Business Plan Jump Start
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The established way to present your business processes is by means of a process flow diagram, or process flowchart. Many Business Process Engineering professionals will have you believe you need to use specialist flow charting software to accomplish the task, and while this kind of software does speed things up a fair bit, a small business can do a perfectly adequate job with a pencil, a ruler and a stencil. PersonalIy,I use Microsoft Excel.
The biggest problem for most of us is that documenting processes seems a bit complicated, but the good news is that you can start with just 4 symbols (and one of those is used twice) and very soon have a process diagram that is clear and understood by all. Each of the actions are connected with - you guessed it - a connector, usually with an arrow at one end showing you the direction of the process:
Some flowcharts separate different functions or individual responsibilities by the use of lanes or channels.
The trick is to think logically through each of the different parts of what you want to happen, starting at the top and then drilling into the detail.
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For Example my business needs to:-
Obtain customers
Process customer orders
Collect payments
Provide Customer Service
If we take "Collect Payment" as an example, you can then break the concept down into parts: Requesting Payment; Handling the kind of payment offered; What to do when the customer offers some kind of payment you can't accept (e.g credit cards:- if you're still waiting to get a merchant account).
After about half an hour, I came up with this:
You'll find this a very workable approach, and once you get a credit card machine, this can be easily added on as an extra part to the process. Also, if you decide to offer credit terms to trade customers then you can add to it, again breaking the concept Trade Credit into parts:- Offer Credit terms >> Process Application >> Set Credit Rating >> On processing order make sure credit amount isn't exceeded etc.
Go on, have a go, you'll be surprised how quickly you can put together some workable processes that give you control and greater clarity about how things will be done in your business. A process flow chart will also show you where you have unneccessary steps or complications, or the process is confusing. You'll then be able to rework it so it's really effective...