(Article originally written for Vargiu Accountants Smart Business Insights)
Implementing efficient systems – or systematising your business – is one of the most effective ways to streamline and grow.
Compare a busy McDonalds that runs like clockwork to a small restaurant where the team are running around frantically and struggling to keep up. Has it ever occurred to you that the colossal McDonalds empire is largely run by the same teenagers who likely don’t clean their rooms or want to do their homework?
The difference lies in McDonald’s systems – its procedures and everyone’s roles and responsibilities are clearly laid out.
McDonald’s isn’t the only well-known brand that can largely attribute its success to effective systems, it is a hallmark of almost all household names and Fortune 500 companies.
Another example is Toyota where using standardisation is the foundation for continuous improvement, innovation, consistency and employee growth. Toyota’s philosophy and its experience support the belief that if it focuses on its process and continuous improvement, the financial results will take care of themselves.
There are many compelling reasons to systematise your business, with just some including:
- It clarifies expectations of your people and relieves stress
- It provides a clear direction on how things should be done
- It provides a valuable resource and reference point for training staff
- It helps to highlight if there is a better way of doing things
- It builds consistency and efficiency because there is a process to follow
- Staff are more motivated because there is structure
- It frees the owner from many of the frustrating daily tasks and allows more time to network, strategise and innovate
Without implementing systems and processes, the daily running of your business can become all-consuming and its growth limited. Alternatively, by systematising, you and your team will be released from the daily grind and have more time to think, plan, be creative, and get away, while building a more profitable and saleable business.
The first step in systematising is reviewing your business as a whole and identifying pain points where things aren’t working as well as they could be. From there, bring in the relevant team members (those who have experience with the issue at hand), to come up with a new way of working or process that will alleviate that challenge.
The standards and protocols you design need to be specific enough to be useful guidelines, yet also allow some flexibility. Sometimes the solutions will be simple, other times they will be more complex.
While it can be tempting to think that once a particular process or pain point has been addressed, the work is done, in reality systems are best practice templates to be improved over time. As the business evolves and grows, its systems will likely need to be tweaked and adjusted over time to keep up and remain relevant. This shouldn’t be perceived as a hurdle but as an opportunity to continue to innovate and improve, making your business more resilient and successful in the process.
Written by Sergio Alderuccio of Alderuccio Advisory. Sergio is our Chairman, business mentor and advisor. He has witnessed the benefit of systems firsthand through his many years developing some of Australia’s most successful franchise networks.
