How to Systemize Business Processes for Growth

An Intro to Systemizing Your Processes for Growth

Let's say you have a successful product, business, or team. You've figured out something that works and produces a good result that people want. Now it's time for the next step. Time to shift into a new gear. Either you want to, or you've been asked to figure out how to grow or scale the idea and make it bigger. To make this happen, you need to systemize the processes that produce your product. This also should work in a way that produces more and improves quality.

This is not a new problem. Humanity has been sorting out better processes for a few hundred years. Adam Smith's book, "The Wealth of Nations" points out quality and efficiency as primary benefits of the division of labor. An early example we can draw from is Henry Ford's assembly line. In more recent history we see things like Lean manufacturing, a hallmark of the Toyota Production System (TPS) and even Six Sigma, developed at Motorola and now broadly used around the world.

But how do you know how much systemization you need? How do you pick which process to work on first? How do you identify that a process should be systemized at all?

Identifying Process Needs

First things first, make sure it's a process you need. Something we like to differentiate at Bulb when we talk about processes, is knowing when you're dealing with a project vs. a process. To be super clear, a process is an activity that is basically the same, if not identical, every time you do it. Repeatable or recurring, in that it's going to happen more than once, and likely will keep happening forever.

So now you know it's a process.

90% of Processes: Low Investment Improvements

The next thing to know is that most of the time a process can be established and set into motion with relatively low investment. Somewhere around 90%, can be improved with low investment.

A low investment process is one that can often be governed by Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). Simply documenting the steps to accomplish a task may be just what you need. Even simpler than that is when a team can get aligned on the "why" and agree on "how". Then it becomes ingrained in the culture. It's tribal knowledge. But... if you're doing that, then don't forget to create a better process for onboarding to impart the knowledge.

The results from these improvements are usually more felt than measured. To that end, enhancing these processes can facilitate growth, improve employee experience, and boost customer service. Quantifying any result of these might come in the form of a before and after measurement of throughput. Mark a day when you started a new process and take note of a measurable statistic at that time. Then, measure the same thing six months later. It may not be a direct correlation depending on your situation, but it's something.

10% of Processes: Big Process Investments

A much smaller set of these will be higher investment. These fall into the "big process" category and require more significant investment. Your process might be in this bucket if:

• It involves many parties (people, teams, departments, functions).
• It's critical to the mission. If this process fails, the business could lose substantial amounts of money or even go out of business.
• It provides a competitive advantage or differentiator. Performing this process in a certain way adds value to your product, making it more competitive or desirable in the market.

The good news is, since these processes are often tied to critical or high value functions, it can be much easier to justify the investment. This also means it's imperative to get them right, they will impact a wider audience, and they're made up of a multitude of micro processes or steps, each of which needs attention on its own.

Measuring the results will be much more straightforward. These processes are going to impact how much it costs to produce the widget, how many widgets you can produce in a specified time span, how long your widgets last, and can even impact the value of your widget in the market. Presuming you're keeping track of this already, just keep measuring.

Figuring Out What's Next

Ready to get started?

1. First, decide if your process is big and complicated, or low investment / risk. Once you know this, you'll have a good sense for the next steps that are needed to move forward. More on this later...
2. Next, regardless of the size or impact, identify the key outputs of the process. Know what you're trying to produce and what it looks like to do that successfully. This is like mapping the value stream in Lean.
3. The next step in a digital workplace is to identify the tools that can be used to optimize the steps in the process. More on this later, but here are some high level example questions you might ask:
   • Can we use an automated process?
   • Can the process be started with a digital form submission?
   • What digital communication platform might be used to inform stakeholders and what process steps raise notifications?
4. Finally, work with leadership to engage the right people to provide the tools and guidance needed to make it successful.

Solving Big Process Problems

If we wanted to get more specific in tackling big process problems in a modern workplace here are some key things to focus on.

Anticipate a larger and longer-term investment. This is not going to be over in a week, and you should set expectations appropriately. Prepare the team for a longer commitment. Spend extra time defining and articulating the vision. Invite others to contribute, bear responsibility and seek buy-in from everyone involved.

Ensure process related metrics are within grasp. Write down the process outputs and the ways in which you measure them today. Determine whether those same measures are applicable and identify milestones for measurement of the same outputs as you implement and evolve the new process. If you don't do this, you're flying blind. That often results in a crash.

Involve leadership. This is not a small lift. It's going to get noticed. Some of the buy-in you need will be from your leadership team. If they're not already part of the team, ask for sponsorship, let them help with decision-making, and allow them to help set the stage and pave the way for change at an organizational level.

Expect more restrictive limits and control over the components of the process. If the process is high stakes or critical to the success of the organization, you better believe there will be more control exerted over changes to the process, the tools involved, and how it is implemented. This makes sense since the value should be protected. This can often mean putting automation or apps in place of humans to reduce variability.

Working on the 90%

For the other 90% of processes, you still have systemization to do, but it's going to be more distributed. Success here is all about making sure your people are aligned, equipped and empowered.

Provide your people with knowledge of the tools. There are a whole host of tools available today to make modern work better. One of the biggest challenges is simply getting started. The biggest roadblock to getting started is knowing what tools are available or allowed, and what problems they are designed to solve.

Define and communicate the organizational strategic perspective on how the tools can and should be used for the business. Don't just assume everyone is going to figure out the right way or the best way to use the tools. There will always be experimentation, and that's ok. This is about clearly or providing examples of how tools can be used to implement process and solve problems... AND communicating WHY a tool is used in that way.

