business into a self-sustaining organism will help you shift this control so that you can focus on other essential aspects of running the company. By solving issues now, rather than winging it, you’ll save time exponentially across departments and eliminate future problems.
Wickman identifies how to begin building your business into a well-oiled machine. Take a high-level view of your business—how does it look, what are its moving parts and processes, and who is following them correctly? Assess your business processes with the ultimate goal of streamlining them.
"Your company needs to be organized in a way that reduces complexity and creates accountability."
Businesses can quickly become increasingly complex, so simplification reduces frustration. Making your operations less complex means eliminating and consolidating steps and standardizing core processes.
Wickman challenges entrepreneurs to consider how they want their business run and ensure everyone knows, values, and follows the processes. You cannot fine-tune a non-existent or inconsistent process. This is where tools can enable you to identify and refine your business's rules and processes.
As a business owner, you probably feel it’s important to be able to act and react on the fly. But by standardizing your processes, you’ll create an integrated and harmonious machine that is resilient and can withstand change. Plus, it will improve day-to-day team communication and productivity.
If your business is self-sustainable, it can run without you. Leveraging automation through software, like a document management system, gives you more control over your time since you won’t have to spend hours on repetitive tasks. Automation will enhance operations, simplify training, and allow processes to run amidst staff changes.
Robust business process management software will also give you a comprehensive view of everything in motion. You’ll have an audit trail to ensure compliance or adherence to document retention regulations. You can get everyone on the same page, fix bottlenecks, and anticipate issues before they happen. If your business requires adherence to regulations, the software will enable you to achieve accountability and compliance.
With more control from not spending so much time managing issues in your business, you can scale–add more customers, expand, earn more revenue, and add more employees without adding complexity. Or you can simply step away from your business more often!
Anything that is measured can be more easily managed. As a business owner, data is your friend, and not paying attention to it costs money, time, efficiency, and control.
Measuring your progress allows you to make ongoing improvements. Many problems result from process-related issues, so identifying and troubleshooting roadblocks in your processes will keep you on the path to achieving your goals.
Track your measurable goals by simplifying, standardizing, and automating value-added processes in Docuxplorer. Create custom workflows, track tasks as they progress, manage workloads, and run routine reports from one place.
Data will highlight current problems and predict future ones, increasing your awareness and focus and allowing you to shift priorities as needed.
"There is a direct correlation between organizational adherence to core processes and your own ability to let go."
“Most entrepreneurs don’t understand how powerful process can be, but when you apply it correctly, it works like magic, resulting in simplicity, scalability, efficiency, and profitability.”
Your business processes form a complete system, making everyone’s lives easier and the company more successful.
Most organizations have a few core processes that drive the majority of business functions. Standardizing these will help you discover ways to improve your systems, simplify, apply the right technologies, and, most importantly, make everything consistent throughout your organization.
Your ultimate goal is to make running your business more effortless and enjoyable. Tools that enhance your processes are excellent long-term investments. They help you save time and money and keep control. When you have control, the other key aspects of running a successful company–team development, profit, and growth–will follow.
DocuXplorer provides you with the tools to reduce frustration and achieve long-term operational efficiency. From building your unique document structure to automating workflows to expert consulting, business process management software allows you to fine-tune your business and create an effortless, process-oriented future.
