Business Processes- Start-ups and SMEs

Without a doubt, successful businesses the world over have managed to remove/limit complexity in their organisations. One way of doing so is by designing processes that take away guesswork in the way a task is performed. So, that means that regardless of who handles a task, the way it’s done, the quality and speed of execution will always be the same. Take for example your favourite bakery; every time you visit it to get your favourite cake slice, the cake tastes the same, and that is precisely why you keep frequenting the bakery. None of us ever asks which pastry chef is on duty; we just rest in the comfort of knowing that the next day we come for that cake slice, it will taste just as good as it did today. The reason the quality is the same is that such bakeries have laid down processes that everyone follows to the letter, ensuring a consistent product.

Because businesses are complex machines, there are many parts to them, aka departments, it follows, therefore, that each department should have its own processes, so in the end a company has a plethora of processes, i.e. accounting processes, operations processes, sales processes, etc. Remember, the reason for coming up with processes is to limit complexity and make companies agile, but if a company is going to end up with a plethora of processes, is that not introducing complexity and drag in the organisation?

A global company I once worked for was big on processes, which helped streamline our work. Unfortunately for us, these departmental processes were developed in isolation of other departments. So instead of simplifying our work, they ended up adding layers of complexity to the way we did business. You would find a process in sales would clash with a process in operations, which in turn clashed with processes in accounting. We were constantly frustrated at the ‘other’ department(s) whose ‘inflexibility’ made it difficult for us to achieve our goals, and at the same time, we were failing to meet our customer expectations as an organisation. It was only after we sat down as a company and aligned our departmental processes that we started to pull in the same direction, and offer the great service we had promised our clients, which translated into increased revenues.

As a business, do you have well laid out processes or do you rely on the presence of some individual who seems to have a knack for doing a certain task? In your organisation, how do you design your departmental processes? Is it a collaborative effort between departments or each department develops its processes in isolation of other departments? Let’s chat!

Business in the midst of epidemics for start-ups and SMEs.

How many businesses out there have ever included disease outbreaks on their business risk assessments? Up until recently, and all thanks to 

Covid-19, disease outbreaks were not an issue I considered a risk that needed mitigating by a business. But given the way world markets are tumbling in the wake of Covid-19, is it not time that businesses took epidemics as a potentially serious threat to their businesses? Read the newspapers these days and you will read of Toyota keeping its factory in China shut and how that will impact their revenues, Primark with 40% of its goods coming out of China trying to find alternative source markets or Apple with its Iphones assembled in China having to delay production and launch of their new smartphones, which will indubitably have a negative impact on their revenues. These are all big companies; they can weather the storm, but what of start-ups and SMEs, how are they currently faring, and how will they fare in the future if disease outbreaks, as predicted by WHO become prevalent?

An e-commerce start-up that I am rooting for and am quite bullish about has found itself at the mercy of Covid-19. They have China as their sole source market, and so for the first two months of this year, they have had depressed sales because until recently, nothing was coming out of China. The founders of this business are bootstrapping, and cannot afford even a day of closed Chinese borders unlike your Apple, Toyota, et al. We all know how fickle clients are; there are only so many apologies and explanations you can give to your buyers for why their goods are stuck in China- even if the reasons are beyond your control, as is the case with Covid-19- before they switch their patronage to your competitors, who have diversified source markets.

 If the Covid-19 epidemic is not contained soon, it will bankrupt many a start-up and SMEs with high exposure to China. It’s time businesses took another look at their business models and re-did their business risk assessments taking into account disease outbreaks and how they could mitigate them.

How is your organisation affected by Covid-19? What steps have you taken in your organisation to mitigate its impact? Going forward, what strategies do you have in place to combat another epidemic? Drop your comments in the comments section and let’s discuss.

Website content

So, recently, a client asked me to listen to a brainstorming session they had had and tease out information they could use as content on their website. Prior to this day, I had never paid any attention to content creation but had experienced it as a consumer on websites I visit. Some content I found helpful, others not so much, and others even frustrating.

This got me thinking: what makes for good content on a website? So I did a bit of research, and came across content strategy. This means that the content should assist an organisation to achieve its long term goals. It's not just about coming up with content for the sake of content, or so that people can say you have a website! The content purpose is twofold: 1. to meet business objectives and 2. to meet user expectations.

According to the foremost thought leaders in content strategy, CEO and founder of Brain Traffic Kistrina Halvorson, and co-founder of Dialog Studios Melissa Rach, content strategy comprises content components as well as people components, but I will focus on the content components here, specifically content substance, i.e. what messages does content need to communicate to our audience?

But what is good content? Without getting too academic, according to some gurus in this area- Chakraboty et al (2015), there are 3 dimensions to content which are:

1    1. Informativeness- the ability of a web site to make information available,

2    2. Usability of information- users perceived ability to utilise content i.e. reduces consumers’      search costs by helping to access the information available on a website more efficiently

3  3. Quality of information- the quality of the content in a website and the suitability of the content from a user’s perspective.

So good content should meet these dimensions. Getting this information was an aha! moment for me. It shed light on why I enjoyed visiting some websites and found some very frustrating. It had all to do with the purpose the content on those websites was meant to fulfil, and whether the content met the 3 dimensions of content. The ones I hated failed to meet my expectations which are generally to find useful actionable information.

I don't know about you, but I hate company websites that sell products but do not display the prices of those goods, and instead invite you to contact them for a price!!! Like, what the hell! If I wanted to call you and ask for a price, I would not have wasted my time browsing your website. These websites rank poorly on the usability of information. Inevitably, this leads to very poor user experience. Depending on the product they are selling, they could lose a potential buyer to a competitor whose prices are easily accessible. I was looking to buy a car recently and found the Toyota website content usability on point. It reduced my search costs by ensuring that the information I needed, in this case, car prices, was easily accessible. Its competitors, on the other hand, required that I call them for a price, which I did begrudgingly as I need to find a car within my budget.

I also hate websites whose content is not properly laid out. Have you been on a website where you keep scrolling down and new information keeps appearing and there seems to be no end to the stream of information, yet you still cannot find what you are looking for? It’s almost as if you are reading a 100-page word document but on a webpage! That is a poor quality layout of the webpage. One wonders why such information could not be curated into various pages on the website.

Anyway, a seemingly simple task got me researching content strategy and what makes for good content and marrying it to my own experiences with content. What has been your experience with the content on websites? If you have a website, did you follow any particular strategy in creating that content and does the content meet the 3 content dimensions? Which of the content purposes does your content fulfil? I would love to know your experiences with website content. Drop your responses in the comment section and let’s have a discussion on content creation.

Cheers

Angella