Make sure that sufficient governance of the tools and environments is in place to unlock innovation while minimizing risk. The bigger the organization, the bigger the risk. This can get ugly if you're allowing cowboy coders and shadow IT to rule. There are reasonable restrictions and limitations that can be applied at the system level. These limitations go hand-in-hand with the first two. Do a better job on knowledge and alignment and you end up with less friction when it comes to policy.

Mapping process to M365 tools

So what does systemization look like using Microsoft 365? There are lots of tools now that we can use to help run and track process activity. Like I said before, the biggest challenge is simply knowing where to start. So, I am giving you my 2 cents on the M365 tools so you know how we think about them. Let's quickly walk through the common tools, rate them for process management utility, and talk about how they can be connected to processes management.

Outlook

5/10

As a standalone tool, Outlook can be useful for scheduling appointments, meetings, and tracking individual tasks. Shared calendars and delegated access

Outlook is more useful in facilitating a process if paired with other tools like ToDo, Planner, and Power Automate.

OneDrive

5/10

Not ideal for complex or distributed processes where multiple team members are required to collaborate and share information, areas where a tool like SharePoint or Teams would be better suited.

Some utility can be found as a temporary storage or location for processing data as part of automated processing like document conversion and data import or export.

Bookings

7/10

While limited in scope to scheduled activities or events, and availability planning, Bookings can be highly useful for process management especially when it comes to scheduling for service-oriented teams and customer-facing interaction. As part of the M365 ecosystem, it integrates well with Outlook, Teams, and SharePoint.

Forms

7.5/10

Microsoft Forms does have some limitations but can be used quite effectively as an internal or external tool for data intake and gathering feedback. By itself Forms does not have built-in processing or workflow capabilities, but when paired with other tools like SharePoint, Teams, Power BI or Power Automate, it can be quite useful in processes where collecting input directly from customers or end users is required.

SharePoint

8.5/10

SharePoint is a highly capable platform for structuring and managing organizational processes. On its own, it provides a strong feature set supporting collaboration, document management, and workflow automation.

When paired with other M365 tools like Power Automate, Power Apps, and Power BI, SharePoint can serve as an organization data and document management backend that supports critical processes throughout an organization.

Excel

6.5/10

Excel is often used as the primary tool for managing and tracking organizational processes. This is particularly true with small or medium-sized organizations who often start with an Excel spreadsheet out of which the business is run. Flexibility and ease of use often make it a first choice for business leaders.

Beware of the sunk cost though. Excel is not always the best long-term solution. We come across organizations that are run from Excel a lot. Our standard recommendation is to look to other tools if the thing you're doing in Excel is mission critical or high value.

Lists

7/10

In short, Lists can do everything SharePoint can do minus document management. Be careful when using Lists for a process though. It's much easier to overlook the question of "where is the data stored?" with Microsoft Lists. If you're managing a process involving multiple people or that needs to live beyond just "you", make sure you're creating the list in the context of a Team.

Teams

9/10

Microsoft Teams is kind of like the Swiss Army Knife of process facilitation. It is often at the center of communication, collaboration and workflow within and across teams in an organization. The success of processes managed through Teams often depends on the how well an organization does in adopting clear and effective digital communication & collaboration strategies.

Teams can be a central hub where everything comes together from an end user perspective. It's where I communicate with my team members, receive notifications, respond to approvals, collaborate on documents, manage my tasks, view analytics, participate in meetings, and even access apps or data from other systems.

Loop

6/10

Loop is not a process management tool by design but it's features can be very useful for process collaboration, and standardization. Loop can enhance a process by templatizing process elements into repeatable modules. Loop components offer the ability to single source content across a variety of Microsoft tools. This tool can be effectively used to enhance process management as a process documentation tool, ensuring something gets done and is documented the same way every time. Loop even has simple capabilities to create and manage task lists.

Planner

4/10

Planner is intended as a user-friendly task or work management tool. It can be used to manage and track activities in a process, particularly if you like managing the status of an item as it moves through various stages of a process. Think of a kanban style board for visualization of the process. In this way, Planner can be a useful lightweight tool for task management, workflow tracking, agile, or scrum processes.

It unfortunately does not have a robust capability to integrate easily, in all the ways you'd want, with Power Automate. It also is not a good solution for structured, or large-scale processes that might require a more sophisticated level of reporting or analytics.

Stream

5/10

Stream is not really a process tool per say and certainly not a complete end-to-end process management solution like some other tools. However, it does provide valuable utility for process facilitation by enabling video-based documentation, on-demand training, and communication. Where video can be used to improve process through showing or telling it fits the bill.

Power Automate

10/10

Power Automate is Microsoft's primary process automation tool. It connects with all the tools in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem and virtually all tools outside of the ecosystem. It can be used to automate repetitive tasks, connect disparate systems, and improve overall process efficiency. Power Automate is the conduit through which systems and people can be connected.

Power Apps

10/10

Power Apps is the tool you use when it's time to ditch Excel as the way you run your business. Most digital processes have some form of data intake, review, and follow up required. When the requirements on these aspects of a process become more complex, building it with a Power App can be a great choice.

The options range from free, with SharePoint or Excel data based Canvas Apps, to Premium licensed Dataverse based Canvas / Model Driven / Power Pages apps. All options are cloud based, secured, and can be accessed anywhere from any device. A Power App can be used to manage the simplest IT request process and ultimately is the same technology used as the backbone for all Microsoft Dynamics workloads.

Power BI

8/10

Power BI can be the tool you turn to for process analysis and insight. Connect it to the raw process data, wherever that is, and turn it into actionable information. Power BI can connect to virtually any data source, bring multiple data sources into single dashboard, and even trigger other processes based on key data points.

Trying to figure out the 90%? You might benefit from our 365 Foundations course. Need help planning or building a big process? Let's create an app for that! 🙂