Business Processes and Related Topics

I've seen first hand the value of documented business processes. I owned a small business of 15 to 40 people for 16 years. We had "before" and "after" stages of having our processes documented. "Before," it was chaotic. Processes were passed by word of mouth and changed just about every time they passed. Formal training? What formal training? It was all word of mouth. The only thing that saved us was a group of dedicated individuals who scrambled to make things work, at the cost of great personal stress.

Sound familiar? This formative, "before" stage is very common, I'd almost say ubiquitous, among early-stage small businesses.

The "after" stage, or normative stage, if done right, makes all the difference. The corporation all of a sudden has a reliable memory. New hire training becomes simple and uniform because the processes are in place and documented. It become posssible to stufdy existing processes and make them better because they are known and documented. The staff can now concentrate on creative efforts to make money instead of scrambling to make up for the chaos of the "before" stage.

With the availability of online tools and archives, processes can be documented rapidly and updated to every desktop just as rapidly. The excuses for not having a documented "method" to the madness are rapidly disappearing. Here's a good article for process beginners.

Streamlining Technology and Business Processes Following a Merger or Acquisition. Ascend Technologies' Dan MacKinnon reviews the steps to effective technology consolidation following a merger.

[Computerworld Breaking News]