Growth – the standard by which all business is measured. Often elusive and yet always essential, the trajectory of your business growth can be an inherent reflection of your company’s health, as well as a strong indicator for how long your business may be able to compete within its sector. But with industries growing increasingly competitive, tangible business growth can feel even trickier to attain. Unless you take the right steps, and the right first step is typically process improvement.
By constantly improving your company’s processes, you help ensure that your business stays agile and adaptable. In other words, process improvement strategising is vital for making sure that your business is primed to respond to abrupt and unapologetic shifts in market and consumer needs.
To help bring you to speed on matters of growth, here is our simple but helpful guide to process improvement strategising, and the measures you can take in 2024.
Building for quality
Alongside helping your company stay agile, improving the quality of your processes may also in turn help your enterprise improve the quality of its products and services. If you’re looking to boost the quality of your company’s output, speaking to an ISO 9001 certification consultant is a great jumping off point, as these insights will definitely provide your company with a good sense of direction.
Receiving your ISO 9001 certification may also help to attract new customers, and perhaps even more industry talent if you’re seeking to expand your enterprise. This is because the ISO 9001 certification is internationally recognised as a signal that your company is dedicated to adhering to best industry practices, and continually improving on its offerings as well as its operations.
And as we mentioned, companies that are committed to building for quality, are likely to attract more industry talent that shares similar values. Not to mention that optimising your operations may even help you expand on your staff in time, generating new jobs in whole new departments. With this ripple effect, it becomes apparent that investing in your process improvement strategising can lead to business growth in more ways than one.
Outline what you’d like to improve
Once you’ve consulted with your ISO certification specialist, you and your wider management team can then identify what areas of your business you’d ideally like to target in your process improvement strategising. Are you looking to boost the efficiency of your production line or your customer journey? Are you looking to improve on your company’s administrative operations?
You can answer these questions in whatever time frame suits your company best. Just make sure that you’re fair and honest in your appraisal. You’ll gain nothing from being selective in your criticism. A SWOT analysis is a great place to start, as it demands you look at your company’s internal and external activities.
From internal operations, financial management, and marketing on the inside to supplier operations, competitors, and business market research on the outside, the more you look at the bigger picture, the better. That way, you’ll be set to implement focused change that promotes the kind of growth you’re looking to cultivate for your business.
Take a human-first approach
While many successful businesses ignore this approach, the truth is that investing in your staff remains a cornerstone of sustainable growth. From robust training initiatives that encourage upskilling to providing channels for your people to feel seen and heard, this type of growth differs from the others in this article as it’s largely intangible.
At least initially. The results mightn’t be instantly measurable, but the improvement in company culture will. Over time, this will have a positive and productive impact on your business, as it will allow you to foster a skilled and adaptable workforce that’s equipped with everything it needs to drive your company growth autonomously. They do say that good managers know when to let their employees manage themselves, after all.
Implement automation
For the uninitiated, automation is the antithesis of a human-first approach. But there’s no denying that in the digital age, business automation is also a potent tool when implemented correctly. If you’ve invested shrewdly and strategically in your staff, you’ll recognise how automation streamlines operations and why you should embrace it. It’s all about focusing energy and resources in the right direction.
Of all the tangible growth measures you can implement in your business, automation is the one that yields instantly measurable results. From simple, repetitive tasks to large, complex workflows, by implementing automation – whether at a hardware or software level – you can accelerate processes and minimise errors, enhancing efficiency.
And that’s just the boring part. The fun part is that it liberates your staff to ideate and execute more creative and strategic endeavours within your company. So let them experiment and see what innovations they may be able to develop for your enterprise.
Embrace data
Optimisation strategies derived via data analysis is another tangible growth measure that business owners across the globe have been adopting in recent years. How you feel about swimming in oceans of numbers, figures, and statistics will decide whether you want to dive deep or flee somewhere high and dry. The fact is, everything your company does can be broken down into data, and the sooner you harness this information, the better.
When you accurately interpret data, you can make informed business decisions, personalise your products and services, and even anticipate market trends (thanks to the power of predictive analytics). Though there’ll still be aspects of your business that available performance or market data won’t reflect, practicing a little creative interpretation when it comes to your harvested data may still be able to provide insights you wouldn’t have even thought possible. So be sure to utilise data for the growth tool that it is.
Enhance the customer experience
Once upon a time, the interaction between the company and the customer was purely transactional. I give you money, you give me a product or service. Those days are largely gone. Now, customers seek an experience when they choose one company over another. And if your company is ignorant toward enhancing its customer experience (or CX), you may be overlooked for a competitor.
The critical thing to remember with CX is that it involves the customer’s entire buying journey, not just the final purchase. Personalising interactions, efficiently addressing user grievances, and proactively nurturing the relationship beyond a transaction are measures that will not just foster growth but loyalty and advocacy from your customers. And we all know what word of mouth can do for a brand.
For modern enterprises, improving your CX will naturally also require utilising technology. So be sure to consult with your web development and digital marketing teams for this particular process improvement strategy. Chances are your CX improvements will start on your website and go all the way to your customer service channels and processes.
For every unique company, there’s guaranteed to be an equally unique process improvement strategy. What works wonders for another company might deliver little for yours. So be sure to consult with your staff, business consultants, and perhaps even your customers (via feedback surveys) to determine the most high-impact growth measures and optimisation opportunities that exist for your enterprise.
Keep in mind too that the process of growth strategising is never truly complete itself. Process improvement strategising is an undertaking you must return to regularly. Once is never enough, not when the tides of customer sentiment change so frequently. So be sure to stay just as flexible and adaptable over 2024. With an open mind and plenty of collaborative brainstorming, your company should be able to enjoy a lucrative calendar year.
